
Interview given to the Irish Times (key sections)
(from the transcript of the interview between Patsy McGarry from the Irish Times and Archbishop Elect of Dublin Dermot Farrell, kindly provided as a courtesy to the Catholic News Agency by the journalist.
Women priests/deacons
“Pope Francis has put a new Commission in place. In terms of a way to go, that’s a way to go. The issue is what did women deacons do in the early church…in the 60s Pope Paul said that if all the bishops of the world favoured change he would consider it. None came.”
“The danger is such change could lead to a schismatic church. You see that in the Church of England where when certain reforms were brought in, some went off and joined the Catholic Church. That’s a huge issue. What Pope Francis has done is that he has initiated the debate …but it’s going to be slow. I don’t think it’s going to be done overnight. There’ll be a lot of discussion.”
Personal views on women priests/mandatory celibacy
”I think that the big issue for women priests for me is that the two pillars of our faith and the Church are scripture and tradition and the biggest barrier to that (women priests) is probably tradition, not the scriptures. That’s the hurdle that has to be overcome. Would I like to see women deacons, I would. Women have almost preserved the faith in the church, certainly in this country and probably beyond. They were the ones who handed on the faith or took the responsibility for handing it on. Our mothers were very important in terms of teaching and prayer. They were the ones, more than the fathers. That’s where a lot of us got our faith, we got it from our parents. Personally, it came from my mother and father. I didn’t learn it.”
“You learned catechism in school, but catechism was not the faith. Faith is a relationship with the Lord.”
Mandatory celibacy
“First of all I don’t like the word `mandatory’. There is a value in celibacy, there is a sacrifice involved. I do think it is an important part of the Catholic tradition. It is a rule, it’s not a church teaching as such but I think it’s an important”
“I don’t accept the argument that if priests weren’t celibate they couldn’t do what they are doing. There are many people who are married and have to go out in the middle of the night, doctors, firemen. That’s not an argument against it. There’s a different argument.”
“For example you have the two tracts in the Orthodox church. You have the celibate language and you have the married language. You have to make a choice before you are ordained, usually, in those churches. Even with permanent deacons who are married, they’re part of the clergy but they do undertake that if their wife dies they can’t remarry.”
Orthodox choice in the Catholic Church?
“It could be discussed. There has been some talk about the viri probati, of going down that track.”
“I think there’s a value in celibacy. That is important and I don’t think that should be lost whatever decision is come to in the years ahead. Choice on celibacy is something I would favour discussion on. That’s not going to be decided by the Irish hierarchy or the American hierarchy. It will have to be by the universal church.”
Teaching on homosexuality/catechism language
“Pope Francis has given a great lead in terms of outreach to homosexuals. Sometimes they have been victimized in the past and have suffered an awful lot of abuse in society, physical violence against them. That’s completely and utterly wrong. Some of that is coming from the culture and the society in which we live, which demonized them almost. That’s absolutely completely and utterly wrong. Men or women who find themselves of a homosexual orientation, it’s not something they chose. It’s something they come to realize or discern. In the past they covered it up, they lived with it or struggled with it because they were afraid if they declared it, it had all sorts of implications. At one stage you’d find yourself in prison. Thank God it was decriminalized (in Ireland).”
Language of Church teaching on?
”It’s a technical description. People misconstrue that then because it is technical theological language.”
He agreed that in popular culture “there is a difficulty which can translate into sometimes violence against people where they find there is a huge prejudice against them…”
“I think Pope Francis has discussed that (removal). It came up at the last Synod. Marriage is a different thing.”
Blessings… Divorced/remarried, same-sex couples
“The difficulty with blessings is that they are very often misconstrued as marriage. Priests have given these blessings in the past. I remember one colleague of mine. I had said to him – he used to have this ceremony of the blessing of rings – I said to him I don’t have a difficulty with blessing rings if you’re doing that here in the house but if you go out into the public domain, in a church, and bless rings as you see it …they turned up with 200 people and they saw it as a marriage. Sometimes people use that phraseology …you’re into confusion there. It can be misconstrued as `yes, the priest married us’.”
There was “good discussion at the Synod (on the Family) good document produced on dealing with those situations.”
“Blessings are always going to be misconstrued and that’s where the difficulty arises because once you start blessing things like that people are going to construe that as a marriage. We can’t have that sort of situation in the Church because it creates all sorts of problems in terms of our own teaching and these teachings of the church have been constant.”
Hard-line traditionalists
“They’re hostile towards anyone that doesn’t agree with them, they’re almost close to being intolerant. They’re everywhere. I’d be respectful of them, they have a view and probably want to impose that view on everyone. That’s disrespectful. They have to respect the views of other people in the Catholic faith who for various reasons may not have the same commitment they have. That doesn’t mean they’re any less sincere. Why should that (irregular) person be ostracized? It may come to the stage.”
“Things may be objectively wrong but you must take the subjective into account when you’re dealing with people that Catholic faith has always had the two sides to it, the objective teaching and how that applies subjectively.”
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/archdiocese-of-dublin-may-need-major-organizational-changes-says-archbishop-elect-in-confusing-irish-times-interview-41059
* The opening quote was from an article, “Some Troubles in Dublin”
by Fr Gerald E Murray in The Catholic Thing accessible at Catholictruthblog.com