Chai Brady
Role of youth, women and inter-diocesan relations are some of the focuses of the future, writes Chai Brady
Changes are coming in the Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly and although some of them may be “painful” there will be discussion and dialogue, with everyone facing it together as a Church community.
Following a statement in January about the process of ‘reimagining what the Church in Cashel and Emly could become’, Archbishop Kieran O’Reilly SMA told The Irish Catholic about the results of the more than three-year diocesan listening process and in which direction they are leading.
The archdiocese has been working towards addressing the needs of the Church in the coming century and are following the synodal approach laid out by Pope Francis in which he speaks about communion, participation and mission.
“We’re walking together. I think that has to be the kind of approach that we take because the challenges are many and various, we have the realities of the world right now. We’re just going to have to face so many different challenges together but all the time I think myself, with a missionary background, it is to undertake the mission that was given to us by the Lord, to make the Lord known,” said Archbishop O’Reilly.
Concerns
One of the concerns facing the Church in Ireland is the huge decline in priestly vocations and an aging demographic of priests. Asked about how this will be addressed he said: “You’re all the time trying to address those realities pastorally on the ground, there’ll be new pastoral initiatives, there’ll be new pastoral directors, there’ll be a lot more collaboration and cooperation across dioceses and across parishes. There will be a reimagining, a reconfiguring.
“Pope Francis has constantly asked us to be imaginative and to be creative and I would say that will be at all levels of the Church in Ireland. We’re beginning a real journey of discovery of what it means to be in communion with each other and to be able to participate for the purpose of mission. We’re at the start of a great journey that I think is a new awakening. First of all the spirit always speaks to us through the facts and the facts are an aging population of priests, fewer vocations and yet the call all the time is to go with the Gospel so we have to address the realities on the ground and then move on from there as the spirit leads us.”
There has been a lot of discussion about the closure of some churches to take account of the fact that just about a third of Irish people regularly attend Mass”
What will happen from there is dialogue with local communities, with Archbishop O’Reilly saying the Church in Ireland has a “very strange identity”. “You can’t go to any parish in Ireland where there’s not a monastic ruin, we’ve been through many cycles in Ireland, we’ve lived through so many realities of the Church, we have a great wealth of experience to draw on, we must never forget how well-rooted, especially in the rural areas, the local Church and the local community is and in any move really no matter what you have to take into account the mind and the thought of the people, you have to bring them with you as well to understand how best they can be witnesses to the Gospel in their own communities,” Dr O’Reilly said.
“The buildings will have to be maintained and looked after but people are great for doing that anyway but there has to be a deeper call for each person to live full their own Baptism and to live it in a communion context with a leadership that we give them the encouragement to be fully themselves as Christians in our world. Buildings are always going to be important but they’re not the be all and the end all of course.”
There has been a lot of discussion about the closure of some churches to take account of the fact that just about a third of Irish people regularly attend Mass. Speaking to this reality, Dr O’Reilly said: “With regard to closures and that, you would always hope that would never happen. But as you saw in Dublin there, one big church was taken down then another one more adapted to the needs of the people was used – so things are always changing in the light of local needs and the local people’s understanding of things and I think that’s the way forward really.”
Deep engagement
In a pastoral letter to his diocese published at the end of January, the archbishop spoke of creating a Church which “truly listens to, and respects, womanhood; a Church which promotes a full and deep engagement with the voices of women”. The role of women has been a source of debate in Church circles, particularly around whether women can become deacons and even join the priesthood.
Asked about the future of role of women in any new initiatives, Archbishop O’Reilly said: “I would say they’re part of councils and committees and groups now, they can be chairs of different councils and different groups inside the diocese, women can be and are chairs of them.
“They are deeply involved, I’d say, in all activities in relation to the organisation of the Church, whether it is finance or whether it is safeguarding, so many different aspects. I’m very dependent myself on a wonderful team of women either in the diocesan office or in the pastoral context, of women who are engaged with schools, safeguarding, I mean the groundwork is already being well-laid now for their fuller engagement… however that will be, but again it will be walking together, listening, hearing what it’s about, there has to be that sense of openness to how the spirit is going to speak to us.”
In April 2020 Pope Francis announced the members of a new commission who will study the possibility of women deacons in Church”
While the Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly don’t have the permanent diaconate, which didn’t come up in the listening process, it has always been in the plan of the Church. Archbishop O’Reilly explains that one of the issues surrounding the permanent diaconate was that initially there was a number of candidates that came forward but currently there is very few even showing an interest. He adds: “Even so it varies from diocese to diocese and it demands a level of support from the people, from the priests, that this would work. It’s an open question always because it’s part of the Church’s ministry.”
In April 2020 Pope Francis announced the members of a new commission who will study the possibility of women deacons in the Church. It is expected their work will begin this year. “At the Roman level they have had a number of meetings, he [Pope Francis] has asked them to come together again. The Church is in a walking discernment about that aspect of ministry and sure of course we will see how that emerges, I would hope that it will bring about positive results but we will wait and see,” said Dr O’Reilly.
That world is passed, we live in a different reality now and the Spirit speaks to us in the reality that we’re in”
The commission isn’t the only thing that has been delayed due to Covid-19, the pandemic has also slowed down planning for the archdiocese’s future and due to restrictions around physical gatherings the process of publishing the diocesan pastoral plan has been substantially delayed. However, Dr O’Reilly said it is “very obvious” that the future is going to be led by laity.
Change will inevitably be painful when it means moving from something that hasn’t rearranged itself for over a century, according to Archbishop O’Reilly, he said: “There will be challenges and it may be painful, but we have to face that as a community, we face it together and I think that’s the key, walking together to see where we can go and I mean sometimes it will move quicker than others, sometimes it may be slow, but all the time I think if we hold before the vision of what we’re about as a missionary group in our dioceses, in our parishes, then the Spirit will be with us.”
“There will always be people who will want to hold onto the past, there will always be people who will say, ‘but sure it was perfect in the 1950s’, which it wasn’t anyway. That world is passed, we live in a different reality now and the Spirit speaks to us in the reality that we’re in.”
Vast change
Reflecting on the period just over a year ago, when Covid was something that was a distant phenomenon and was thought to be less threatening than the world now understands, the archbishop points to the vast change that happened in a short time span. In relation to the Church in Ireland he said: “You have to be aware that the old kind of certainties are no longer there and we have to be able to see and address and reflect, but I say together, that’s the most important thing in the future, whether it’s a synod in a diocese or a synod in a country or a bishops’ synod, that has to be the understanding now.”
There is a whole section on youth in plans being drafted by Cashel and Emly. Archbishop O’Reilly said that one of the difficulties has been defining young people, whether it is children, late teenagers, people in their early 20s or a bit older. “You know yourself people in their late teens want nothing to do with early teenagers because it’s just they’re in a different kind of mindset so it’s going to be very challenging,” he said.
{{In the Cashel province, in which there are seven dioceses, Dr O’Reilly said that one of the benefits of the Covid situation is that they work much more closely together now than prior to the pandemic”
“Probably you would have to engage a youth worker in the diocese, we already have a youth forum here and they have been engaging in the different kinds of possibilities of gathering young people but then we have very good projects happening in neighbouring diocese as well and I think there’s a far better spirit of trying to collaborate and work with other projects already in place, we have to share our resources more on an inter-diocesan level, we have to be much more aware of what’s happening over the road, just because there’s a small stream that divides a diocese doesn’t mean that we can’t be engaged.”
Seven dioceses
In the Cashel province, in which there are seven dioceses, Dr O’Reilly said that one of the benefits of the Covid situation is that they work much more closely together now than prior to the pandemic. “We meet on Zoom now we discuss a number of things, pastoral areas, funerals, Baptism, how we’re dealing with that and common kind of approaches. I’m here in the middle of about seven or eight dioceses around me, so none of us is an island in ourself so we have to be able to link in,” he explained.
“These divisions go back to the 12th Century. We have to be far more flexible in the way we work together. Now one of the things that has helped that tremendously is the internet because there’s websites and diocesan websites and youth sites, there’s a tremendous amount of material out there.”
In a December interview with this paper the Papal Nuncio Archbishop Jude Thaddeus Okolo said that the process of amalgamating dioceses has already begun and that it will be “slow and steady – to avoid hurts, shocks, and surprises”.
However, Archbishop O’Reilly poured cold water on the amalgamation process happening in the province of Munster any time soon but accepted it is “a possibility down the road”.
The diocese of Cashel and Emly, Emly was integrated into this diocese in the 17th Century so that’s long forgotten in the memory of people, people only know it as Cashel and Emly now”
“It has always been discussed because some dioceses are quite small, the only diocese that has ever been linked in with another I think in the last 50 or 60 years is the Diocese of Ross in Cork”,” he says.
“That was a big challenge and you know that happened but a lot of people in that part of the country were – and still are, but I suppose as time goes on there’s fewer – unhappy with the way that happened.
“So in any kind of movement like that there has to be careful involvement of people. The diocese of Cashel and Emly, Emly was integrated into this diocese in the 17th Century so that’s long forgotten in the memory of people, people only know it as Cashel and Emly now. It’s important that if anything like that is going to happen it has to be done with a proper understanding of the history and the background and the local needs etc…
In Munster he said: “We’re already working very close together. It’s a very big province in a way, you also have to have, as a bishop, a certain proximity to your people. There’s no sense in having a bishop of 300 parishes and they never see him so there’s kind of a balance. I think right now we have the balance here in Munster because you’ve got the big city diocese like Waterford, Cork, Limerick, they’re very important and then you’ve got the hinterland, the rural areas, which are very strongly church oriented, so I would say right now there wouldn’t be any move in the Munster area for talk about amalgamating but then you don’t know sure, a discussion could come. Again I say a lot of that can be overcome by the reality of working together and collaborating, it’s not always necessary to make a big structural change because if it means that you’re taking up more energy and you’re taking it away from the work of mission and that’s not the best really sometimes.”
The future may be long and arduous at times as Cashel and Emly set out on an uncertain path, but a Pope Francis-led vision of synodality and involvement at all levels of the Church is set to be the name of the game as the archdiocese prepares to publish its plans.