The Church needs "competent lay men and women educated in their faith", Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said, according to a report in the Irish Times.

The archbishop referred to a statement by Pope Benedict XVI at the beatification of Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman in 2010.

"He said: ‘The service to which Blessed John Henry was called involved applying his keen intellect and his prolific pen to many of the most pressing ‘subjects of the day'," the archbishop recalled.

A lack of people capable of doing such tasks today contributes to the Irish church becoming increasingly marginalised in terms of contributing to social and political discussion, Archbishop Martin said.

Such marginalisation is not simply due to "some sort of external exclusion".

"[I]t is also because the Church in Ireland is very lacking in ‘keen intellects and prolific pens addressing the pressing subjects of the day'," Archbishop Martin said.

This is "a role especially for competent lay men and women well educated in their faith".

"The contribution of the Church to the improvement of society will not be attained simply by negative political commentary.

"It will not be attained by morbid and depressive analysis of the woes of the Church.

"It will never be attained by religious media which allow themselves to be reduced to mere blogs of clerical gossip.

"It cannot be attained by creating a neo-clerical Church, focussed just on priests."

What is needed, Archbishop Martin said, is "a vibrant affirmation of the ‘Joy of the Gospel'".

Without such an affirmation by lay people, the Church will not produce priestly vocations, he added.

Sources

• Irish Times
• Image: Catholic Ireland

The Archdiocese of Chicago has investigated the inexplicable healing of a young American mother who prayed for Cardinal Newman's intercession when she became afflicted by a "life-threatening pregnancy".

Doctors who treated her reported that they have no explanation for the sudden and complete recovery of the woman, a law graduate.

The file on her case has now been passed to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

Blessed Newman was beatified in 2010 after the Vatican approved another miracle in which his intercession was sought.

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Rev. Chadwick was best known for his work on the Victorian Church of England, Cardinal John Henry Newman and Michael Ramsey.

He wrote a textbook called "The Pelican History of the Church: The Reformation (1964)", which an obituary in The Guardian described as "the first book on many reading lists for a quarter of a century".

Rev. Chadwick held two Cambridge University chairs over a period of 25 years, was Cambridge's vice-chancellor during the student unrest of the late 1960s, and chaired a commission that transformed the structures of the Church of England.

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