A series of scandals involving priests and religious had been quite devastating and had raised very serious questions about celibacy as well as about sexual maturity, the Bishop of Killaloe, Dr Willie Walsh, has said. At the Merriman Summer School in Ennistymon, Co Clare, Dr Walsh said there had been a significant decrease in religious practice, and that traditional church teaching on sexual morality was being ignored by many Catholics. Marriage breakdown had significantly increased in recent years and many people had chosen to live in second relationships.
The priesthood and the life of the religious were no longer seen by most young people as a serious or worthwhile option in life, he said. There appeared to be a significant alienation among many who grew up as Catholics, particularly among the most educated and articulate people in society. Bishop Walsh said that judged by the standards of the 1940s and 1950s the picture was depressing. However, there were still very large numbers faithful to Sunday Mass and other religious practices; large numbers of people were still active in parish life and retained a strong loyalty to their church.
There was growing evidence, he said, that people were coming to realise that the promise of happiness through material goods was a false one and that they were looking for a deeper meaning to life. Dr Walsh said there had been a continued improvement in the relationship between the Christian churches. Progress in ecumenism had been slower in recent times than in the immediate post-Vatican 11 period - but when compared to the relationships in the earlier years of Irish independence it could be said that they had come a long way.
"The Catholic Church is weaker as an institution, but I believe that the church is now a more humble and more honest church, a church which recognises its own sinfulness and there is, as St Paul says, `strength in weakness'."
Bishop Walsh said a weaker church which recognised its own sinfulness could more readily identify with the weaker members of society. "A weaker church is a less oppressive church and the `strong' Irish church of the 1920s to the 1960s was at times quite oppressive. A church which claims to be true to the teaching of Christ must surely be a liberating rather than an oppressing force," he said.
The church of the 1920s, where bishops "said do it and all was done, where the priest was the middleman between humankind and God", had travelled a considerable distance, he said. In that era faith and religion were taken for granted in an unquestioning way. The church during those 75 years had exhibited all the characteristics which were exhibited by ordinary people at different times - people who were proud and humble, mean and generous, demanding and serving.
"We have come to a church which is insecure, hopefully less authoritarian and less clerical, a church which defines itself as the people of God," he said.