After the Pope – the Catholic Church in Ireland Gerry O’Hanlon SJ The role of the Catholic Church in Irish public and private life has changed considerably. The papal visits of Pope John Paul II in 1979 and Pope Francis in 2018 are useful lenses through which to view the change that has occurred. There was euphoria and even adulation around the visit of John Paul: huge and enthusiastic crowds, saturation-coverage from a largely uncritical media and a respect from public authorities that bordered at times on deference. The visit of Pope Francis was quite different: the crowds were noticeably smaller, there were well-organised protests and the hostility of some and indifference of many were evident in the media coverage. This reflected the shift in consciousness which has occurred since 1979, through which the Catholic Church has lost much of its prestige and moral authority, and can no longer expect to exert a monopoly influence in social, political or even personal life. In retrospect it is easier now to see the fault-lines which were already there in 1979, and which the papal visit served to conceal rather than heal – the growing secularisation which allowed, for example, many young people to respond warmly to the charism of Pope John Paul, without at all accepting his teaching on issues of sexuality or gender; the pressures in Irish society, long building up, for a more liberal approach to legislation around contraception and divorce, and in more recent years same-sex marriage and abortion, to which politicians were already beginning to respond; and the terrible wound of clerical child sexual abuse and harsh regimes in Catholic institutions like reformatories, orphanages and mother-and-baby homes, which existed then but only came to public light after the first papal visit. The visit of Francis, much more low-key and contested, was in this sense also more real and revelatory: it disclosed what was actually going on in Ireland.1 In the context of addressing this new situation, the words of An Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, at Dublin Castle welcoming Pope Francis to Ireland are important: ‘Holy Father, I believe that the time has now come for Gerry O’Hanlon SJ Studies • volume 108 • number 430 126 us to build a new relationship between church and state in Ireland – a new covenant for the twenty-first century. It is my hope that your visit marks the opening of a new chapter in the relationship between Ireland and the Catholic Church’. It is true that a new common sense, a new ‘group-think’, is already becoming embedded in Irish society. This would replace the old Christendom settlement, in which the Catholic Church occupied a dominant position in society and the state, by a rather shallow identification of all things modern, progressive and enlightened with out-and-out secularism. This absolute form of secularism, while claiming to be pluralist, wishes to turn a blind eye to the claims of religion for inclusion in the public square. But, as St Ignatius articulated in an important hermeneutical principle of his Spiritual Exercises, ‘every good Christian is more ready to put a good interpretation on another’s statement than to condemn it as false’ (Sp. Ex. 22). I think, with Patrick Hannon, that ‘…the Taoiseach should be taken at his word’.2 Christianity is at its best when, without either defensiveness or naiveté, it engages in constructive dialogue with its critics, external and internal. This, rather than hostile separation, is a better antidote to widespread defeatism and demoralisation. This will mean an exploration by theologians, by Catholics, by Christians but also by Ireland’s public intellectuals and general citizenry of the relationship between Church and state and society; between morality, law and politics; the place of religion in the public square; and, most fundamentally of all, the self-understanding of the Catholic Church, and its relationship to the personal and public lives of its members. This exploration will understand the perennial temptation for a Church under siege to simply remould itself to the prevailing dominant culture, thus losing its own distinctiveness. But it will also be cognisant of the temptation – echoing down through the centuries in the refrain of...