Post by guillaume on Feb 20, 2009 14:24:28 GMT
Irish Church must escape 'arrogance of power,' says Dublin's Archbishop Martin
Dublin, Feb. 17, 2009 (www.CWNews.com) -
The Catholic faith can flourish amid the pressures of a secularized society, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin told an audience at Trinity College, Dublin, on February 17. But the Archbishop of Dublin warned that faith is threatened when religious activities are "used predominantly as social veneer."
"When faith becomes an ideology then it looses its true identity," the archbishop told a meeting of the Trinity College Historical Society. He remarked that Church leaders can lapse into the assumption that "outward conformity means true assent and commitment," when in fact the depth of religious commitment is lacking.
"I am at times tempted to think that my task would be easier if we lived in a more secularized country, where there was no need to pretend a type of religious veneer as a form of external social trapping," Archbishop Martin said. Yet religion remains deeply embedded in Irish society, in spite of the pressures of secularism, he said. In fact, he observed: "Curiously, much of secular Ireland is not yet ready to separate itself so definitively from religion."
The archbishop opened his presentation by recalling that in the past, a Catholic archbishop would not have appeared at Trinity College. "Indeed the main aim of my predecessors for many years was to protect the younger members of their flock from the dangers to their faith which they could experience in the environment of these halls," he said. Even today, he added, many Christians view universities as "bastions of relativism, of indifference and of agnosticism."
But Archbishop Martin argued that the greatest dangers to the faith of young Irish Catholics today are attributable "to as much to the inadequacies of the Church’s efforts at evangelizing, as to the dominant atmosphere of university culture or Irish culture in general." He argued that a lively faith will thrive when it is tested against popular ideas, and "a faith can only develop within the public square, in a challenging debate and dialogue."
The archbishop remarked that he is continually surprised by "the level of insecurity in the lives of some people which their religious formation has engendered, something which I find hard to reconcile with the freedom Christian belief should bring." Young people are anxious to test competing ideas, and will respect the claims of faith if they are put forward clearly by Church leaders deserving of respect, he said. "If however they perceive the Church as an institution standing up for its own institutional interests, then they will be unmerciful in their rejection and hostility."
The Church's outreach to young people has sometimes been handicapped by "an arrogance of power," Archbishop Martin said, noting that this arrogance was particularly evident-- and particularly damaging-- in the Church's response to the sex-abuse scandal. The best way to restore confidence, he said, is to exhibit "humility and the absence of any trace of personal arrogance-- something which was not always a characteristic of the Irish Church and its leaders."
Dublin, Feb. 17, 2009 (www.CWNews.com) -
The Catholic faith can flourish amid the pressures of a secularized society, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin told an audience at Trinity College, Dublin, on February 17. But the Archbishop of Dublin warned that faith is threatened when religious activities are "used predominantly as social veneer."
"When faith becomes an ideology then it looses its true identity," the archbishop told a meeting of the Trinity College Historical Society. He remarked that Church leaders can lapse into the assumption that "outward conformity means true assent and commitment," when in fact the depth of religious commitment is lacking.
"I am at times tempted to think that my task would be easier if we lived in a more secularized country, where there was no need to pretend a type of religious veneer as a form of external social trapping," Archbishop Martin said. Yet religion remains deeply embedded in Irish society, in spite of the pressures of secularism, he said. In fact, he observed: "Curiously, much of secular Ireland is not yet ready to separate itself so definitively from religion."
The archbishop opened his presentation by recalling that in the past, a Catholic archbishop would not have appeared at Trinity College. "Indeed the main aim of my predecessors for many years was to protect the younger members of their flock from the dangers to their faith which they could experience in the environment of these halls," he said. Even today, he added, many Christians view universities as "bastions of relativism, of indifference and of agnosticism."
But Archbishop Martin argued that the greatest dangers to the faith of young Irish Catholics today are attributable "to as much to the inadequacies of the Church’s efforts at evangelizing, as to the dominant atmosphere of university culture or Irish culture in general." He argued that a lively faith will thrive when it is tested against popular ideas, and "a faith can only develop within the public square, in a challenging debate and dialogue."
The archbishop remarked that he is continually surprised by "the level of insecurity in the lives of some people which their religious formation has engendered, something which I find hard to reconcile with the freedom Christian belief should bring." Young people are anxious to test competing ideas, and will respect the claims of faith if they are put forward clearly by Church leaders deserving of respect, he said. "If however they perceive the Church as an institution standing up for its own institutional interests, then they will be unmerciful in their rejection and hostility."
The Church's outreach to young people has sometimes been handicapped by "an arrogance of power," Archbishop Martin said, noting that this arrogance was particularly evident-- and particularly damaging-- in the Church's response to the sex-abuse scandal. The best way to restore confidence, he said, is to exhibit "humility and the absence of any trace of personal arrogance-- something which was not always a characteristic of the Irish Church and its leaders."