The following article was written by VOTF’s Sean O’Conaill and appeared in the Irish Times.
With the Vatican-appointed Church inspectors due in Ireland this autumn, Sean O'Conaill wonders if the patriarchs will announce the failure of patriarchy.
How many in Ireland believe that the pending visit to Ireland of nine Vatican-appointed inspectors, or visitators, can reverse the rapid decline in the authority of the Irish Catholic hierarchy?
So far, scant enthusiasm for the visit has been shown by Ireland's bishops themselves. It was left to the Irish Catholic to strike a tentative note of optimism in its headline of June 3rd: “Could this be the renewal we have been waiting for?”
For that to happen the visitors will need to do something quite sensational and unprecedented. They must announce that the patriarchal governing system of the Catholic church has been finally exposed as anachronistic, stifling and dangerous—and call upon the Pope to reform it...."
Bridget Mary's Reflection:
Well said, Sean! The Vatican needs to come to grips that the end of patriarchy is already a reality. The institutional church has lost its moral credibility. It must reform and renew to survive. Jesus showed us how to live as the beloved of God. Both men and women were his disciples and called to be the Good News as well as to share the Good News. The Roman Catholic Church is one of the last bastions of male clerical privilege and gender apartheid. Structural change is the only solution. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said 16 years before the the demise of apartheid in South Africa: "... our God... is a God of justice and liberation and goodness. Our cause...must triumph because it is moral and just and right. .." Reflecting recently on the collapse of apartheid, Tutu told TIME, "The texture of our universe is one where there is no question at all that good and laughter and justice will prevail." (TIME Oct. 11, 2010) So too the time for the full equality of women in our church has come. No more excuses, please, from the prelates in the Vatican.
1 comment:
That is a sweet wish Bridget and I hope you receive what you are praying for.
The RCC likes to think of itself as an immortal institution and prides itself on its 'ancient' provenance.
However, that provenance begins to look anemic when put under the historical microscope. 2,000 years is not that long really in the face of deep human history.
The RCC takes comfort in it's historical record and how it has survived worse tests than those it faces today.
However, any serious study of history will reveal that when institutions crumble, it does not matter how old a tradition they may have to draw on, the end comes as a surprise and comes rapidly.
Personally, I think Christianity will continue to inspire for many more hundreds of years but the RCC is about to get a lot smaller and less relevant in the world at large. Even Benedict has said he sees a much smaller church emerging from this era.
I agree with him. I am a Roman Catholic by birth, I am Irish and I was taught in Irish schools in the 60s and 70s, both my brother and I were abused at Marian College in Ballsbridge in 1966. Abuse they have never acknowledged although they have been presented with enough credible evidence of the abuse. The abuser was transferred to other Marist schools as was normal and I am sure he went on abusing...
I have waited a long time for the hierarchy of the RCC in Ireland to be exposed for what it is - a foreign inspired effort to control a subject people.
Check out what Robert Blair Kaiser had to say about this earlier this year.
http://opentabernacle.wordpress.com/2010/08/20/robert-blair-kaiser-urges-irish-to-fix-their-broken-church/
I wish you and others like you God's speed as you go about taking the Irish church away from these Roman dominated clerics.
Post a Comment