This week’s column in The Kerryman.
Michael Commane
I’ve just finished reading Derek Scally’s book 'The Best Catholics in the World’. It is a work of genius. It tries to explain the story of where we are with the Catholic Church in Ireland today.
Scally is The Irish Times correspondent in Germany and has been living in Berlin for over 20 years. He is hanging on to his faith by his finger nails.
Derek grew up in Edenmore parish on the north side of Dublin. He recalls some of the strange behaviour of Fr Paul McGennis, who was a priest in his parish. McGennis sexually assaulted Marie Collins when he was chaplain at Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital in Crumlin in the 1960s.
Scally gives some space to the clerical sexual abuse saga in the Catholic Church but that is the launchpad for his story.
Living in Berlin he has learned of the terror of the East German regime and before that what the Nazis did.
If we try to distance ourselves from those who did terrible evil we are dodging what happened and are trying to forget about it. As if to say, we had nothing to do with that.
When any organisation has control and has complete power, the majority of people are afraid to stand up and object.
I remember when Pope John Paul II came to Ireland. At first I did not want to go to the Phoenix Park to see him. I thought it was all a stage-managed show of some sort of strange power. I went because I did not want to be the odd man out. And then when I did go I was embarrassed walking up Chesterfield Avenue in my Dominican habit. There I was belonging to the ‘special people’. It seemed all wrong to me then and still seems all wrong to me today.
Back that day in 1979 I was extremely uneasy with the hype that surrounded the event. I might have mumbled and groaned about it to friends but I was afraid to say anything too public.
It takes great courage to stand up against the prevailing wind whether it be in the church, at work or in the State.
We live in a time when we think or believe we are all standing up for our rights.
We need to think again. How many of us follow the crowd? Isn’t that exactly why influencers are making such extraordinary sums of money.
If anyone does or says something that does not conform in the current climate we easily dismiss them as fanatics.
Scally is saying that we in Ireland went to church not knowing why, and have stopped going to church not knowing why. He wonders what actually did we know about our faith.
The clerical child sex abuse horror has been a great excuse to walk away from the church. It’s easy to get angry about it.
Clerical power merchants took control and most of us followed like sheep. We were afraid to speak out or criticise the priest. And if someone did they were marked for life.
A line in Scally’s book keeps ringing in my ears: ‘What if you saw something but chose not to see?’
It’s something we all do, and do far too often.
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