This is my article currently published in The Journal.ie

Major Challenges facing the Catholic Church

After a long period of stagnation, even retrenchment, in the Catholic Church, Pope Francis was a reformer. Through a movement which he called Synodality, he attempted to change the structure of the Church, in particular in its decision making processes.  The idea reflects the need to shift from a system where traditionally all the power and authority was in the hands of the clergy to a system where all the believers had a voice and accepted that at a basic fundamental level all the baptised were equal.

The need for theological reform

John Menadue

In the mid-1980s when I was at Boston College, a Jesuit university, one of the lecturers commented that the Catholic Church hierarchy was fearful of a schism in the church. Too late, he remarked, it is already here, informally. He pointed out that the majority of students at that Catholic university no longer believed the traditional story of a heavenly deity who locked people out of heaven because of the first humans’ disobedience.

It is reported (Irish Catholic, 19 March 2026) that Bishop Alan McGuckian ‘thinks the door to female diaconate is shut and that his fellow Jesuit Pope Francis should have said so’.

We respectfully disagree.

Bishop Alan has spoken boldly. But has he listened to the ‘sense of faith’ of the overwhelming majority of Irish Catholics on this issue? To the latest authoritative papal magisterium arising out of the Synod on Synodality, to which he contributed by his participation?