The Irish clerical hierarchy is in a state of paralysis. With one or two  exceptions (such as Bishop Willie Walsh of Killaloe) it has nothing remotely  relevant to offer the spiritual needs of the people. 

Thirty years ago, it missed a great opportunity (despite the encouragement of  Vatican 11) to create a genuinely indigenous church which would develop its own,  culturally rooted practice and theology. 

The very same prelates who dutifully signed up to all those potentially  revolutionary and revitalizing documents returned home and proclaimed: "Business  as usual"; "What we have, we hold!" - with the implication that this was what  "the People" wanted anyway. As Archbishop John Charles McQuaid of Dublin put it  in his own inimitable way, as he pushed his sealed trunk (clinking merrily with  "top secret Vatican documents") through customs: nothing was going to upset the  "tranquility of the faithful".

Complacency, ineptitude and clerical ambition have led to ever greater  dependency on Rome - under the guise of "loyalty to the Holy Father". At a time  when the country was confronted by unprecedented social change, a yawning  spiritual vacuum was allowed to develop, with nothing on offer save "re-runs" of  the euphoria of the 1979 papal visit - which quickly faded and was gone with the  wind.

The pseudo orthodoxy of liberal capitalism in the guise of the "Celtic Tiger"  has been allowed to go largely unchallenged, because it has been so  enthusiastically endorsed by the middle classes and the upwardly mobile.  Abandoned by the wayside are those who fail to "make the grade" or "seize the  day", the "disenchanted", left to their drugs and the sink hole of desperate  housing estates, where an occasional coat of paint is expected to cover up  untold human misery.

It is from such profound desperation that the first green shoots of hope have  appeared: hundreds of small, grassroots   movements driven by a gnawing spiritual  hunger for something better than the anorexic fare doled out on Sunday mornings  to incredibly shrinking congregations by rapidly diminishing numbers of clerics:  harassed and demoralized, they distribute their placebos and bromide,  accompanied by the occasional shrill reprimand.

From people's frustration and anger has come a dawning sense of the power  within to renew themselves and their little patch of earth. Taking over  responsibility for the direction of their own lives has led to the rediscovery  of the message of Jesus, Son of Yahweh, the God who is to be found only on the  edge, among the poor and the disenfranchised, never in the shrines of the rich  and powerful. 

For 2,000 years, the alternative message of Jesus - of a new kind of  community, based not on blood or class, but on compassion, practical love,  equality and inclusiveness - has lain buried, stifled and distorted by the  weight of clerical power play and vested interest masquerading as "theology" and  the "Word of God".

The rediscovery of the unconditional dignity of the individual is producing a  different kind of leadership: one based on facilitation, not domination,  affirmation rather than condemnation, and the celebration of difference over  uniformity.

It has been accompanied by a fresh awareness of the great richness of the  Catholic tradition, a living heritage which has always been there, flowing  beneath the court politics of official "orthodoxy": the enduring spirit of the  People.

This "sensus fidelium" has, in fact, been the mainstay of the church during  times of crisis - of which there have been many. We are in the middle of one  today: the Roman curia, stuck in siege mode, drifts further and further >from  reality and contemplates canonizing Pius IX - he who finished up condemning  modern civilization and all its "pomps", including democracy. 

It is democracy - the outcome of their very own sacramental theology (in  Confirmation we receive divine wisdom, Sophia)which they cannot stomach. And  thus, in time honoured way, they claim they are bound by the "Word of God"  itself (i.e., their own patriarchal prejudices) to refuse to contemplate women  priests, synods of the People, etc., etc.

For those who would convince themselves that it is worth waiting a little bit  longer (for a Godot Pope of change), it is salutary to contemplate two sayings  attributed to Jesus: Can the leopard change its spots? (i.e., can the  curia be untrue to itself - and its remorseless logic?) And if this is the case,  should we not Let the dead bury their dead? (i.e., do nothing to prolong,  by artificial means, a manmade structure which is so obviously in the grip of  rigor mortis)?

And in the meantime - behind closed doors by (as they say) consenting adults  - to birth new church structures more relevant to our needs and more in keeping  with the mind and example of the One who was the Living Face of God among  us?

As Gandhi once said, we must be the change we wish to see in the  world.
 

Joseph Sheehy

(The author is a member of the Springhill Community, Belfast, established by  Fr. Des Wilson in 1972; and The People's Theology, which he co-founded in  1995.)