We need to celebrate young people and challenge them to be the Church of the future

The challenge for the Church is to move to authentic co-responsibility between priests and people the new Bishop of Kilmore Martin Hayes tells Michael Kelly

In his apostolic exhortation ‘Christus vivet’ published last year, Pope Francis spoke of the youthfulness of the Church and prayed: “Let us ask the Lord to free the Church from those who would make her grow old, encase her in the past, hold her back or keep her at a standstill”.

It’s a model of the Church that the new Bishop of Kilmore Martin Hayes finds very appealing. His own vocation to the priesthood was nurtured by his involvement in youth ministry in Limerick in the late 1970s and he believes that prioritising work with young people is the key to the renewal of the Church in Ireland.

Bishop Hayes – who turns 61 next month – has spent the vast bulk of his priesthood at home in pastoral settings. Whether it is working in the area of marriage care or suicide prevention, the sort of pastoring emphasised by Pope Francis is where he has always felt at home.

The Pope’s vision of a Church – priests, people and religious – together listening attentively to the voice of God and discerning the way forward is also well within his comfort zone. As a priest of the Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly, he was instrumental in a listening process there that brought together the joys and hopes, the worries and anxieties of parishioners in 21st Century Ireland.

Call

After a childhood in Co. Tipperary, Bishop Hayes traces his own discernment of a call to the priesthood to his time in Limerick when he was studying engineering. Here he became involved with MuintearasÍosa, a youth faith initiative which underlines the importance of the three flames of fáilte (welcome), foghlaim (learning) and guí (prayer). Speaking to The Irish Catholic this week, he recalls weekends away where young Catholics were able to reflect and pray on God’s plan for their life in a spirit of friendship and fun where sing-songs were at the heart of building relationships.

The group proved to be a formative experience for the young would-be engineer and it was while working in Dundalk that the idea of a vocation to the priesthood really crystallised for him. “Quite honestly, I thought I was going mad at first,” he admits.

But over time and prayer, his sense of God’s calling began to take greater shape. “I knew then it was a kind of an ache that I had to resolve – it was something I had to do,” he recalls.

Pope John Paul II had visited Ireland in the autumn of 1979, and his words had a profound impact on the young Martin and resonate to this day. “‘Something else is needed!’ He said in Galway,” Bishop Hayes says, “and I knew I had to do something else with my life”.

He entered St Patrick’s College, Thurles in 1983 to begin studying for the priesthood for his home diocese of Cashel and Emly.

He clearly enjoyed being back in his home town and the entire seminary experience. “We knocked the corners off each other there,” he says with a laugh.

As well as the academic formation in Thurles, he believes that was an experience of “learning how to relate well with people and with one another, growing together and coming to terms with what was involved in priesthood”.

After ordination in 1989, Fr Hayes was sent by Archbishop Dermot Clifford to study anthropology in Rome, returning to the teaching staff in Thurles just two years later.

When Fr Hayes was teaching aspirants to the priesthood in Thurles there were also seminaries in Belfast, Waterford, Carlow, Wexford and Maynooth. Overseas there were Irish seminaries in Belgium, Spain and – of course – the Pontifical Irish College in Rome. Today, only Maynooth remains and there is only a handful of seminarians there.

“Vocations to the priesthood is a huge challenge,” he admits. One of his first acts as Bishop of Kilmore will be to ordain Deacon Tim Small for the diocese next weekend. “That’s a great privilege,” he says.

Bishop Hayes is adamant that the Church cannot promote vocations to the priesthood and religious life in isolation without regard to the wider faith formation of young people.

“Because of the fact that I have come from a youth faith movement and lay ministry, I am a great believer in promoting that…I am convinced that if we promote lay ministry, and involve young people, and give them a role [in the Church] then vocations will come out of that”. Bishop Hayes goes on to list an impressive number of men who are now priests that were involved with MuintearasÍosa.

I put it to Bishop Hayes that if the Church can get youth ministry right, the vocations will come from communities of faith. “That is my conviction,” he says. “But, we need to allow young people to find their own feet”.

Return

For Bishop Hayes, it’s not so much a return to where we were, but finding new ways to engage young people. “I’ve been involved in a listening process in Cashel &Emly. and some of the talk there amongst the older generation was about getting young people ‘back’. I get – and share – the sentiment, but you won’t get young people ‘back’ to what they often perceive as old-fashioned.

“You need to acknowledge them as they are, and allow them to enjoy their youth and vitality and celebrate that with them”.

A major challenge for the contemporary Church is that there is a perception amongst some young people – often fostered by negatives voices – that what the Church has to say is old hat and for another generation. “We need to challenge this where it is present,” Bishop Hayes believes, “but it’s not something that is there across the board,” he insists both from his work in Cashel &Emly and early experience in Kilmore. “There are great young people involved, and they give you an energy and a vitality…we need to accept them as they are – and, of course, we need to challenge them and pray with them and acknowledge the Spirit within them, but we also need to allow them space because they are going to be the Church of the future”.

And Bishop Hayes sees plenty of green shoots in his new diocese. “The work in pastoral planning initiatives and listening that has gone on here in Kilmore has been remarkable…my predecessor [Bishop Leo O’Reilly] and his predecessor [Bishop Francis McKiernan] have put a lot of energy into the pastoral side,” Bishop Hayes believes.

At the same time, he admits to a certain amount of trepidation setting out in a new diocese in unfamiliar territory. “I suppose the way I look at it is that wherever we are ministering, we are ministering with people with the same needs and desires,” he says.

“Obviously, I don’t know the geography of the area – but I have travelled around it, and met all the priests in the four deanery areas. That was very useful because it helps me to situate where personalities are, and the geography of the diocese – that has been a very good start,” he says.

“I can certainly say that on the day of the announcement [of my appointment] in Cavan I got a great sense of the people, and a great sense of the welcome so I’m very much looking forward to meeting more people,” Bishop Hayes says.

Ordination

The episcopal ordination on Sunday in Cavan’s impressive Cathedral of Saints Patrick and Felim is a highpoint in the life of any diocese. It is only the fourth such consecration in the cathedral’s history, but surely the most extraordinary given that just 50 people were present in the building that could comfortably seat 1,200.

Bishop Hayes is the second Irish bishop to begin his episcopal ministry under pandemic restriction. “It’s strange,” he admits and disappointing for a lot of family members who were unable to travel. “But people are very understanding of the time we are living in,” he says.

Unprecedented is a word that is over-used by journalists, but at a time when public Masses were suspended across the island of Ireland for over three months it seems the only word appropriate. And, the effects of the virus are felt right across society.

For most of his 31 years of priesthood, Bishop Hayes has worked in the area of both marriage preparation and the challenges facing married couples, giving him an insight into the challenges the pandemic will bring for relationships.

“Undoubtedly there are going to be strains placed upon marriages today in view of the fact – first of all – that couples may well be tied in economically and financially to a mortgage or whatever, but also the fact that people have been locked down together…it highlights the need for marriage preparation and the need for ongoing care of marriage,” Dr Hayes insists.

At the same time, the bishop is at pains to point out the positive aspects that have emerged for many families as a result of coronavirus restrictions. “I know from my own experience of my own extended family and friends that Covid-19 has brought some pluses as well: it has meant a better balanced life for many people…they realise that they don’t have to commute to Dublin, and they have more time to be with families…so that’s a good thing,” he says.

Formation

In his previous work in Cashel &Emly, Bishop Hayes spent a lot of time working on the ongoing formation of priests. He sees this as a “vital element” in caring for those in frontline ministry.

Whether it is priests, religious or laypeople engaged in pastoral work, Bishop Hayes says there is a need for a “deep listening” so that “people can reveal their humanity as distinct from their roles”.

“Because with fewer priests, fewer religious, there’s a greater workload foisted upon them…and so they can get very busy and get very caught up in their role. But, we need to hear the still, small voice of the Lord that called them in the first place,” he says.

On the theme of listening, Dr Hayes was a key driver behind a process in his previous diocese that heard from parishioners about their future hopes for the Church. For the new bishop, listening is about eliminating the divide that can sometimes exist between priests and the people they minister to.

“We need to have a conversation. At the moment, there would be – as I see it – a considerable gap between priests and people…and the more listening we do, the more that gap is eliminated or dissolved,” he says.

Worries

He worries that with fewer priests there could be a danger of the priest again being seen to be on a pedestal. “People are busier, so they’re leaving more to priests…but I see the priest as being in the circle with people, and the bishop being part of that same circle learning from one another”.

Some bishops have found the process of listening to be an uncomfortable experience. But Bishop Hayes says it was overwhelmingly positive. “I learned that people have great faith”.

“We can often think in modern Ireland today that the faith is gone, because practice rates are down. But we found that people really valued their faith and had a deep yearning for community.

“The other thing that was interesting was the whole area of liturgy: people were looking for more involvement, and more participation in liturgies,” he says.

A theme that emerged time and again in the process was the place of women within the Church. “I’m very conscious of the fact that the majority of people who are actively involved in the Church are women, and there would be a real passion and desire among the women and the people that I was involved in to have a meaningful role [in the Church].

“Women would like to be involved in the decision-making, and in the governance of the parish and of the diocese – that’s something we have to address,” he insists.

Women

There’s a tension, I put it to the new bishop, between the desire for the full participation of women in the Church and the fact that Church teaching is clear in following Christ’s way and reserving the priesthood to men alone.

He agrees. “There is a tension there between what is allowable in the Church today with regard to ministry and where people would like us to be”. However, he is clear that if there is a greater focus on co-responsibility within the Church then the issue of the difference between laypeople and the ordained changes. “I think if we concentrate upon having laypeople involved fully in parish councils, pastoral councils, diocesan councils – that helps people be involved in governance and then priesthood is less about power and governance and more about service”.

“You will always have priests involved in governance, but if you can decouple it from priesthood so that governance is exercised collectively between priests and people that will lead to a healthier Church,” he believes.

Border

Kilmore, like Armagh, Derry and Clogher is a diocese divided by the border with parishes in both jurisdictions. Britain’s decision to leave the European Union and the subsequent effects on that land border loom large in the diocese. It’s something that Bishop Hayes is acutely aware of in his conversations with priests who minister in order parishes. “There would be serious implications [of a no-deal Brexit], north and south of the border.

“They [border parishioners] just do not want to go back to the inconvenience of the past…or where you had customs checks on both sides of the border.

“I suppose there would also be a fear that tensions could rise again…People do not want to be returning to the past, they have enjoyed the relative peace of the last 20 years or so – and that would be shared by both the Catholic and Protestant communities along the border,” he says.

One thing is clear, whether north or south – Bishop Hayes is keen to hit the ground running. From our conversation, he is evidently a shepherd in the mode of Pope Francis – with the smell of the sheep.