Pope Benedict XVI Part 2 of a new series on Faith in modern Ireland with Eoin McCormack
Have you ever found yourself in the often-awkward position in work or in another other social setting where you are somehow elected the spokesperson for all things Catholic? Over the next few weeks, this column will explore how we can better prepare for those uncomfortable conversations that many Catholics find themselves in today.
Last week’s column highlighted the need for us to upskill in our apologetics (defences) if we want to be in any way compelling. To do this, we need to go back to the books and make use of the many online resources now available to properly study the faith in order to truly know what we’re talking about. Equally however, in the spirit of echoing St Paul’s evangelisation techniques in Athens, we also need to be experts on the given culture to know what apologetics skills are necessary to propose anything that can be meaningfully understood.
This week’s column will take a philosophical look underlying the current state of religion in Ireland. Just as St Paul demonstrated to the pagans that their worship of an ‘unknown god’ was in fact pointing towards the deeper mystery behind the universe – the one true God revealed in Jesus Christ – we too need to be able to read the culture to point people towards the truth.
Faith & Culture
Working in a multicultural parish in Dublin city, I am continually approached by Catholics from all over world who ask What is going on with religion in Ireland? It has become an apparent observation by many international Catholics, either visiting or living here, that Ireland is a cold house for joyful people of Faith. To our shame, for the most part, this coldness is largely coming from cradle Irish-Catholics who themselves have received the sacraments and a Catholic education within the Irish Church. This comes as a particular surprise to many international visitors who are acutely aware of Ireland’s reputation as the ‘land of saints of scholars’ and our extensive missionary outreach in the last century.
All you have to do is google ‘Catholic Church in Ireland’ and you’ll find hundreds of news articles with few offering anything hopeful”
If we want to construct an appropriate model of apologetics that makes sense for the modern world, the question “What is going on with religion in Ireland?” is actually the perfect place to begin. Like St Paul in Athens, we need to understand the philosophies that shape people’s often ill-informed remarks or comments regarding religion in the modern world.
Ireland’s Philosophy
For the past 30 years, the narrative surrounding the relationship between Church and culture in the secular media at least, has largely focused on controversial issues such as the child-sexual abuse scandals, the Church’s place in state education, declining vocations, and so on. All you have to do is google ‘Catholic Church in Ireland’ and you’ll find hundreds of news articles with few offering anything hopeful. It is true to say in a quick conversation, much of the reasons people give for their contempt of Catholicism in Ireland is generally related to at least one or more of these issues in some form or another. But if the conversation develops and you press the person with even one or two simple questions regarding matters of Faith, you might just find that they will reveal a very surface-level understanding of any of the big questions – whether there is any real purpose to life, whether there is an objective nature to truth or whether belief in God is a reasonable or meaningful proposition.
The scandals could not have come at a ‘worse time’ not because there is ever a ‘good time’ for scandal, but because Ireland was changing culturally and philosophically”
At an address given in New York, in 2013, the then Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, indicated, “in one sense the scandals could not have come at a worse time.” This is a highly important point to not get lost in a debate about recent scandals, these are largely the types of conversations where no one benefits. Rather, as the former Archbishop alludes, there is something else lurking under the culture. The scandals could not have come at a ‘worse time’ not because there is ever a ‘good time’ for scandal, but because Ireland was changing culturally and philosophically. Secular-rational philosophical trends that were once restricted to the universities of the enlightenment era and had yet to have any real influence in Ireland, had just arrived on our shores alongside the rapid growth in material prosperity blended with a new openness to the wider world and multi-culturalism. And while some of these developments have come with many positive influences, with every form of change there is always unintended consequences. Religion had become not just contemptuous because of the scandals, but it also became increasingly culturally irrelevant.
For the most part, while people may still site the various controversial issues for not engaging with the Church, experience and statistics tell us that those who actually leave the Church do so for much deeper philosophical reasons. When it comes down to it, religion is neither rational nor relevant. To submit to a singular ‘truth claim’ of any kind is deemed potentially offensive and non-sensical because there are alternative views and opinions. Even gender is now a relative term. We are, as Pope Benidict XVI predicted in 2005, living in a “dictatorship of relativism.”
‘Nones’
As of the last census, the second largest religious group in Ireland is ‘no-religion’. This is very telling considering the corresponding drop in those identifying with Catholicism. Much like their counterparts in the UK and the US, Irish Catholics who leave the Church do so to enter the ‘no-religion’ bracket. This statistic is important because it indicates that people are not merely disillusioned with the institutional Church and finding other ways to practice their faith in the triune God, such as through Anglicanism for example. Instead, it shows that many are explicitly stating that belief in the Christian God is no longer relevant to them, leading them – and their future children – to identify as religious ‘nones’.
All three of the most recent Popes have recognised this growing need within the cultural dialogue writing encyclicals stressing the reasonableness of Faith”
Understanding these philosophical and statistical insights is essential to recognise the true nature of your ‘religious conversation’. What might seem like surface-level remarks could actually be something much deeper and more philosophical than you initially realise. When ‘talking religion’ in modern Ireland, we therefore need a model apologetics that is very much grounded in reason to tackle the conception that Faith is irrational. We need to prime ourselves with reasons to believe in God who is the ultimate logos – reason – behind all things as St Paul told the pagans in Athens. We need to have answers for people’s questions on why we exist, what is the fundamental purpose to life, and arm ourselves with good philosophy for the existence of truth itself.
All three of the most recent Popes have recognised this growing need within the cultural dialogue writing encyclicals stressing the reasonableness of Faith. Just before we entered the new millennium in 1998, John Paul II wrote his groundbreaking encyclical Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason) in reminding to the culture of the “two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of the truth.” Similarly, both Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis together scripted Lumen Fidei (The Light of Faith) in 2013, which acts as a complementary follow-up to Fides et Ratio, dialoguing with enlightenment criticisms. In it, the Popes recognise that faith “might have been considered sufficient for societies of old but was felt to be of no use for new times for a humanity come of age, proud of its rationality.” ‘Talking religion’ in modern Ireland therefore needs to be informed with confident reasons to believe.
Next week’s column will tackle the issue of ‘talking God’ in the office – how do we use these ‘reasons to believe’ to demonstrate that faith in God is not irrational as the secular culture might like you to think.
Read Part 1 in the series here – Talking about faith in a sometimes hostile modern Ireland