Church no longer calls on sinners to repent
Was the Year of Mercy a failure in Ireland? Certainly the word "mercy" was used a lot in homilies, church documents and banners.
And many parishes, families and groups took various steps to promote understanding of God's mercy.
Efforts were made to encourage people to go to confession, especially those who had not been for a long time. And practical initiatives were taken to help people in different kinds of distress.
Moreover, it is not easy to measure the effects of God's mercy in people's hearts and lives.
All that said, the fruits of the Year of Mercy were much fewer than we might have hoped for.
No great surge in the numbers going to Sunday Mass, for example, nor any noticeable increase in family prayer, nor a renewed zeal for evangelisation.
It will be rightly said that the impact of divine mercy goes far beyond all this. Yet it must include it.
Many reasons can be given for the disappointing outcome - lack of enthusiasm, not enough outreach, and so on.
But the greatest weakness in our celebration of the year may have been a failure to make repentance for sin a central concern. Indeed, this has been a major problem in the Church for decades.
It helps to explain, for example, why many people have little sense of sin as disobedience to God, and why there has been a huge fall in the number of Catholics going to confession.
When Jesus began his public ministry his first instruction was: "Repent and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1,15). This remained a central theme in his preaching, and in the mission of the early Church.
Even in the last book of Scripture, the Book of Revelation, repentance is a major concern. Which strongly indicates that it should still be a major theme in Catholic teaching.
It goes, however, against the therapeutic spirit of the present age, with its focus on "positive thinking", "self-esteem", "good self-image", the mantra to "love yourself", the desire not to be "judged".
It also clashes with the idea of "personal autonomy" and the mindset that insists, "Don't tell me what to do!" or, "I'll decide for myself!"
And given the recent scandals in the Church, what bishop or priest is going to tell people that what they are doing is a sin and they should turn back to God?
That would only leave him open to vehement accusations of hypocrisy, with orders to take the beam out of his own eye first.
It is little surprise, then, if priests shy away from calling on people to repent, to turn away from their sins. Or if they only speak about the commandments in a vague, abstract way.
But whether he likes it or not, preaching repentance is part of the Christ-given mission of a priest, a key element of his service to the Church, one of his most serious responsibilities, and part of his way of carrying the cross.
All human beings want to be loved, but they have to learn how to accept love.
Some never learn that, or are very poor at it, due to various hurts when they were children. Their lives are greatly impoverished as a result.
In a similar way, we have to learn how to accept God's love and his mercy, to accept salvation through forgiveness for our sins.
But we can do this only if we recognise our sins and, through God's grace, are willing to turn away from them. And often our sins need to be pointed out to us, given our inclination to deny them, even to ourselves.
The Church, then, must take up once again the task of preaching repentance if she is serious about the salvation of souls.
And many parishes, families and groups took various steps to promote understanding of God's mercy.
Efforts were made to encourage people to go to confession, especially those who had not been for a long time. And practical initiatives were taken to help people in different kinds of distress.
Moreover, it is not easy to measure the effects of God's mercy in people's hearts and lives.
All that said, the fruits of the Year of Mercy were much fewer than we might have hoped for.
No great surge in the numbers going to Sunday Mass, for example, nor any noticeable increase in family prayer, nor a renewed zeal for evangelisation.
It will be rightly said that the impact of divine mercy goes far beyond all this. Yet it must include it.
Many reasons can be given for the disappointing outcome - lack of enthusiasm, not enough outreach, and so on.
But the greatest weakness in our celebration of the year may have been a failure to make repentance for sin a central concern. Indeed, this has been a major problem in the Church for decades.
It helps to explain, for example, why many people have little sense of sin as disobedience to God, and why there has been a huge fall in the number of Catholics going to confession.
When Jesus began his public ministry his first instruction was: "Repent and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1,15). This remained a central theme in his preaching, and in the mission of the early Church.
Even in the last book of Scripture, the Book of Revelation, repentance is a major concern. Which strongly indicates that it should still be a major theme in Catholic teaching.
It goes, however, against the therapeutic spirit of the present age, with its focus on "positive thinking", "self-esteem", "good self-image", the mantra to "love yourself", the desire not to be "judged".
It also clashes with the idea of "personal autonomy" and the mindset that insists, "Don't tell me what to do!" or, "I'll decide for myself!"
And given the recent scandals in the Church, what bishop or priest is going to tell people that what they are doing is a sin and they should turn back to God?
That would only leave him open to vehement accusations of hypocrisy, with orders to take the beam out of his own eye first.
It is little surprise, then, if priests shy away from calling on people to repent, to turn away from their sins. Or if they only speak about the commandments in a vague, abstract way.
But whether he likes it or not, preaching repentance is part of the Christ-given mission of a priest, a key element of his service to the Church, one of his most serious responsibilities, and part of his way of carrying the cross.
All human beings want to be loved, but they have to learn how to accept love.
Some never learn that, or are very poor at it, due to various hurts when they were children. Their lives are greatly impoverished as a result.
In a similar way, we have to learn how to accept God's love and his mercy, to accept salvation through forgiveness for our sins.
But we can do this only if we recognise our sins and, through God's grace, are willing to turn away from them. And often our sins need to be pointed out to us, given our inclination to deny them, even to ourselves.
The Church, then, must take up once again the task of preaching repentance if she is serious about the salvation of souls.
