Archive News
Tackling the issues at the heart of the Catholic crisis
Date Published: 29-Aug-2012
Did you know that – whatever about the ordination of women priests and all of the kerfuffle that might entail – there is nothing at all to stop the Catholic Church from electing female Cardinals and showing the first semblance of equality at the Vatican’s top table?
Imagine the choice we’d have on our own doorstep of women who might inspire a real revival in a country where the census found that 84 per cent of us are Catholics, and yet only one in three is a regular Mass-goer.
There’s a Parish Priest in Mayo, a founder member of the Association of Catholic Priests, who has recently published a thoughtful, measured and yet revolutionary book that looks at the state of the Church in Ireland now, traces the reasons it finds itself where it is, and looks at how it can evolve for the better into the future.
Most importantly, Fr Brendan Hoban’s book – Where Do We Go From Here, subtitled the Crisis in Irish Catholicism – isn’t some kneejerk reaction the clerical sex abuse; rather it is a forensically constructed examination of the problems and perhaps the solutions, with just a degree of lateral thinking thrown in for good measure.
It should be recommended reading, not just for those who consider themselves practicing Catholics, but for anyone who has even a tangential relationship to religion. Which just about covers the vast majority on this island.
The selection of women Cardinals is one of his suggestions, but he doesn’t pull it out of thin air; it is partly to send out the right signals but mainly because, among the many crises facing the Church, the dramatic fall-off in ordinations is up there with the biggest of them.
As it stands, the average age of priests in Ireland is 64; in ten years time it will be 74 or unless there’s an increase in vocations – which is highly unlikely given current trends – it will be in the eighties by 2032.
It’s the same as you go up through the ranks, because 23 of our Irish Bishops are over 65, and 15 of them over 70; six dioceses have no bishop at all.
And if they retired at 65 – as they would have to do if they were Bishops of the Anglican Church – only four dioceses would still have their present bishop. That’s hardly the age profile for a Church trying to recover lost ground.
So Fr Hoban, who is the PP in Moygownagh and a regular columnist with the Western People, has some solutions; controversially perhaps he wants to see those priests who have left active ministry – particularly because of the laws on celibacy – coming back into parishes.
He also suggests a role for more mature members of the parish in active ministry – and if the debate on women priests is an impediment to progress, he suggests that we move higher up the hierarchy because Cardinals do not need to be ordained.
With that in mind, he throws out the names of Mary McAleese and Nuala O’Loan for a start – two pioneers in their field who also have strong and deep faith – as role models on this front. It’s an interesting place to start.
The level of practice in Ireland has fallen from 92% to 35% – although that’s still 1.6 million, so it’s not exactly on its last legs either – so it’s not unreasonable to assume a level of disconnect between the congregation and the hierarchy.
And yet turning over more of the power or the authority to the laity isn’t a solution on its own – Fr Hoban points out that the Lutheran churches in Scandinavia defer to their members on teaching and they’ve declined in numbers anyway.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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