After weeks of reading articles and watching programmes about it, I visited the refurbished St Mel’s cathedral in Longford last Sunday afternoon. Crowds were still pouring through its doors, weeks after the official reopening. The addresses in the visitors’ book revealed that many had travelled quite a distance to be there. That’s no surprise, the story of St Mel’s has heartened people all over the country and beyond.
While it is a mighty accomplishment for the Church in Ardagh and Clonmacnois, it also tells us something about the Church in Ireland today.
Let’s rewind to Christmas Day 2009. The RTÉ news bulletin that day led with three Church stories: the gutting of St Mel’s, the resignation of two auxiliary bishops in Dublin as the fallout from the Murphy Report continued and the ugly attack on Pope Benedict, knocked to the ground as he arrived for Christmas Mass in St Peter’s Basilica.
Now, five years later, we find ourselves celebrating the reopening of this beautiful cathedral.
The refurbishment is certainly a triumph for the skills of the architects and engineers, but it is also a powerful symbol of the enduring and resilient faith of the people. The take-home message is that the people of God in Longford rallied to rebuild their church during the most turbulent period – economically and ecclesiastically – in Ireland’s recent history.
The Irish might not be the best at finding words to express their faith, but we demonstrate it mightily with gestures like this.
One woman I spoke with contrasted the relatively quick reopening of a ruined cathedral with the frustratingly slow work of Church renewal. In many respects, the refurbishment of a gutted cathedral, with all its complexities, is actually an easier task.
Church renewal can’t resemble a building project, complete with strategies, plans and targets. Indeed, Pope Francis warns against “sitting around tables” to “dream up vast apostolic projects, meticulously planned”.
A certain degree of planning and investment is certainly needed but the process of renewal will be found in the ordinary life of the Church, described by Pope Francis, as “a history of sacrifice, hopes and daily struggles, of lives spent in service and fidelity to work, tiring as at it may be”.
There will be no great ceremony to signal the successful completion of that renewal. Perhaps we’ll know we’re on the right track when we hear less of what the Holy Father calls the sin of habriaqueísmo – endless talk about “what needs to be done” and see, instead, in the words of Archbishop Michael Neary, a determined commitment to youth evangelisation by “honest stewards who are fast on their feet” with “trained and committed personnel on the ground”.
It will be a laborious and challenging process, but the story St Mel’s in the midlands should be an inspiration for a long time to come.
I chatted with a steward while I was in St Mel’s and, after telling the story of the refurbishment with pride, he whispered: “Please God it’ll renew the faith of the people now as well.”
While I was there, the first baptism in the reopened cathedral was taking place; a reminder that this is no museum. Indeed, faith is the cement between those bricks in St Mel’s. That faith was certainly evident in abundance during the interviews featured in RTÉ’s excellent television and radio documentaries about the project aired over Christmas.
Empty churches
The late Brian Farrell hosted an RTE discussion in 1998 about a survey that put weekly Mass attendance at 60%. He posed this question to his studio guest: 'Why are the churches, which were once full, now empty?'
That phrase 'empty churches' has become a common descriptor for the Church in Ireland. While Mass attendance has diminished significantly, some now seem to believe that virtually nobody attends anymore.
I was at Sunday Mass in Westport recently and the congregation filled the large church to standing room only. The attendance at the 6pm Sunday Mass in Dublin's Clarendon's St before Christmas was remarkable for its large number of young adults. And a holy hour for young people and families led by Fr Brendan O'Sullivan at St Mel's is drawing a strong attendance each month.
Yes, one could match these stories with accounts of tiny congregations elsewhere, but we shouldnít forget that hundreds of thousands of Irish people have remained faithful to the Eucharist. The churches weren't empty in 1998 and they're not empty now.
