Brendan Hoban: Old clerical habits die hard in the Vatican                        

Western People  5.11.2024

Cardinal William Conway (archbishop of Armagh and the leader of the Irish Catholic Church,1963-77) was known as ‘a cute man’ who had a talent for playing his cards close to his chest. Once, after arriving in Maynooth for a meeting after travelling from Armagh, someone casually asked him what the weather was like in Armagh that morning. Conway’s reply – as ever considered and circumspect – was a measure of the man: ‘I think it was raining but don’t quote me on that’. 

After the Second Vatican Council, Conway was responsible for the smooth introduction into Ireland of the Mass in the vernacular – a huge change from Latin to the everyday language of the people. At the time introducing change from a heretofore  universal acceptance of the unalterable Latin in the Mass to a universal acceptance of the vernacular seemed a challenging task. If Latin could be summarily sidelined as no longer suitable or acceptable after centuries of practice, what else might need to be jettisoned as surplus to modern requirements?

Conway was an astute leader of the Irish Catholic Church and his policy of gradualism – introducing change bit by bit – was regarded as the key to the almost universal acceptance of the new vernacular Mass in Ireland, unlike in Britain (especially England) where Latin Mass societies formed to lead opposition to the change. And still do. Conway’s drip-feed approach of introducing the vernacular bit by bit  was both insightful and successful – as the absence of Latin Mass societies in Ireland attested. 

His policy of managing change gradually became the wisdom of the day – bolstered by an unquestioned acceptance at the time that the archbishop of Armagh knew what was best for the Irish Catholic Church. 

Times, as we know, have changed. While gradualism still has something to say for itself, the idea that ordination confers wisdom now has a very potted history. As has the accumulation of precedence, entitlement, presumption and control that defined the clerical world. That’s now bulked under the collective term ‘clericalism’ which, thanks to Pope Francis is now reviled as the cardinal clerical sin. As a result, the Archbishop of Armagh no longer knows better. 

But old clerical habits die hard and those who seek to perpetuate them are doing a lot of damage to our Church. As, for example, whatever genius decided that, of the 10study groups set up at the recent Rome Synod to further examine issues facing the Catholic Church, the one on the role of women would be swathed in secrecy.

The composition of the other study groups was public and even had photographs of the members attached but Study Group Five (on the role of women) was clouded in secrecy. This, of course, was the one that had created a flurry of expectation of change (as with the possibility of ordaining women deacons) and the secrecy involved had already been highlighted by two commissioned reports on women deacons that were unpublished! If a calculated effort was being made to suggest a conspiracy of control, it couldn’t have been more successful. 

The perception or rather realisation, that in the Catholic Church clerics in authority simply ‘don’t get things’, has long defined frustration with a cossetted elite who often live in a world of their own. The glaring example of an inability to actually ‘GET IT’ was the handling of the recent child abuse scandals. While parents almost immediately recognised the terrible damage inflicted on innocent children as the central issue, church authorities distracted by peripheral concerns like preserving the reputation of the Church didn’t hear or lost sight of a key truth. Like Sinn Féin, more recently, with ‘an abundance of caution’, the Church took its eye off the ball and had to be dragged bit by bit to what the primary moral focus demanded. 

The debacle of the recent Roman Synod’s ‘Study Group Five’ (mentioned above) is yet another glaring example of an inability to actually ‘GET IT’ as the handling of the role of women in the church follows the same unbalanced trajectory. At a time when it is clear to most people that women’s place in society is undergoing a seismic revolution and when Catholics, as the Synod reports from the dioceses of the world confirm, wait patiently for that historic quantum jump to be implemented in our Church, the tactic seems to be a cloak and dagger effort to avoid facing an inescapable reality.

If women have taken or are taking their rightful place in every conceivable area of expertise in today’s world, why do we pretend that this beneficial tsunami will successfully avoid the Catholic Church, which of all institutions clearly needs the positive input it will bring. The present effort to stem the tide or to stay the hand of history has the finger-prints of Vatican bureaucrats all over it. It’s not just unwise but foolish and, let’s face it, profoundly embarrassing.

Yes, I know there are other views. There’s the danger that the Church could fragment as a result of a worldwide schism. And I appreciate that the Catholic Church is so diverse that delivering change is complex and takes time. And I know that there’s an argument to be made for Pope Francis’s determination to prioritise ‘process’ over ‘content’.

And that, despite the disappointment of yet another can being kicked down yet another road, the synod has achieved important objectives not least the radical departure that the lay voice is bringing in approach, governance and ministry to the Church. It will take time to dismantle old structures and to implement new ones.  

It’s important too that the hot button issues are still there and that, one way or another, the 10 study groups will have to report by June 2025. Once more we live in hope that light-bulb moments will illuminate what sometimes appears as an enveloping darkness. When will we GET IT?