‘the world has changed and so must the Church’
Brendan Hoban, writing in the Western People, again comments on the decreasing numbers of priests to serve in Ireland and the consequences that arise as a result for the remaining, mainly elderly, priests.
But he adds “my interest here is not in the priesthood issue.
Rather it’s on how the failure to address this issue by the leadership of our Church is impinging on the immediate victims (the present priests) caught in the slipstream of an on-going decision by the Irish bishops to continue to avoid ‘the elephant in the living room’.
“Are there not a few bishops who might do a Bishop Kräutler on it and have a chat with Pope Francis about the implications of his Christmas message – ‘the world has changed and so must the Church’?
What is it about that sentence that the Irish bishops don’t understand or refuse to accept, even though almost every Catholic in Ireland seems happy to acknowledge?”