Christianity is not dead

Dear Editor, When Archbishop Michael Neary says that we are hearing the “death rattle” of Christendom (IC 13/11/2014), he is clearly not saying that disbelieving secularism has defeated the Church.

Dr Neary describes Christendom as a “shared set of assumptions about life and its purpose, reflected in use of language, in culture and in the law”.

These shared assumptions were always formed principally by a close relationship between Church and State. However, this relationship always severely distorted the Church’s message and limited its evangelical impact – giving rise to the very scandals that led to the secularist reaction in the modern era.

Ireland’s major seminary, Maynooth, came into being in 1795 formed by an alliance of landowning aristocrats and Catholic bishops who were equally determined to oppose social and political transformation.

It was the Irish Church’s consequent blindness to social elitism and snobbery that led to the worst scandals.

In the wake of Irish political independence in the last century the dangers of a close relationship between Church and State were illustrated in Church-run institutions that cruelly abused the most socially disadvantaged women and children – a scandal still being revealed.

Another effect of Christendom was the unbalancing of Catholic moral theology.

Beholden to social elites, clergy too often became blind to the origins of elitism, violence and injustice in the disease of status anxiety and in the sin of covetousness – yearning for what the wealthiest have. Clerical attention became diverted instead into a fixation with the minutiae of people’s sexual lives. This imbalance inevitably distorted the theological understanding of many generations of Catholics.

Given the distorting straitjacket of Christendom it is truly miraculous that Christianity nevertheless survived.

So the death of Christendom is not to be lamented. Instead it should be welcomed and even celebrated as the necessary precursor for the next phase in the history of Irish Christianity.

The 13th Century Franciscan movement was essentially a protest against the corruptions of Christendom, so the papacy of the first Pope to be called Francis is an ideal moment to begin a new era.

Yours etc.,

Sean O’Conaill,

Coleraine,

Co. Derry