THERE WAS “very little doubt” that for Ireland to default on its debts “would be seen as lacking in moral rectitude. There is something definitely unethical about borrowing and not repaying”, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin John Neill has said.
“Lending recklessly raises another whole ethical field,” he said, but that because there was reckless lending, “didn’t mean people had to borrow . . .”
As announced last October the archbishop is to retire at the end of next month. He has been Archbishop of Dublin and Glendalough since October 2002.
On the comparative silence of the Irish churches in the current financial crisis, he felt it was “particularly hard to comment on it at the moment because it is so party-political sensitive”. For many it was “very hard to see the larger moral issues involved”.
The crisis had shown that in Ireland we were “not good with individual responsibility, basically”, he said. It was also “absolutely correct” to highlight how, over the years, “we [in the Church of Ireland etc] stopped propagating” the Protestant ethic “and were keeping our heads down”.
His church, as with other churches, lost hundreds of thousands of euro in the collapse of bank share values. But the archbishop emphasised that church investments were “very widely spread”. Income was “seriously down”, however.
“I think that institutional religion as a whole is going to take quite a knocking in Ireland,’’ he said. He felt his generation “failed . . . in passing on love of the institution’’.
He did not, however, think they failed in passing on faith itself.
“There’s a lot there that is not expressed institutionally. I think a new form of church may easily emerge but I cannot discern what that will be. It is one of the reasons – not in a sense of despair – why I feel I should retire at this stage. Fresh leadership is needed in the Republic, to discern what is happening,” he said. His successor will be elected on February 2nd. The Church of Ireland has enjoyed sustained growth in recent years. This he attributes to the “very pro-active” approach of parishes. “The immigrant population has definitely made an impression,” he said. On top of which “a lot of people have been searching, a lot of people adrift, the Church of Ireland has become a home for many of them”. Quite a number were from a Catholic background.
There has also been strong growth in numbers training for ministry in Ireland with the church beginning to enter a period where “over-supply” of priests was becoming an issue. He felt the Church of Ireland had an advantage in that they allow women priests and clergy marry.
The clerical child sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church had injured the Church of Ireland too. But, he emphasised, “we have been very careful not to capitalise on this. It has happened to Anglican churches in other parts of the world where they had to take on the role of the state.”
He agreed the scandals had “injured the brand” particularly where young clergy were concerned. They “feel very vulnerable. Many of them don’t wear clerical collars because of the abuse they have received on the streets”. Where State funding for Protestant schools in the Republic was concerned, he said relations with the Department of Education were now “much better” and that progress was being made.
On relations between the Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland in Dublin he said “I don’t think they’ve ever been better”. His counterpart, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin, was “a breath of fresh air to the scene. He came with a very strong ecumenical agenda [on becoming Archbishop in May 2004].
“He brought the Catholic archdiocese straight into the Dublin Council of Churches, to which all other churches were already affiliated. At each level he has worked with us,” he said.
But, if ecumenical relations in Dublin are good, the same cannot be said of other levels. The announcement by the Vatican, that it was setting up a separate personal prelature for Anglican clergy, including bishops, who were unhappy over how their communion was dealing with the ordination of women and gay priests “was not expected”.
It was seen “in many Anglicans quarters as an unfriendly thing to do”. Similarly, the continuing reference by the Pope to Protestant churches as ecclesial communities has “hurt a lot”.