The Catholic Church can still save the West. But it has to save itself first

Faithful Catholics should be worried about two consequences of Ireland’s gay marriage referendum. The first is for freedom of speech. Private individuals have won the right to celebrate their gay and lesbian relationships in public. That’s great. But as the state and courts shift their preference away from upholding cultural tradition and towards defending sexual freedom, will religious people be politely encouraged to enter the closet?

If gay marriage is now the law, what happens to anyone who dares to say that they don’t think it’s really a marriage? Will orthodox Jewish teachers be allowed to teach class, evangelical social workers to help the needy, or imams to stand in front of a school assembly and say it as they see it? We already know that private businesses won’t be allowed to refuse someone’s custom even for quite reasonable reasons. In Northern Ireland a Christian baker was punished for refused to ice a pro-gay marriage statement onto a cake. That’s despite a) gay marriage not being legal in the province and b) the customer requesting a political rather than a personal statement (few Christians would actually object to saying “Congratulations Bob and Frank” – it would be rather mean and ungracious). Secularists insist that religious people will continue to receive the protection of the state – and maybe they are correct. But you have to concede that this does amount to a social revolution by statute. Once-upon-a-time you never had to think twice before quoting Corinthians in public. Nowadays, you have to invoke the state’s beneficent protection to do so.

^{The crowd in Dublin celebrates the referendum result on Saturday (EPA).}

Luckily Western society is free and populated with largely decent people who will try to strike a proper balance between competing rights. Before religious minorities complain they should remember that it is far better to live in a country where the state has a bias towards fining the odd baker rather than one where gays and lesbians face a prison sentence, such as Uganda or Russia. Likewise, Western society may be more confusing and muddled than it was in the 1960s but it is probably far kinder. It is less keen to cast stones at people which, let us never forget, was something Jesus Christ opposed.

And yet there certainly is confusion and muddle – and that’s the second, perhaps bigger thing that Catholics ought to worry about. The mission of Catholicism itself is obviously in need of renewal. Otherwise the Church wouldn't have lost that referendum.

When I wrote that Ireland had rejected Catholicism, I got a lot of angry replies. Half said, “Good!” (which proved my point). The other half said, “But I’m Catholic and I voted for gay marriage.” This poses an interesting question. Is someone who calls themselves a Catholic yet who publicly rejects Catholic teaching still a Catholic? It’s not just lay Irish who were doing this but priests, too. And across the Western world there are clerics who are actively working to shift Church teaching in a new direction. One liberal Catholic wrote a strong rebuff of my piece for Time Magazine from which I infer the view that Catholicism is something more than just its doctrines - that 4 + 4 can equal 5 under certain special circumstances. What are the roots of this contrarian religious stance?

^{Pope Francis remained silent on the Irish vote during his Pentecost Sunday address (SIPA/Shutterstock/ Rex Features).}

Ireland offers an interesting answer. There are two stories of the Irish Church. One is the powerful institution that became unhealthily entwined with the state – a state dominated by a single party that used populism, nationalism and corruption to stay in power. It was a Catholic consensus that was conservative in the worst sense: authoritarian, entrenched, out of touch with the real needs. Covering up paedophile abuse was the sickest manifestation of its fascism.

But the other story of the Church in Ireland is of an institution that disregarded a great deal of its teachings and majesty to lurch towards progressivism. A man raised in the Irish Church explained to me that congregants had been told since birth that Catholicism is all about equality, socialism, community, inclusiveness, family. Its liturgical style is represented in exaggerated form by the famous singing priest who broke with the formal Mass to give his rendition of a Leonard Cohen song at a wedding. This is the Church of motherhood: the Church that gives and gives and gives without asking anything of its congregants. It doesn’t really treat them as mature souls who can be spoken to honestly about the facts. It is a faith almost stripped of the less cosy aspects of its teachings.

^{Archbishop Diarmuid Martin says there's a "growing gap between Irish young people and the Church" (AFP/Getty).}

How did the Archbishop of Dublin respond to the referendum results? By saying – I kid you not – that the Church needed to reconnect to the youth.

The Archbishop could be interpreted as meaning two awful things. First, that the Church must not make a case for itself but apologise and court its critics. Second, that this is an institution more interested in retaining its social authority than in articulating its core beliefs. In other words, the Irish Church remains paradoxically both deeply conservative and faux-trendy all at once. It is over-cautious and it is not passing on its full teachings to its youth for fear of driving them away.

If it was functioning properly as an evangelical church – if its softly, softly approach was working – then the pews would be full, respect for priests would be high, Catechesis would be strong and the gay marriage referendum would have come up with a different result. Fr Ray Blake sums up the situation thus: “A Church that is rootless is not 'owned' by the people. A Church that is afraid to teach because it has cut itself from it previous Magisterium, and which instead sows uncertainty, has nothing to say in the daily living of its members, nor in the intellectual forum in general. In fact it is irrelevant. It has all the outward appearance that it once used for the furtherance of its mission but has lost its interior meaning. It is not so much an Emperor with no clothes, but the clothes without an Emperor, all that is left is the institution, which itself is meaningless. In Germany, as in Ireland, the real-estate portfolio seems to be what the Church is about rather than any actual teaching or revelation of Christ.”

Fr Blake is right, but there are caveats to this. First, we are describing here a crisis in Western spirituality – not a worldwide phenomenon. In Africa and Asia the Catholic Church is in rude health. Second, there are priests, nuns and lay people within the West who do amazing work that sparks revolutions in people’s lives. They visit the sick and dying; Christen babies; tend to broken souls. Third, as a Catholic writer I get a lot of emails from men and women who are converting to the faith. Ours is a Church that is alive and reaching out to people.

That is because the Holy Spirit works through it. We mustn’t make the mistake of regarding the state of the Church as we would analyse a supermarket chain with branding problems. I believe that the Church is nothing less than an instrument of God. As such, its ambitions are unique, its challenges unique and the solutions unique, too. As Fr Blake suggests, an organisation with a unique purpose has to be true to itself or else it betrays that uniqueness. In the free market of ideas that is the modern world, who would pick a Church that is timid and fearful?

If there is some misunderstanding as to what Catholicism is about, let’s correct it. Let’s not go silent about doctrine but explain it. Let’s talk openly and proudly about what it means to be a Catholic and its power to transform.

For instance, if the subject de jour is sex and sexuality then let’s talk about Catholic sexuality. About loving, honouring and obeying another person; about complimentarity and natural law; about being open to the potential for life; about the example of Mary and Joseph as parents; about the Jesus’ loneliness in the desert as a representation of our lives; of crucifixion as symbol of the pain that everyone feels whatever their sexuality; and of the extraordinary liberation from suffering that comes from salvation. There is no greater love than God’s. No substitute can be found online. You can’t honestly look around at a society that is drunk on consumerist images of sex and say that it is free – that in being drowned in so much choice, individuals are reaching their full potential. On the contrary, the very campaign for gay marriage could represent a subtle shift towards monogamy and a search for something that transcends all the cruelty of a society hooked on disposability. People are crying out for a more human alternative to this social order. Catholicism should offer it.

^{Devotees hold a portrait of late Catholic archbishop of San Salvador Oscar Romero as they attend a procession celebrating his upcoming beatification in San Salvador, El Salvador Photo: EPA/OSCAR RIVERA.}

During his ministry, St Paul opined that heterosexual marriage was best but that celibacy was even better. He believed the Second Coming could be any day now and that believers should live their lives dedicated to the spirit. Paul’s teaching is a good reminder that the Church certainly isn’t conservative in the way that Irish Church has become in many quarters. It’s radical. It makes demands of the individual that go way beyond the fashionable pieties of this age: it asks that people give their hearts and bodies to God. It is that fire inside that has allowed Catholicism to survive thus far and is what will sustain it in the future. Think of Oscar Romero, recently beatified, who lost his life fighting for the civil liberties of the the poor. Or think of that blessed boy saint, José Sánchez del Río. Arrested in 1928 for fighting the Mexican secularists, he was thrown into prison where he refused to renounce Jesus. His captors cut the bottom of his feet and made him walk to a cemetery, slashing his body with knives. Before the child was killed with a bullet, he used his last ounce of breath to draw a cross in the sand with his own blood.

¡Viva Cristo Rey! Martyrs are stubborn men and women who won't deny the truth, no matter the cost. A Church composed of such heroes cannot die. And it still has the capacity to help build a more just society.