Staff reporter
A senior barrister has called on Church leaders to speak out with confidence for Christian values in the run-in to next year’s World Meeting of Families in Dublin.
Writing in The Irish Catholic, Patrick Treacy SC praises Dublin’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin for his outstanding leadership in tackling child sexual abuse, his ongoing support for homeless people, and his determined criticism of gangland crime.
However, he argues, Catholic leaders must also speak out in support of marriage and the family before Dublin hosts the global Church gathering in August 2018.
Criticising the archbishop’s failure to engage in this month’s wide-reaching Würzburg lecture with the consequences of how the Irish State’s legal understanding of marriage is now at odds with that of the Church, Mr Treacy said a visit by Pope Francis to Dublin could be a ‘D-Day moment’ for the Church.
“His arrival could launch the first proper, co-ordinated response to the secularist, ideological colonisation that has attempted to suffocate the great tradition of Christian faith in this country and turned it into mission territory,” he writes.