Future without priests in Ireland if crisis continues says leading cleric

IrelandNorth, in the US, pontificating about the country he left 30 years ago and calling it wrong. Your version of and vision of Ireland is nothing but a memory. Your prejudice a self-consuming hell.

Ecumenism comes of age in Ireland. Bythebay (BTB) - an Ulster Presbyterian(?) telling those pesky 'Yanks' that Ireland (another country?) will decide the fate of the Catholic Church in Ireland (excl. NI?) Now I know the Mayan doomsday scenario is accurate. (Beware 20/12/2012). Keep up the devils work, BTB! Drive that wedge between Ireland and Irish-America. You'll get your reward in hell! Apropos RC clergy - the problem is what a minority did (i.e. clerical child sexual abuse), and what a majority didn't do - i.e. stop it! Re. politics - socialism IS the paradigm democracy, (i.e. participatory over representative). "Catholic physician"(?). In cases of conflict of interest which predominates - theology or science? If a physician diagnoses/prognoses(?) us as part of "... the body of Jesus Christ", is this a case of the biology of theology? The physics of metaphysics? Despite there being a few good men (and women) in the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, the liklihood is that this 1,700 year religious reich is crumbling in a triumph of democracy over autocratic dictatorship and theological despotism. Open your minds - read the Gnostic Gospels!

@CIARADEXY & KATIEHERK - A one time regular blogger on IC, Father Tim once posted a Blog entitled "Would the last Priest to leave Ireland please turn out the lights" Now this would have been at one time a fanciful notion, but not so now. And whilst I dont believe that it will ever get to the point that there will be literally NO priests in Ireland, it is worth remembering that Ireland has had such an experience previously. The Historians will recall the hundred or so years of the Penal Laws in Ireland during which time the Catholic Church was effectively outlawed on the Island. At any one time there may have been as few as 40-50 priests in the country and few people got the chance to attend mass regularly. The faith survived in the hearts and minds of those for whom it mattered. That is still the case today.Faith in a loving God and a guiding Holy Spirit is as strong as ever. Faith in an Institution which has shown itself to be so inept and inadequate in so many ways is less so. "Where two or three gather in my name, I will be among you" is the promise that was made by Jesus. And that is why I am not and will not be afraid, even if the last Priest DOES switch of the light on the way out!!

loedkionline: Succinct,clear,truthful. It should be heeded.

good

lokieonline: What you say about the institutional Catholic Church is spot on. But it won't get shattered until the critical thinkers get together and organize. It won't happen on its own. That's why I laud the priests' association. The old boys in the funny dresses won't give up without a hell of struggle. Let the games begin!

katie, the church in the Us will never fail because of the number of fundamentalists there but in ireland its on its way out and good riddens!

Jack-this site is full of racists complaining about migrants coming to ireland. Funny thing is, those with the issues arent irish theyre american!

Would it be better if the Catholic Church in Ireland went back to being the Celtic Church, as it was before it accepted the authority of Rome? Perhaps have more independence, but maintaining ties with the Pope, in a similar way that the Eastern Orthodox churches are independent, but recognise the overall authority of the Patriarch of Constatinople? If it did, perhaps then it could have more freedom to implement reforms, such as allowing women priests and married priests.

@gravedigger ; is that a racist comment ?

ireland verry soon wil seace to be a catholic country.with the large ammount of migrants entering here and having big families on welfare.leavs ireland on the brink of being over run by non europeans

Not to worry. By the time we run out of priests, there won't be any Catholics either. We'll all be elsewhere, at this rate.

This is the best news I've heard for a long time. The biggest number have not walked away, as Joe Mulvanney says in the article above. They were all alienated and driven away; The gays were told they were "defective and incapable of love" per Ratzinger; the women were told they could not be priests becaust Jesus didn't have any women apostles ( forget Mary Magdalen); the clergy were told they could not marry; those who disagreed were silenced (5 recently). And they wonder why there are no congregations anymore ! The Church is devoted to itself.....preserving its own power and wealth. It's that simple....and if protecting paedophiles has to be done they will do it, again and again. Let me quote Holden Caulfield: "Old Jesus would just puke."

One photograph of the "Assembly of the Irish Catholic Church" says a great deal. It's on the Irish Times site, with today's article entitled "Meeting hears calls for dialogue at all levels in Irish church." I couldn't see anyone in the audience who looks younger than 50, with the average age, I'd say, about the same as the Irish priests'. They look like they've been waiting a long time for the changes promised by Second Vatican Council.

Carroll09, what is the source of your claim that the number of young men in US seminaries is increasing? In any case, that number is only one side of the equation. I've quoted this before from the 1/6/12 article in the NY Times on interviews by Rev. D. Paul Sullins: "At least 25,000 Americans have left the [Catholic] priesthood since 1970, Father Sullins says. Many of them expected the church to lift the celibacy rule, but when they realized the rule was staying, they left and got married. Twenty-five thousand former priests—-in a country with fewer than 40,000 priests today. Celibate or not, all Catholics can do the math." Add to that the number removed because they're pedophiles who enter seminary to find situations where they can prey on children (unless RC officials continue to cover up for them, as looks likely). The "authentic" Catholicism you want, which should have died during the middle ages, drives priests out; the ACP's proposed reforms would open up the priesthood, make it uncomfortable for pedophiles, and bring the faithful back into the pews and the sacristy. If the ACP is "misguided," so are the majority of Irish Catholics. See the survey "Contemporary Catholic Perspectives" for that correlation. It's your view, not the ACP's, that is clearly the minority view--and the reason why the Church is failing in Ireland and the US.