It is stating the obvious to say that the Catholic Church has lost a great deal of its credibility, particularly here in this country. There are some very obvious reasons for that, the clerical sex abuse revelations, clerical control and the side-lining of women in decision making and ministry, various teachings on sexuality and relationships, a serious failure of leadership, and many others.
But I believe there is a deeper, and more fundamental, problem than any of the above.
Following on from my blog posting of March 29th entitled “How much Church Doctrine do we really Believe”, a blog that in the way of social media got circulated, I recently got an email from Alfred Kracher in the U.S.
I think Alfred’s email expresses what I was trying to convey in a much clearer way than I could, so with his permission I reproduce it here:
Recently the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church re-published your blog “How much of Church Doctrine do we really believe?”
A development that has emerged from my ‘birthday’ Mass in January, and a number of things that I have written, and said in various media interviews, about Church doctrine and language, is that, with the co-operation of Noirin Ni Riain, I have been working with a small group of people, about fifteen in all, over the last couple of months. This is a varied group, women and men, younger and older, with a variety of different positions as regards religious institutions.
