June 13, 1999

Scandals and New Beliefs Changing Ireland's Church

By JAMES F. CLARITY

UBLIN, Ireland -- As times change in Ireland, so too does the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, once the ineffable, undisputed authority of life here.

Ireland still looks and feels like Western Europe's most Catholic country -- an estimated 90 percent of its 3.6 million people consider themselves practicing churchgoers, people still cross themselves when they pass a church, most have ashes daubed on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday and flock to churches on Easter. Angelus bells calling the faithful to prayer still ring twice daily on national radio and television.

But as the "Celtic tiger" economy roars, propelling Ireland into the league of the world's 25 richest nations, the country has become not only richer, but less formally religious, much like the rest of Western Europe. That shift, combined with a series of sex scandals involving Roman Catholic priests and bishops, has left the church searching for a new role, something more akin to spiritual adviser than rigid arbiter of social and sexual mores.

The church hierarchy, challenged by changing public attitudes on issues such as contraception, divorce and abortion, has come, as it were, down to earth.

Bishops, once aloof, now answer questions about the sex scandals, many of which have involved child molestation. They apologize, and in some cases pay reparations. Voting on matters such as abortion or divorce, many bishops now say, is a matter of individual conscience, not -- as the church used to suggest -- a way to commit mortal sin or court eternal damnation. Even suicides are no longer condemned.

Older, more conservative bishops are heard less, and the church is slowly taking up the art of public relations. In the Dublin Archdiocese, where one-third of the population lives, the Rev. John Dardis, a 42-year-old Jesuit with a master's degree in communications from Syracuse University, is the spokesman for Archbishop Desmond Connell, who is considered a conservative.

"The church is struggling, the bishops are struggling to find their voice in Ireland today," Dardis said. "The question is whether Ireland will go the way of Western Europe. As Europe has become more materially prosperous, the rate of religious practice has fallen."

In today's Ireland, he said, "many people feel it's not cool to be Catholic. The reaction to organized religion is that it is oppressive, out of touch." Only about half the country's nominal Catholics attend Mass on Sunday, and fewer go to confession regularly, he added. The Irish, he said, have forgotten about the essential work the church did in education and medical care over the centuries. The church today is still very much a voice for and protector of more than 100,000 unemployed and others left behind by the economic boom.

Championing the underdogs has not shielded the church, however, from liberal, anticlerical challenges from an increasing number of young Irish or from the weakening of church authority on sexual matters.

Condoms are widely available. The ban on divorce was removed in a referendum three years ago. While abortion is virtually banned here, there is a growing minority of people who want to change the constitution so that abortions might be legal in cases of rape and incest. Irish law permits abortion only when the life of the mother, as distinguished from her health, is threatened by pregnancy. A threat of suicide is a valid ground for abortion.

About 6,000 Irish women go to Britain each year for abortions.

There also has been a decline in young men choosing the priesthood, once a prestigious calling.

At the same time, the church has had to respond to the sex scandals.

At least a dozen families are suing the church for damages for child abuse alleged to have been done by priests 10 and 20 years ago, and many priests say they now will not touch a child affectionately, even in the child's home in front of parents.

In 1992, it was disclosed that the bishop of Galway, Eamonn Casey, had fathered a son by an American. Since then, scores of cases of sexual abuse of children by priests have come to light. In March, the Rev. Sean Fortune, in County Wexford, south of Dublin, committed suicide 10 days before the start of his trial on 29 counts of child abuse.

This week, the nation was appalled by two cases involving clergy and sex crimes. In one, a former nun, Nora Wall, 51, was convicted of assisting in the rape of a 10-year-old girl at the child-care center that she had been running.

In the other case, lawyers for a 79-year-old retired priest, the Rev. Turlough Connolly, said he had made a substantial payment to a woman, Geraldine O'Neill, who then withdrew her formal civil complaint that he had assaulted her last year.

The decline in church authority was epitomized by a recent uproar over a statement on contraception by Connell. The archbishop suggested, in effect, that the unplanned children of parents who did not use artificial birth control methods were better, happier children than those of parents who did use contraceptives. Church officials quickly said his words were unfortunate and not intended to offend.

"If a bishop raises an eyebrow on a question, it is felt by many people that 'This is this bishop telling us what to do again. How dare he?"' Dardis said.

Discussing the church's problems recently in a Dublin dormitory, six university students, all in their early 20s, said they all have relatives, mostly over 40, who are priests, but would never consider following suit. Not one of the students is a regular churchgoer; one is an agnostic from a Catholic family.

"Celibacy," said Michael Geaney, a pharmacy student, "that's a tough one for most of us." The others, students of law and medicine, nodded agreement.

Two medical students, Donal Brennan and William Kinsella, said that if abortion were legalized in Ireland, they would overcome their personal opposition, and perform the procedure, despite the church's description of it as murder.

"People don't listen to the church's views on social issues, on contemporary affairs, " said Alec Molloy, an insurance law student.

Geaney said, "Young people still believe there is a God. But they don't see themselves as practicing Catholics."

Michael Deasy, the agnostic, who is a law student, predicted, however, that the church would soon gain increased public support. "There has been a media feeding frenzy on the scandals," he said. "They're turning the church into an underdog. The time is right for some kind of resurgence in the church's role."

Dardis concurred. "The scandals came along and they have been damaging," he said. "But people still see a need for faith in their lives."

"There's a hunger for spirituality, a search for what is deeper and a skepticism about all institutions, and this all comes together at a crucial time. We are struggling to find our voice at the end of this millennium."