Bishops' meeting with Pope

The Irish Times
Thursday, February 11, 2010

Madam – Next week the Irish bishops are going to Rome for a crucial meeting with Pope Benedict XVI and senior members of the Curia. They must not allow the Roman Curia to present clerical child sexual abuse as an “Irish” problem.

The bishops must have the courage to remind Rome that it has a lamentable record in the area of dealing with clerical child sexual abuse. In a letter to this paper (December 22nd, 2009), I pointed out that Rome had got it wrong at both ends of the abuse spectrum. On the one hand, it promoted Cardinal Bernard Law to the office of archpriest of St Mary Major even though there was extensive abuse of children by priests while he was archbishop of Boston. On the other hand, it failed to pursue credible accusations of sexual abuse against Fr Marcial Marciel, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ who had powerful allies in Rome.

Furthermore, officials of the Dublin archdiocese such as Monsignor Dolan, told the Murphy commission that they “did not feel that Rome was supporting them in dealing with the issue (child sexual abuse).” (4.23).

Addressing the clerical abuse of children without examining the wider reality of ministry and clericalism in the Catholic Church would be a major mistake. There is an enormous need for new forms of ministry in the Catholic Church.

For the past few decades, the Catholic community has been praying to the Holy Spirit to resuscitate the current form of ministry, with little results. Could this not be the Holy Spirit’s way of nudging the Catholic Church to look elsewhere for suitable leaders for Christian communities? Since the 1970s, individual bishops and Bishops Conferences have been calling for major change in the structure and form of ministry, but to no avail. Rome seems to be in denial, which is why bishops’ conferences from around the world must challenge it on this vital issue.

The Irish bishops are pastors in their own right, and not local branch managers, Walmart-style, of the chief executive in Rome. I hope they will have the courage to tell the Pope and other members of the Curia, that the current model of ministry in the Catholic church is imploding right around the globe.

As a missionary I have witnessed examples of this disintegration in many churches in Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Africa, north and south America. Access to the Eucharist, which, according to the Second Vatican Council is the source and summit of the Christian life, is becoming less available to Christian communities. New ministries ought to be shaped in response to the gifts that the Holy Spirit is giving to the contemporary church and not the medieval one. Naturally, these new ministries must be open to everyone, male and female, married and single. – Yours, etc,

Fr SEÁN McDONAGH