Call for Irish Synod to address ‘dysfunctionality’

Published Date: February 10, 2010

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Saying that the Church faces a “watershed moment” in the wake of the Irish government report on abuse in church-run institutions, former Jesuit provincial, Fr Gerry O’Hanlon, has called for a national synod to deal with “institutional dysfunctionality”.

“It will not do any more for priests, bishops, cardinals, the pope to simply tell us what to think, what to do. People rightly want to have a say,” Fr O’Hanlon writes in the current edition of the Furrow magazine, the Irish Times reports.

“Now would also seem to be a good time to call into question the reality that certain narrow grounds of orthodoxy are a sine qua non of episcopal appointments at present, and to call for more transparent, representative and accountable local, including lay, participation in the appointment of bishops.

“It would seem that we need in Ireland to renew our own understanding of church, along the more participative lines envisaged by Vatican II, and, in particular, with a greater role for women and without any veto on the kinds of issues that might emerge in the consultative process that will be required.

“Why not, then, envisage going down the road of the oft-proposed national synod or assembly, well prepared in each diocese, touching into the experience of believers and disaffected alike?”

More generally, he observed, “one gets the sense that we are at a watershed moment in Irish Catholicism, with repercussions for Catholicism worldwide. There is an institutional dysfunctionality at the heart of our church which goes beyond any simple notion of governance or management reform and which needs to be tackled.”

In the same issue retired Dublin priest Fr Pádraig McCarthy challenged the findings of the Murphy report, how the media has dealt with it and how Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese has responded to it.

“Media coverage of the report may have given the impression that the report is a catalogue of unrelieved disaster. It is good to be aware, therefore, that of the 45 cases in which the report gives an assessment, handling by the church in 25 cases receives some sort of approval from the commission; 20 cases receive varying degrees of criticism.”

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Leading Jesuit calls for synod to address Murphy report (Irish Times)

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