The church in Ireland is undergoing “persecution”, with people directing “anger” at clergy, bishops have said.
Speaking at a priest’s ordination Mass, Bishop Denis Brennan of Ferns said: “You will feel the anger/hostility people have for the Church in general directed at you.
“There is a lot of concern in Church circles these days about the future,” he said.
“This is understandable given the volume of criticism and negativity directed at the Church over recent times.”
But he said that Catholics should not be fearful. “In these Pentecost days we need to cast off our fears too. We are not the first generation of Christians to worry and wonder about the future. In every age people have written the obituary of the Church and our age is no exception,” the bishop said.
Last week Bishop Leo O’Reilly of Kilmore said that hostility to the Church was now a “settled part” of Irish culture.
Speaking at a welcoming Mass for the relics of St Thomas Plunkett, the bishop said: “People from abroad are often astonished at the antipathy to the Church displayed in our country.”
You didn’t have to be paranoid, he said, to believe the Church was undergoing persecution. “It is not physical persecution but it is no less real for that. It is more subtle. It takes the form of gradual exclusion of Church people or activities from the public space.”
Bishop O’Reilly said there was “denigration of religious beliefs, practices and institutions on radio, television and on social and other media”, and “a focus on bad news about the Church to the almost total exclusion of any good news.”
Donald Trump on the wrong side of history, says bishop
Bishop John Arnold of Salford has said that Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement is an “abdication of responsibility” that puts him on the “wrong side of history”.
In a letter to the Times, Bishop Arnold noted that Pope Francis had given the president a copy of Laudato Si’ at their meeting last month.
It was “a pity that the president has seemingly not read it”, the bishop said, as “he would have seen that the Holy Father asks why anyone would want to be remembered for their inability to take action in the face of the environmental crisis”.
Bishop Arnold, who is chairman of Cafod, the bishops’ overseas aid agency, added that it was “for Donald Trump to decide whether to remain isolated on an issue that will define our time”.
Graham Gordon, Cafod’s head of policy, said: “President Trump argued that he is ‘someone who cares deeply about the environment’. Walking away from the problem and ripping up your obligations are strange ways of showing this.”
The Paris agreement was a commitment by 195 countries to reduce carbon emissions.
Pilgrims honour St Margaret
More than 2,000 pilgrims flocked to Dunfermline on Sunday to take part in Scotland’s national St Margaret’s pilgrimage.
Her relics were taken in procession through the town led by a pipe band. Archbishop Leo Cushley of St Andrews and Edinburgh celebrated Mass at St Margaret’s Church.
The centuries-old pilgrimage was revived three years ago after stopping in 1974.
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