MICHAEL SALTER,
Sir, - Father Eamonn Clarke (March 19th), and many of the contributors on the subject of the "crisis" in the Church, seem to be looking down the wrong end of a telescope in presuming that what pertains in Ireland, and indeed much of the first world, applies generally.They compound their error by espousing as a panacea precisely those trends that threaten the Church in the West!
For the record, the Church is not shrinking but has grown by 30 per cent in the reign of the present Pope.
As for priestly vocations, they are up 75 per cent in the same period, with at present over 8,000 clerical students in each of Brazil and Mexico while a surprising 10,000 Indians (where the Church is a tiny minority) are studying for ordination.
More relevant to our predicament is that even in the spiritually arid West there are orders such as the Legionaries of Christ or the Order of St Vincent Ferrer which are overwhelmed with applicants while there is also a sprinkling of dioceses with full seminaries. What these orders and dioceses have in common is a strict adherence to orthodox, traditional doctrine and discipline.
The crisis in the Western church occurred 30 years ago when we were assailed by a horde of semi-heretical modernists mouthing inanities about the "spirit of Vatican II", who set about suppressing authentic popular devotions, forcing on the faithful a plethora of meaningless innovations and reducing sound doctrine to a matter of debate.
We are now reaping the bitter fruits of this, in particular a younger generation that, having been wantonly deprived of the catechism, was fed modernist imbued catechetics. But there is still hope for the future if we are blessed with more bishops such as Pell of Melbourne, Doran of Rockfield, Illinois or Chaput of Denver who have not been afraid to face down or remove the ageing hippies in the clergy and thus reverse both the decline in religious practice and ordinations in their dioceses. Otherwise we might need another Ecumenical Council - not Vatican III, but Trent II. - Yours, etc.,
MICHAEL SALTER,
Seatown Place,
Dundalk,
Co Louth.