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The All-Ireland Primate said the Covid pandemic “lifted the veil” on the reality of the Church’s position in Ireland, observing that it was low on the public’s priority list.
Speaking at the online launch of a new book, Maynooth College reflects on Covid-19: New realities in uncertain timesArchbishop Eamon Martin said that despite speaking to the government about the importance of public worship before the company reopened, it had been “humiliating” to realize that “spiritual health, the importance of ‘going to mass, the importance of being together in worship, did not “not really figure as one of the major problems in the minds of many people”.
But the Archbishop of Armagh noted that surveys have shown that being able to worship and be together has a positive impact on the mental, emotional and spiritual well-being of people and, therefore, on the common good. .
The new book is a response to Archbishop Martin’s call to explore what the Covid crisis says about the Church and about prayer and faith, as well as to explore the possible lasting effects of the pandemic on the church life. It offers a variety of reflections from the point of view of theology, Scripture, philosophy, ethics, liturgy, pastoral care and canon law.
“Much of what we take for granted as the Church has been cruelly disrupted and disrupted by this pandemic,†the Archbishop said, and he recognized how difficult it was to be a leader in the Church right now and having the kind of decision that people sometimes expected. It was natural for people to start asking: “Where is God, where is the Church, where is the Eucharist?”
To the question: where was the Church at that time, for him it was not inside empty churches, “but in the daily life of so many good people, nurses, caregivers, others – who, motivated by their faith, would go the extra mile to reach out and help others â€.
Professor Salvador Ryan, one of the editors of the new book, said that due to the pandemic a number of issues that needed to be addressed by the Church in Ireland were now “really seen in great relief from a way they don’t have â€. t been seen or that we weren’t prepared to see or didn’t want to see or didn’t have time to see “before Covid. He said the pandemic offered the Church” the opportunity to recalibrate, to take stock and, hopefully, to work for renewal “.
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