Looking in from the other side of the window

Looking in through the glass in the porch of St Kevin’s Church on Synge Street last evening was a lesson on many aspects of the Catholic Church in the world today.
It was Tenebrae at 19.00 – an unusual time.

The large church was less than quarter full. All adults and mainly middle-class, at least so it seemed from attire.

Far away up in the sanctuary a group of men wearing black ‘pixies’ were carrying on some activity, which included singing, profoundly bowing, running about, whispering to one another and generally in perpetual motion or else in solemn silence.

What they were saying was more or less inaudible, but remember, I was the other side of the glass partition.

In some ways it looked like some sort of secret ritual that was being performed inside closed gates.

Within an arm’s distance from me was a table with church magazines. One of the headlines on one of them speaks of the link between relativism and Satanism. Another runs a story on how anti-Catholic The Irish Times is.

It was freeing and relaxing to leave the porch and cycle away from the church and head up Rathmines Road and into Rathgar.

Is this the future of the church? It looks like it. But luckily it will have no bearing on the lives of most of ht people I passed cycling home.