And he will need all that wattage as the head of the Dublin Archdiocese and Primate of Ireland to save the Catholic Church there.
His openness and frank honesty have won over the hearts, if not the worship habits, of the young in Ireland who are abandoning the church in droves.
“The presence of young people in the life of these parishes is, however, minimal. The strong backbone of good Catholics in Ireland is an aging group,” he ironically told that same age bracket of people who packed the house at Fordham University Law School to hear Martin speak and receive an honorary degree on April 24.
White-haired, pale skinned seniors filled the seats in McNally Amphitheatre.
Among the handful of youth was my very Irish parishioner, Dr. Paul Corrigan, from Dundalk in County Louth, who got to shake Martin’s hand and tell him how much he appreciated what he was doing back home.
That’s where Corrigan, 33, will return this week for a visit en route to a wedding. But he pinpointed the problem, “The priests they have are not fit for the job.”
Martin, 68, said: “One of the great challenges the Irish Catholic Church still has to face is that of strong remnants of inherited clericalism.”
He complimented the vast number of good clergy but said that this clericalism contributed to perhaps the worst sexual abuse scandal in the world.
“There is no way you can simply explain away the huge number of those who were abused and the fact that this took place undetected and unrecognized within the Church of Jesus Christ.”
Martin said safeguards are now in place.
But the damage is done.
Ireland and Catholicism were almost synonymous.
No more.
“The Church had become conformist and controlling not just with its faithful, but in society in general” said Martin, who spent a good part of his ecclesiastical career outside of Ireland, which made him the best choice to return to reform it in 2004. That’s when “the Irish tiger” was still running rampant economically, but soon it would all fall down like a house of cards, actually over the overblown and overcredited housing market.
Today Martin has noticed that poverty is on the rise. He said that in many schools, which are almost exclusively run by the Catholic Church and are state-funded, children come to school without eating breakfast and it hinders their learning. People he said who used to contribute to the St. Vincent de Paul Society, which helps the poor, are now its clients.
Ireland has changed and will never return to its past Catholic glory. But he is hopeful that a homegrown revival will save the Church and it won’t come from conformism, which is the hallmark of the institutional Church.
“Christian faith requires changing our way of thinking, of trusting in God’s love rather than in the tangible securities of day-to-day life,” said Martin, who entered the Vatican diplomatic corps in 1976, seven years after ordination. He served on two Pontifical Councils and was the Vatican diplomat at the U.N. in Geneva.
He also led conflict resolution missions to East Timor, Sarajevo and Rwanda definite global hotspots which may have prepared him for what he would find in Ireland. He put a good face on the reported disunity of the Irish bishops, which might have denied him a red hat in two consistories.
“Those in charge are very inflexible,” said Corrigan, a physicist specializing in lazers, who was anxious to point queries at Martin during a Q&A period, which sadly never occurred.
Martin noted that young people focus on justice issues and ask him repeatedly why the church is against homosexuality and is it a sin to commit suicide, which has risen in Ireland.
I know that even the mature crowd would have pressed Martin for replies.
What all enjoyed was the surprise after Martin received his honorary doctorate.
Jesuit Father Joseph McShane, president of Fordham, said that instead of giving him a customary, academic hood, six Fordham carpenters carved a crosier or bishop’s staff and these hulking men paraded down to present it to Martin, who seemed quite touched and pleased with the shamrocks carved in the top.
They just might have fashioned it out of metal because he will need nerves of steel to reform the Church in Ireland.
Or when he uses the crook, or top, to corral the “sheep” in Ireland.
Or to set them free.