Two groups of people got it wrong in Ireland in recent months. Firstly, there were those who feared the visit of the relics of St Therese would result in an outbreak of superstition and hysteria. The second group tried to ban polls in the run-up to elections. Both groups started with the assumption that people had to be protected from their own ignorance - that they couldn't be trusted, in other words.
The greatest mistake of all, however, would be to fail to ask the question: why did three million people visit the relics of St Therese of Lisieux? It would be a tragedy if we were to view the events of the past few months as a slight, even beneficial, aberration by otherwise sensible people.
It would be unwise to ignore the experience of people and attempt to get back to church business as usual, especially when it is becoming more and more obvious that a "business as usual" pastoral strategy is emptying churches of worshippers and people's lives of God.
The real question was never about what was in St Therese's reliquary but about what was, and is, in the hearts of people who came in their millions looking for something. Jesus's first question to his first followers was: "What do you want? What are you looking for?"
In modern terminology we might say that the Lord undertook "a needs assessment" exercise with his disciples.
It is all about trusting the people and trusting the Holy Spirit working in their hearts.
We must try to ask and get answers to the question, "Why did the largest number of Irish people in the history of this land come out to venerate the relics of St Therese at more than 100 venues in every diocese on this island?"
What were they looking for? What did they find? Are they finding that for which they long in the churches every Sunday, or ever? We must, and I hope will, use the best of scientific research instruments to assist us in the task. This is too great an opportunity to let slip.
I have heard many people talk of their hope for what this visit might mean to the church in Ireland: that it will bring people back to the practice of their faith, back to the Mass, etc. My own belief is that the visit will not bring us "back" anywhere but will bring us forward into a new and more authentic way of being a community of Christ's followers.
`No need to recall the past, no need to think about what was done before. See, I am doing a new deed, even now it comes to light; can you not see it? Yes, I am making a road in the wilderness, paths in the wilds" (Isaiah 43:18-19).
The visit has been a subversive one for any church or community or minister who peddles or preaches a god less passionate, less merciful than the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The relics came from, and raised people to an awareness of, a kingdom that is not of this world.
From the time of Constantine there have always been those who would use worldly means to promote the otherworldly kingdom of God. People, however, can never be coerced into a kingdom of love and justice and freedom by means that are not of that kingdom.
Citing arguments that it is for "the people's own good", there have always been those in the church who used and use fear and threat and power to retain the loyalty and allegiance of its people.
Pope John XXIII resisted taking such an approach. At the opening of the Second Vatican Council in 1962 he said that while the church in the past condemned errors "with the greatest severity", it prefers now "to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity".
Some will argue, against this approach, that the church is not a democracy. But this is to define what the church is not. Of course the church isn't a democracy; it is infinitely more. It is koinonia and communio; it is the very kingdom of God, the inner life of the Holy Trinity, breaking into our world.
Christians are called to be the light of the world, the salt of the earth. So, too, is the church in its life and in the way it organises and administers itself.
The sense of peace and serenity, of sheer joy and wholesomeness, that were characteristic of the visit of the relics, gave many people a new experience of God and of their faith.
It is unlikely that those who shared these experiences are ever going back anywhere. They, too, will be anxious and willing to go forward, hoping with Patrick Kavanagh that
The old cranky spinster is dead
Who fed us cold flesh.
And in the green meadows
The maiden of spring
Is with child by the Holy Ghost.
(April)
Brendan Comiskey is the Catholic Bishop of Ferns and chairman of the committee that organised the St Therese visit