The executive of the Association of Leaders of Missionaries and Religious of Ireland (Amri) has recommended that the Irish episcopal conference use the Revised New Jerusalem Bible (RNJB).

The association, representing 150 religious organisations, missionary societies and apostolic groups in Ireland, with almost 7,000 members, paid tribute to the bishops' willingness to consult widely over the issue. The Tablet understands the Irish bishops are considering the RNJB.

In its submission to the consultation, Amri said: "As hearers of the Word, we allow the Scriptures to influence and nourish us."

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"The engine is still running, but the wheels are spinning and going nowhere," said Fr Roy Donovan of the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP), who said it was like the U2 lyric about being "stuck in a moment you can't get out of".

Fr Donovan, who is parish priest in Cahersonlish, Co Limerick, said "the Catholic Church in its present state is in crisis and doesn't seem to have any future".

"There is also something very wrong with the priesthood. It is not only young people who have become disassociated from the church as an institution but people across all the generations. The church is not on the radar of most people - it is largely irrelevant."

He was speaking in Dublin on Monday night at a We are Church Ireland event entitled ‘What Does it Mean to be Catholic Today?' Read more

Apart from being a "convenient scapegoat for the ills of Irish society", the church has virtually disappeared in the media.

It has also vanished from public debate, modern Irish writing and the lives of the young.

"Once we mattered too much in too many ways, now we've moved beyond antipathy into apathy," Fr Brendan Hoban says.

It may have a ceremonial presence on the official sidelines of Irish life or be a refuge for those ill at ease with the modern world, but that would be its limit, Hoban suggests.

Refusing to face the truth about the state of the Church in Ireland is "a form of religious treason", he says.

Hoban claims the people who want to move forwards "can no longer afford to indulge those who cling to the wreckage of the past".

"For the Irish Catholic Church, the tectonic plates really have shifted" but people were still "trying to build a scaffolding around a house that has already collapsed.

"All the targeted parish programmes, all the parish councils in the world, all the experts sitting in offices with secretaries and computers, all the prayers in Christendom, won't put the old church back together again. Its day is done," he said.

Hoban says two papal visits - one in 1979 and the other last year "bookended the decline of Irish Catholicism".

In his view, the first visit falsely promised Ireland's Catholics new glorious age of Irish Catholicism was about to begin.

The second "announced the end of a version of Catholicism no longer acceptable to the vast majority of Irish Catholics".

Hoban says today's Catholicism is expected to focus on:

• intellectual rigour
• a communicable theology that connects with the lived experience of people
• a robust commitment to a respectful re-imaging of our church
• an honest acknowledgement that clergy in the interests of the gospel need to divest their control and authority
• a consensus that a robust synodality is the obvious and only way forward."

Source

• The Irish Times
• Image: Religion News Service

Archbishop Brown said that young Irish seminarians he met at St Patrick's College, the national seminary in Maynooth, and in Rome, showed a "renewed enthusiasm for their faith". That may well be true, but the numbers are miniscule.

Figures on the bishops' own website show the age profile of Irish priests. Over 65 per cent of Irish priests are aged 55 or over.

There are only two priests under the age of 40 in the Archdiocese of Dublin.

A priest in Killala diocese, Fr Brendan Hoban, pointed out that there has been a priest and celebration of the Eucharist in his parish -Moygownagh - since the eighth century.

But he believes he will be that last priest in that parish.

At the moment there is a priest in every parish in Killala. Within 20 years there will be seven serving 22 parishes spread out over a wide area. The situation is much same in other dioceses.

The research points out that to maintain the status quo would mean ordaining 82 priests each year.

The reality is that 20 students entered Maynooth in September 2013. It is likely that only 10 or 12 will be ordained in 2020. Continue reading.

Seán McDonagh is a Columban missionary priest, well known author and speaker, and a spokesman for the Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland.

Source: Tablet Blog

Image: Percy French Festival