Jesuit theologian Fr Gerry O'Hanlon SJ has said Catholics frequently view the Church as ''a source of embarrassment and shame'' and ''our current model of church is nonsense''.Speaking at the launch of his new book A New Vision for the Catholic Church: A View from Ireland in Dublin on Monday night, Fr O'Hanlon said: ''Tradition is important but should never become tyranny.''
He described the current Church as an ''excessively male monarchical model'' and said that ''we ought to be looking for an alternative''.
From the Church's beginning, he said, it has experienced ''moments of change that the spirit has led us to''. He says that we are now in such a moment, but that ''it's difficult to sustain a sense of crisis indefinitely''.
The danger, he says is that -- without significant change -- Catholics in Ireland might become a ''culturally irrelevant minority'', however, he said, ''I don't think it has to be that way''.
His book charts significant aspects of the history of the Catholic Church and outlines seven steps he believes should be taken to renew it.
Key suggestions include the urgent setting up of a national assembly in order to address the crisis in the Irish Catholic Church as well as a ''Third Vatican Council''.
In the book, Fr O'Hanlon says that ''far from being a 'light for the nations' we often, today, experience the Catholic Church as a source of embarrassment and shame'' and that ''our current model of church is nonsense''.
Fr O'Hanlon says that the Church is full of ''good people, including good bishops'' but that it is ''an institution that is not comfortable with conversations between its own members'' and that people ''should not confuse faith and loyalty with an unquestioning adherence to the status quo''.
However, he believes a strong Church is needed with ''the 'institutional legs' to survive the tough challenges thrown up by the message of Jesus to our world''.
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