Reflection / John F. Fink

Pope will find a different Ireland from one visited by John Paul II

Pope Francis is scheduled to be in Ireland on Aug. 24-26, mainly for the World Meeting of Families. It will be only the second time a pope has visited Ireland. The first time was 39 years ago in 1979.

I was in Ireland when Pope John Paul II, now St. John Paul, visited that country. But my presence there was purely coincidental, or perhaps providential.

At the time, I was president of the International Federation of Catholic Press Associations. We had had a federation conference in Vienna, Austria, in 1977, and selected Dublin for the next meeting.

We had scheduled our conference 18 months before it took place, but it turned out that we were going to be there at the exact same time as Pope John Paul II was making his first visit to the United States, stopping in Ireland on the way.

We had asked to meet with the archbishop of Dublin during our conference, and he agreed to have a reception for us. But we thought he might have to cancel that because of the pope’s visit. He didn’t cancel it at all. We had the reception the day before the pope’s arrival, and the archbishop couldn’t have been more gracious. More than that, he gave us front-row seats at the Mass the pope was going to celebrate in Phoenix Park.

That Mass was some event! An estimated 1 million people were in the park to see the pope, and I had never seen so many people in one place before. The pope’s plane arrived from Rome and flew low over the park before landing. The people went wild. Then the pope arrived at the park and celebrated Mass. We members of the Catholic press had the best seats in the place for the whole liturgy.

After the Mass, we were bused to the archbishop’s home, where the pope was staying. After his dinner, he came out to meet the press, giving us a little reflection but not answering questions. It wasn’t really a press conference.

The pope toured Ireland before leaving for the United States, and so did we. Our tour took us to the shrine at Knock the day after the pope was there. The place was still a mess from all the trash strewn by those who had seen the pope.

The Ireland that Pope Francis is visiting is far different from the one Pope John Paul II visited in 1979. Then 87 percent of Catholics attended Mass weekly or more. Today, it’s about 20 percent, and declining.

Then there was a surplus of priests, with many of them becoming missionaries in other countries, including the United States. Today, Ireland has few vocations. The average age of its priests is approaching 70, and the Church there is seeking missionaries from African countries.

In 1979, contraception, divorce and abortion were all banned by law. Not so today.

As Irish Cardinal Kevin J. Farrell said in an article published in the Aug. 3 issue of The Criterion, “Ireland is a country that has suffered tremendously, and suffered at the hands of the Church, also—so many cases of abuse: sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse.” In other words, the Church in Ireland has largely brought its problems upon itself.

But the blame shouldn’t be placed totally on the Church in Ireland. I have been back to Ireland since 1979, most recently in 2015, and I can attest that Irish society isn’t what it once was. What was once a poor country is now thriving economically, and immigration has created a much more multicultural and pluralistic society.

Ireland, therefore, has become a much more secular society than it was 39 years ago. In this respect, of course, it is like the rest of Europe and increasingly like the United States.

Pope Francis has recognized the way our world has become more secular, and continues to strive to see how the Catholic Church can play its rightful role in such a society. It will be interesting to see what he says and does during this visit to the Emerald Isle.
 

(John F. Fink is editor emeritus of The Criterion.) †