Pent-up ire sparks religion of future: It's time to cut Vatican ties

By AM Saturday, June 23, 2012

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Tonight TPQ features former Blanket columnist Dr John Coulter with a piece that first appeared in the Irish Daily Star, 11th June, 2012.

The Catholic Church in Ireland needs to be reborn spiritually,  otherwise it will become a meaningless fringe cult in less than a decade.The abuse scandals, coupled with a secular society, have rocked confidence in the Church leadership, with Mass attendances collapsing nationwide.

Ireland was once the great bastion of the Church-State relationship,  especially in the Eamon de Valera era. But now Irish Catholics need a new set of beliefs, which will see the pews overflowing as they did in the Swinging Sixties.

The Vatican 's Irish office has been axed and Taoiseach Enda Kenny publicly used a Dáil speech to lambast the Catholic hierarchy.That represents the depth of the rot. And the calls for Cardinal Sean Brady to quit will not go away. But there is light at the end of this very dark tunnel for Irish Catholics. The question is, do they have the faith and conviction to follow that path?

A new faith “Pentecostal Catholicism” is slowly, but surely sweeping across the island. If Irish Catholics take this spiritual route, their faith will blossom as never before. This should not be misinterpreted as Catholics converting to Protestantism. But it does mean Irish Catholicism institutionally cutting its Vatican ties.

Even in the Protestant community, the mainstream and many fringe churches are faced with falling attendances. And Pentecostal Protestantism is on the rise, too. The power of the Pentecostal movement is that it does not distinguish between Catholics and Protestants. All are what is classified by faith as 'born again believers. In worship terms, a Pentecostal Catholic can feel just as comfortable at a gathering of Pentecostal Protestants.

The perfect example of this growing Pentecostal Catholic movement can be found on Belfast 's Falls Road. It's in the new Falls Community Fellowship church, based in a former Stickies building near the Royal Victoria Hospital. It is led by Pastor Tony Meehan, who once wanted to be a Jesuit-trained priest and was in the Irish Army.

He is also a married man with a family. That's another benefit the new Pentecostal Catholic movement has for any Catholic male wanting to become a pastor - celibacy is optional.The general Irish Pentecostal movement began in Monaghan in the early 1900s, but such was the Vatican 's grip on Catholicism here that bishops have always been able to cleverly dismiss Pentecostalism as Protestantism under another name.

The modern-day Pentecostal Catholic movement is taking the Biblical Old Testament text of Ezekiel chapter 36, verse 26 as its inspiration: "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh."

The Irish Catholic leadership, as well as dumping Vatican rule and going independent, should also follow the words of Jesus when He told people to sell their riches and give to the poor.

With austerity cuts biting deep across Ireland, the Church has vast riches in its chapels, monasteries, convents and cathedrals. Poverty will be the social scourge of the next decade and the Irish Catholic Church must sell, sell, sell to help the poor and needy. It should immediately cut its funding to the Vatican.

But money will not buy salvation for the Catholic Church as an institution. It must turn to Pentecostalism as a faith, otherwise Catholicism in Ireland as a religious influence will be dead in a decade, too.