RITE AND REASON: As a practising Catholic, I have never before been so angry with the church, writes Jim Mitchell.
Despite the untiring efforts of the Pope and the clarity of his message, the Catholic Church is undergoing its most turbulent period in recent centuries. Throughout many parts of the world, especially North America and Ireland, the depth and breadth of the clerical sex-abuse scandal are causing earthquakes among faithful Catholics higher up the Richter scale than anything since the Reformation. For many, the inadequate and slow reaction of the bishops has added to the agony.
This comes at a time when there is already a great shortage of vocations, and priests and nuns everywhere are more and more stretched. Moreover, their lives have been made more difficult as they are tarred with the same brush as their aberrant colleagues.
As a practising Catholic, and indeed a practising sinner, I have never before been so angry with the church. Indeed, along with a number of close friends we discussed seriously whether we should leave the church altogether. Some did. We did not. We didn't even cancel or reduce our financial contribution. This turnabout had an interesting genesis.
We felt like writing to or calling on our own parish priest to express our anger. But as he was about to undergo a serious operation we felt it untimely and inappropriate to trouble him.
Then we had a chance meeting with a group of order clergy to whom we expressed forcefully our anger. It was only then that it began to dawn on us that they were more angry than we were.
They felt even more intensely the pain suffered by so many innocent people since childhood at the hands of colleagues acting in direct contravention of the Gospels. Not many days later we had another chance encounter, this time with two Dublin diocesan clergy. And it was clear that these faithful men deserve not the anger, but the added support, of their flock.
On reflection, these two encounters were reinforced by my own experience of running for Dáil elections for over 32 years. The boundaries of my constituency were constantly changed over that period. I had the honour, therefore, to represent in the Dáil, from time to time, 49 of the 200 parishes of the Dublin archdiocese, from west Dublin to the port, from Crumlin to Whitehall, inner city and outer suburb.
Each of these parishes has been blessed with priests and nuns, resident in the parish, 24 hours a day and seven days a week. For many of the less well-off parishes the only professionals who live there are the priests and the nuns working away in relative poverty at the service of God's people.
The Pope sees this on a global scale. He is obviously deeply pained by such evil as child sex abuse. But he sees that the overwhelming majority of his "troops" are not only faithful to their calling but share his grief at the suffering inflicted on minors by colleagues in direct contravention of their mission.
He is also acutely aware that the shortage of clergy and nuns in the Western church will get more acute as each year passes. He realises that, more and more, the running of the parishes and of many other church bodies will have to be handed over to the laity.
This Thursday he will undertake the 97th international trip of his pontificate when he arrives in Toronto for a three-day visit to coincide with World Youth Day, in reality World Youth Fortnight. This festival is arranged every two to three years and opens in Toronto this evening.
These festivals are arranged for big cities that increasingly have all the appearance of being secularised. However, the Pope's view is that the Holy Spirit is abundantly present everywhere in the world.
The purpose of the youth festival is to seek and find Christ in the great conurbations of the world.
For this purpose the Pope has chosen young people as a part of their formation to help equip them to participate more fully in future parish and church administration. He says to the young people: "If you are what you should be you can set the world on fire."
Most people are mesmerised by the Pope's exhausting itinerary week in, week out. Some think it is time for him to take it easy, perhaps to retire, but he is having none of it. He sees himself on a pilgrimage to bring Christ to the world, especially through young people. He said to them: "I never tire of meeting people, especially young people, despite the obvious difficulties for me, because it gives me yet another chance to announce the Gospel to them."
His message to young people is that it is "cool to be Catholic". In this festival he is assisted by hundreds of bishops who each act as catechist to groups of around 200 young people each day.
Cardinal Connell is one of the catechists at the festival this year, as indeed he was last time. He will work with 200 young people a day, most probably including some from among the Irish contingent at the festival, giving an opening address on a chosen topic from the Gospels and then being available for a question-and-answer session afterwards.
The cardinal will be accompanied by Bishop Jim Moriarty, Bishop-elect of Kildare and Leighlin, and Father Jim Caffrey, the director of Catholic Youth Care, the Dublin diocesan youth agency formerly known as the Catholic Youth Council, and over 500 young Irish Catholics.
The hope is that they will return to their parishes and come to the aid of their parish clergy and nuns in bringing Christian vitality to the parishes. Which brings me back to the intense crisis gripping the Catholic Church in the West.
The horror of child sex abuse has hastened change that was long overdue anyway.The Irish church has been far too slow in handing over responsibility, and some power, too, to the faithful.
Within every parish in Ireland there exist enough able and willing Catholics to take over many administrative tasks from the religious. Indeed, there are many tasks of a ministerial or semi-ministerial nature, too, that laity can be trained for.So, as a concerned Catholic, I salute the 500-plus young Irish people who will pray with the Pope in Toronto this week. Hopefully, they will return home and set our world on fire.
Jim Mitchell is the former Fine Gael deputy leader who lost his Dáil seat for Dublin Central in the general election