Dr Fáinche Ryan. Photo credit: TCD Staff Reporter
A leading theologian and academic has called on every diocese in the country to invest in adult faith formation by employing specially trained lay formation staff.
Prof. Fáinche Ryan, Assistant Professor in Systematic Theology at the Loyola Institute at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), said there should be “people involved in formation in every diocese, people actually employed”. “There needs to be a real solid adult formation available,” she told The Irish Catholic.
Prof. Ryan made the case for consulting lay people more on matters of Church teaching. She warned, however, that if more lay people were to be consulted, they would need to be properly formed beforehand.
“I think you can consult the faithful but they have to know what they are being consulted about. If you are building a bridge the engineers don’t consult me. So, on matters of Church we have to have formed people that you can consult with. People can be very outspoken but they might not actually know the background to the tradition from which they are speaking,” she warned.
The limited availability of people due to busy schedules was also something that needed to be considered, Prof. Ryan said.
“We need to look at the availability of people. Life, as we know is very, very busy, so we cannot expect people to fit into our schedules. We have to make things available to them,” she said.