By Caroline O’Doherty
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2011
THE Catholic Church in Ireland is on the brink of collapse and must be resigned to continuing as a minority culture, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said.
The country’s second most senior cleric said sacraments had become social events rather than celebrations of the Church and it would have to relinquish control of primary schools.
He hit out at his peers, claiming there was a lack of proper thought and debate about how the Church should deal with its present difficulties, but, in an extraordinarily frank admission, he also said he had failed to lead the Church in the changes it needed to make to survive.
Archbishop Martin told a gathering at Cambridge University in England that there would be no ordination to the priesthood in his Dublin Archdiocese this year and that Sunday Mass attendances were down to 2% of the Catholic population in some of his parishes.
He quoted reported comments by Archbishop of Boston Cardinal Seán O’Malley, who is conducting a review here for the Pope, that the Church in Ireland had only five or 10 years at most before it could fall over the brink.
“My belief is that in many ways the brink has already been reached. The Catholic Church in Ireland will inevitably become more a minority culture. The challenge is to ensure it is not an irrelevant minority culture,” he said.
Archbishop Martin said the Church’s crisis predated the child sex abuse scandals because for decades the policy had been merely to “keep the show on the road” without thought as to where it was going, and now that the abuses had damaged it further, only radical change would ensure its survival.
“Despite all my efforts I am failing in my attempts to lead such change. Change management may not be my talent.”
He criticised the Government for being “very slow” to offer alternatives to the Church’s patronage of schools. “I believe that there is need for a national forum to debate the issue.”
Addressing his fellow clerics, he quoted Pope Benedict at the beatification of Cardinal Newman when he described Newman as one of the “keen intellects and prolific pens addressing the pressing subjects of the day”. He said the Church in Ireland today was “very lacking” in similar keen intellects and prolific pens.
This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Bill I agree….Christine Buckley exposed herself to the world for who she really is on that day…in full view of our camera…..verbally abusing victims/survivors…she also lied the next day on national TV saying that Diarmuid martin brought tea to hunger striker….she is in it for the money and gets maximum unchallenged publicity….someone needs to confront her publically on these matters.
THE CHURCH IS FINISHED IN IRELAND NOT FOR WHAT ITS
DONE BUT WHAT IT DID NOT DO,
THE BISHOPS WILL NOT TALK TO SURVIVERS,PROMISE US
EVERYTHING AGREE WITH THE GOVERNMENT TO TAKE THE THE MONIES THE CHURCH AWARDED US.
THEY HELD A WASHING OF THE THE FEET OF SURVIVERS
WHO FEET DID THEY WASH!!! C BUCKLEY (WITH HER CROCODILE TEARS)WHO AGREED THAT THE GOVERNMENT TAKE
OUR MONIES ONCE SHE CAN HAVE HER TRUST FUND TO
CONTINUE HER COSY CARTEL
The Irish people are the ethnic minority in Ireland not the catholic church. Ireland is full of catholics.
As the regime collapses, with a domino effect accros Europe thanks to the brave in Ireland, community assets disguised in ownership as ‘church property’ will be passed on by legal hawkers to offshore trusts and other vehicles of misappropriation. However, an act of parliament can be enacted in certain conditions to render such legal actions void and return ownership to the people.
The festering remains of the church may attempt to sell remaining assets to raise cash for the aparatchiks. Some of the current cash funding available to the vatican has been recently invested in shares in well known heavy engineering companys by its friends in Opus Dei and its associate bank in Navarra.
It is important now to start raising the issue of the property ownership. In the 1950’s and 60’s the vatican commissioned one of its most prestiguous lawyers to investigate where the true ownership of property lay and that lawyer conclused that ownership rested with the community where the funds were donated. In other words, the temples, schools, playgrounds, etc belong to the communities. However this vatican did not suit the Vatican and the lawyer was pressured to revise his conclusions. Nontheless his original finding remain in evidence.
In 1968 Fr. John J. McGrath, a Catholic priest with degrees in Civil law and in canon law, published a small book entitled, Catholic Institutions in the United States: Canonical and Civil Law Status. He said, “If anyone owns the assets of the charitable or educational institution, it is the general public. Failure to appreciate this fact has led to the mistaken idea that the property of the institution is the property of the sponsoring body.”
http://www.elephantsinthelivingroom.com/Ownership_of_Church_Property.do
As Berlesconi departs and a less protective government arrives, the Vatican may find that it is defenceless against protestors and fundamentally weakened to the extent that the Vatican may be overrun by protestors. In this situation, it may be vitally important to prevent destruction of files and looting by church officials of valuable assets (in the secret bunkers) which should remain after the regime topples.
This may all seem far fetched but all the signs of a collapsing regime are in evidence. Lets hope Ratzinger remains in power to finish the collapse. He is an excellent demolition man.
Goodbye and good riddance Catholic church and all your officers. You have been a scourge on the face of humanity.
RB