By Msgr. Noel C. Burtenshaw

(Msgr. Burtenshaw spent a month in Ireland and has written a three-part series on what he found there. This is the second part.)

“Let me draw this picture for you,” I said as our conversation turned to the church.

“The man is living in the heart of Dublin’s inner city. He is unemployed. He has a wife and five children. He lives in public housing. Tell me, is that man going to Mass on Sundays?”

Across the table, sipping from a large glass of beer, the young face looked surprised, then questioning and finally broke out in laughter. “Are you kidding me?” asked the staff man of one of Dublin’s politicians. “Of course he is not going to Mass and neither are the children if they are teenage. His wife may be going. But absolutely he is not going. I personally have not been to church for years.”

It is a total shock for me. The answer is the same everywhere. Mass-going in Dublin is becoming like Mass-going in Italy and France -–something for the young, the old and possibly for married women to do. Only 20 years ago, this city of over one and a half million Catholic people prided itself on being a community that practiced its faith without fail each Sunday.

So, what happened?

Many offer answers, some merely raise their hands in disbelief. The changes are real and great.

“Take a look at our citizens,” says George Handly, a social worker in Dublin. “Fifty percent are under 25. They are the television generation. They have instant communications with the world and especially with the fast pace of American life. Everything seems to be changing around them, music, fashions, computers. They like the fast pace and the excitement. They don’t see any change or excitement in the church so for them it has become irrelevant.”

That’s the word used by others too. “The church has one foot in renewal,” says Nora Jones, who recently returned to Dublin from Peru where she served as a lay missionary. “It has the other foot firmly in the past and cannot make up its mind to go forward or back. For the young, it is irrelevant.”

“It seems like it has happened overnight,” says Father Paddy O’Beirne, who serves as curate in Our Lady of Lourdes parish in Dublin’s inner city. “They are just not going to Mass on Sundays. Economically they have been drained. They have no work and no hope of work. We try to keep the children in school to get a decent education but they won’t stay because others before them have stayed but today are unemployed. They don’t trust any institution. When they leave school early we lose track of them.”

But the decline in attendance at Sunday Mass affects more than the working class. One man who is a professional diplomat in the Irish government says that Mass is merely occasional for him and that 50 percent of his circle of friends rarely go to Mass.

“Maybe we are a part of a new freedom,” he says. “Maybe growing up it was pushed too hard and too often down our unwilling throats. Within the context of Irish life today, the church does not seem to hold great relevance.”

The Archdiocese of Dublin still gets vocations to the priesthood, but not the gigantic numbers of other years. Ten new priests were ordained in 1984. And while the home seminary is seeing some candidates, foreign mission houses are almost destitute. All Hallows Seminary in Dublin, from which many Atlanta priests graduated, has a total of approximately 50 student in the seminary. Twenty years ago each ordination class sent out at least 40 new priests. Ireland seems to have turned its back on one of its proudest products – the missionary priest.

The decline in the practice of the faith in Irish life has, also, had a marked effect on marriage and home life. While separation is possible for married couples in Ireland, legal, civil divorce is not. A referendum on the people’s position on birth control a couple of years ago showed a big majority in favor. It is now available to all. Last year a referendum on abortion was defeated. Next year the people will be asked about divorce. It is expected to be legalized easily.

“There is little doubt it will pass,” says Georgia Handly. “There are 35,000 couples separated in the nation. Many of these men and women are now living in new relationships with new families. This means they are in common law marriages. Support is a problem. The first family of a divorced person can suffer greatly. Something must be done as the chaos grows.”

When that figure of 35,000 couples is considered, in a population of three and a half million, 50 percent of which is under 25, the statistic is startling high. “This has an effect on church attendance too,” says Handly. “When families cannot go to the sacraments, they lose faith and they lose hope. It all adds up.”

The sexual revolution has also become a visible part of Irish life. Just one hundred feet off the main Dublin thoroughfare, O’Connell Street, you find a Family Planning Center. This center was not in existence three years ago but is now kept busy giving advice to all, married and single, who seek it.

“There are a number of these centers around the city,” says Georgia Handly. “They opened really because after the referendum on birth control a need was seen. These centers report that a high percentage of those who patronize them are single people who are sexually active and want advice and help.”

As I drove past a suburban church at noon one Sunday morning and experienced for myself the fewer than usual number of worshippers leaving after the completion of the 11 a.m. Mass, I wondered if there was any new strength in the church among all this chaos. I was pleasantly surprised.

Charlie Farrell and his young wife, Julia, are members of a charismatic group in Dublin. Both are strong church going Catholics. They are part of a ministry team from their suburban parish to needy families around the city. “Recently,” says Charlie, “we had a charismatic priest come to the parish to say Mass. Our church holds about 1,000 people. The crowd for the Mass was overflowing. We are finding strength and great faith in the new small groups like the charismatic prayer movement.”

Others give similar testimony. Marriage Encounter is strong, small bands of lay missionaries are becoming visible and the Cursillo movement has taken root. These smaller faith and action groups are finding new horizons in Irish life as the larger masses of people are disappearing from the huge churches around the city of Dublin.

The Archdiocese of Dublin is presently awaiting the appointment of a new Archbishop. “The last two leaders we had,” said a parish priest in Dublin, “were scholars, men who were distant from the people of this city. We are hoping, I believe, that the new man will be less academic and more visibly active with the people and their many problems. We need leadership as these new attitudes in this new church grow up around us.”

The church in Ireland like the economy, which we reported on last week, has become most frail. There is certainly a lot of hope as new, tiny but strong ministries are seen.

Perhaps we are seeing the beginnings – as in other places – of a new dialogue that will be most productive in time.

(Next Week: The War)