Chai Brady
Bishop Fintan Monahan of Killaloe 
Moving from maintenance to mission means reacting to accelerated decline due to the pandemic, writes Chai Brady
The Government’s announcement of a raft of plans to rejuvenate rural Ireland have come at a time when rural Church communities face hard future decisions wrought by the pandemic. It may be too little too late.
There is already planning underway to alleviate the toll the pandemic has had and will take on parishes, particularly in rural areas. The view was aired that there will be an accelerated decline in Church attendance in discussions involving pastoral area representatives in the Diocese of Killaloe. Several Irish prelates have already said the pandemic will most likely lead to many people never returning to public worship.
In Bishop Fintan Monahan’s Easter message to the Faithful of his Diocese of Killaloe, he raised several questions to help inform diocesan planning post-Covid, one of which focused on the sustainability of some communities, especially in rural areas.
Landscape
In looking at the dramatically different landscape the Church faces, Bishop Monahan said the changes will also extend to consideration of how “our parishes and diocese are funded with the likelihood that parish income will decrease substantially in the coming years”.
This will have an effect on how each parish manages its own affairs and also on the services provided by the diocese which are currently funded from parish contributions. Bishop Monahan said this will prompt the Faithful to ask “what are the priorities for using scarce resources?”
Speaking to The Irish Catholic, Bishop Monahan said the divide between rural and urban areas in his diocese, which encompasses mostly Clare but also parts of Tipperary, Offaly, Laois and Limerick, has led to an existential issue for smaller churches.
“With the declining number of people that are living in rural areas, rural depopulation, it’s a two-tier system in so many ways, you just wonder how small rural churches will be able to be sustained,” he said
“Certainly, with the decline of the number of priests on top of that and the decline then further of people attending, there’s going to be a completely different reality in the very short term when we get back, so trying to alert people to it and trying to get the individual pastoral areas to look at it and plan and see if it’s possible to keep their churches open literally; what sort of life will be in them?”
Difficulty
Regarding rural decline, the bishop pointed to the difficulty with getting broadband, the closure of schools, post offices, presbyteries, Garda stations and the recent announcement of 88 Bank of Ireland branches closing. He said: “All of those things, they’re one death knell after another to rural communities and it’s a pity because the quality of life in these areas is fantastic and it’s a shame.
“Even in our own diocese now, the little triangle of Sixmilebridge, Ennis, Shannon, one-third of the whole population of the diocese are there in that little urban triangle.
“Whereas if you go back, East Clare, West Clare, parts of rural Tipperary, parts of Offaly, there are very small numbers of people and any sense of community is very difficult to sustain, whether it’s in the school, the church or GAA or whatever it is, it’s a real problem. That problem will get worse for the Church in the aftermath of Covid.”
Killaloe
Almost two dozen parishes in Killaloe have no resident priest, with Mass being celebrated once and sometimes just twice a week in some churches.
Across Ireland, church collections this year are down by about half meaning there will have to be a process of rationalising, according to the bishop, saying: “If the income is down by about 50%, as it is now, whether that will come back I don’t know. If a church isn’t able to sustain itself serious questions will be asked. Some of the really tiny churches; I wonder if they will reopen at all after Covid, I just don’t know.”
“Maybe things will swing back to normality, my hunch is probably not, it will probably take a big jump in the negative side.”
Bishop Monahan said his Easter letter is focused on urging people to look at the substantial issues and say: “‘What are we going to do? Are we going to just let things go into complete oblivion or are we going to move towards that urbanised system?’”
“You’d always try and make a priority of ensuring that rural areas would be serviced but there’s a limit to how you can do that in terms of resources that you have, they’re constantly declining,” he said.
“You’d hate to go in the direction that either the banks or the post offices have done or some of the closure of small schools, but it’s maybe inevitable with the way things are going, it’s not just Church but broader society.
He added that despite the stark realities, “the shameful thing is that rural communities do have a quality that is really outstanding which you don’t get in the impersonalised urban environment where the sense of community isn’t as strong, the sense of Church, the sense of being together, looking out for each other, you wouldn’t have that”.
“An awful lot of that came out hugely during Covid, the way people looked out for each other. I suppose the whole point of the letter is encouraging people to look at the stark reality that is there and further alerting people that when we do emerge from Covid we’re going to be in a very different reality, a very different world and with the lessening of resources we need to maybe either rationalise or move in a different direction entirely, the choice will be up to people I suppose really.”
Future
Bishop Monahan acknowledged in his Easter message that there is “no clear pathway to the future of our Church” other than planning based on reflection, discussion, discernment, re-visioning as well as practical ideas regarding the needs of the Church.
He said: “It is my hope that this planning will resume with a new impetus gained from our experiences of what it was to live under the restrictions imposed by the virus.”
Emerging from the pandemic, he said it is not enough to open church buildings and return to the way things were pre-Covid-19.
“This would simply postpone the necessary changes required for the Church of the future. Planning for the future will take time, creativity and an openness to change,” Bishop Monahan said.
Referencing Ireland’s national synod, announced by the bishops after their spring meeting, Bishop Monahan spoke of the importance of mission and that the Faithful have, in many ways, become “immersed in the business of maintaining our current structures that it may have drained us of our energy for mission”.
He added: “Have we the courage to make that transition to abandon some of our old structures in order to move from maintenance to mission?”
