Ireland, Pope Francis, and the Death (and Rebirth) of the Catholic Church

So… As I write this, Pope Francis has arrived in Ireland,

An Ireland- so the media has reminded us ad nauseum- is far different from the Ireland that John Paul II visited in 1979.

I know what they’re trying to say, and some of the commentary says it very well. But at a fundamental level, it strikes me as somewhat lazy thinking. Name me one country that isn’t a lot different than it was forty years ago. I mean, even North Korea is significantly poorer…

And, as is often said, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Even with the decline of Catholic belief and practice in Ireland, 78.3% of the Republic still choose to identify as Catholic, as do 45% of the North.

Granted, we’re not Catholics the way the Church wants us to be Catholics.

But- and this is my topic today- after the way this Church treated us for decades, it truly is a miracle any of us call ourselves Catholics at all.

I say this because of my firmly-held belief that, if we want to do Catholic theology in Ireland and Northern Ireland with any integrity, we must grapple- and I do mean really and truly grapple- with the violent abuse inflicted by the Catholic Church in Ireland on the smallest, weakest, poorest, least influential, and least powerful… and that it did so with the collusion of the Irish state.

This is the social reality into which Francis stepped when he de-planed yesterday.

When we talk about the abuse scandals that have been exposed in Ireland and around the globe, because of the vast amount written about it in the past week, it’s easy to glaze over and say, ‘yes, yes, I know. It’s appalling’… We hear the stories of individual victims and it becomes small and personally tragic, tinged with sentimentality.

Make no mistake- the individual accounts are horrible; each victim has had to survive in their own way.

But when I was doing my Masters, I took the opportunity to read- in their entirety- the 2009 reports of the Commission of investigation conducted by the Irish government into the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin (usually referred to as the ‘Murphy Report’ after presiding Irish judge Yvonne Murphy) and the ‘Ryan Report’ from the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (CICA), charged with investigating the extent and effects of abuse on children in Ireland from 1936 onwards.

To put the reports into some kind of context, while doing my Masters, I also read- in their entirety- UN reports of the use of systemic torture in Apartheid-era South Africa, the use of torture and murder against political dissidents in Central and South America in the 70’s and 80’s, and the use of concentration camps and genocide during the Balkan wars of the 90’s.

Through the lens of my expertise on these issues, I feel confident in saying that what happened in Ireland and Northern Ireland can be spoken about in the same breath.

Reading the reports was- and I choose my words carefully- like staring the Antichrist full in the face.

Reading them, I felt that I understood why someone as compassionate as the Jesus of the biblical text would suggest such a cruel and unusual use for a millstone. 

What the Murphy and Ryan reports exposed was evil;

Over 800 known serial abusers;

Over 200 Catholic institutions;

Over 35 years;

Over the length and breadth of the nation;

Hundreds of industrial schools, Magdalene laundries, mother and baby homes;

Abuse, neglect and death not sporadic or opportunistic;

Not a tragic failure of the system, but, horrifically, the system itself.

This was a gulag.

None of this is ancient history. The modern Irish state only dates to 1921. 

As late as last year, evidence emerged of a mass grave with the remains of 796 children on the former site of a mother and baby home in Tuam, Co. Galway. The Sisters of Bon Secours, the religious order who ran the home, through the efforts of the PR firm they hired, denied the existence of the mass unmarked grave for two years. It was only through the dogged efforts of a local historian who meticulously followed up the fact that there were nearly 800 deaths of children in Tuam between 1925 and 1961, but graves for only two, that we now know the scale of the horror.

These were the unwanted, uncared-for children of ‘fallen’ women, women and children simply seen as ecclesial detritus.

All of the horror is compounded by the Church’s reaction, which has been the very embodiment of the word ‘inadequate’.

First, there was silence. Then, where there had been silence, there has been noise;

Obfuscation, stonewalling, non-cooperation, platitudes, and rationalizations, making many of us, heads cradled in our hands, beg, 

'PleaseinthenameofChristwillyoushutupandfuckoff?' 

In light of all this, it has been wondered, what will the Pope say?

Today, while saying Mass at Phoenix Park, the Pope begged forgiveness- from God and, ostensibly, the Irish people.  

I love Pope Francis; I truly do. But what he said was not enough; not nearly, remotely enough.

The Church has not repented. Worse, it has not mourned.

Rather, it has managed.

It has given broad, universal apologies, tried to ‘draw a line’ under the issue, put policies in place. But no financial compensation, no access to records for the victims’ families, no memorials, no masses for the dead souls…

For its part, the Irish government makes shocked noises and points appalled- APPALLED!- fingers at the Catholic hierarchy, but has been very careful so as not to have to address the complicity and collusion of the courts, the police, and the civil service.

It was they who, at the foundation of the modern Irish state, handed the schools, the hospitals, and entire social welfare apparatus to the Church who, we now know, ran them like an authoritarian, theocratic social experiment.

In short, what did the Irish state know, and when did they know it?

This is the Ireland to which Francis has come.

And yes, it is a very different Ireland to the one visited by John Paul II.

The dictatorship is over. The monolithic, imperial, Holy Catholic Church of the past is gone forever… and most Irish Catholics don’t mourn its passing.

The edifice endures, of course, frantically trying to save and salvage itself.

It still runs the schools and the hospitals;

It still dares to chide and to lecture us, grasping the remaining rags of its moral authority, hoping (in vain) to keep us from voting for marriage equality and the repeal of the 8^th Amendment banning abortion.

Millions of self-professed Catholic People voted overwhelmingly for both, saying, in effect, 'Don’t you ever again tell me what is right, good, or appropriate for my life, my nation, or my family, ever.’

So… How do we do Irish Catholic theology with integrity in the shadow of the mass grave in Tuam?

With all due respect to what the Holy Father did say, what do I wish he had said?

I give you a mystery:

What would happen if he had said, ‘We have sinned;

‘We are sorry;

‘We humbly repent,

‘And as penance, we will shut ourselves down, collectively give up our vocation, sell all we have and give the money to the poor, the abused, the victims, and the survivors.

‘God forgive us.

‘God bless you.

‘Goodbye’?

The Church would end.

But through its self-destruction, through this self-immolation, I wonder if, in time, the Church might be reborn…

Those of us who weekly drag ourselves dejectedly to 11am Mass, as well as those who long ago stopped dragging themselves to Mass, now that there wasn’t one to drag ourselves to, might feel a new stirring.

Over time, as has happened in these islands for millennia, men and women would feel the call of God.

They would pray and they would serve.

They would heal each other’s bodies and souls.

They would meet together over bread and wine and feel God in their midst.

And each morning, as the first of us did, they would face the rising sun and worship the three-in-one, singing,

‘As it was in the beginning, it is now an ever shall be.’

The Church might be reborn…

For at the heart of the Christian faith is rebirth- life from lifelessness.

The writer of the Gospel of John has Jesus say,

Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains a single grain;

but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

Those who love their life lose it. And those who regard the life of this world as nothing will keep it for eternal life.

The Irish Catholic Church must die… But it must die as Christ died.

It is only by doing so that it can fully be the Body of Christ, given for many.

The presence of evil and sin does not mean that there is no God.

It was God who raised the Body of Christ to life. I believe that God wishes to raise The Catholic Church- the Body of Christ- to life.

For what shall it profit the Church to maintain a crumbling façade and lose its soul?

It is the God of salvation who, in Christ, gives salvation.

The Church can be saved.

But it must die.

It's the only way to live...