Bishop McKeown speaks of resistance to change within the Catholic Church

In his St. Patrick’s Day sermon in Pennyburn the Bishop of Derry said he believed it to be a ‘crucial time’ for the church in Ireland.

"We know there are still strong voices in the church today arguing for their own positions. Some people think that only radical change will work.

"Others believe that only a return to the church of our grandparents will bring renewal. There are those who will mock priests and parishes who actually take initiatives or ask awkward questions about the way forward,” said Dr. McKeown.

Parishioners were told of those within the church who will ‘criticise anybody who takes a risk or has an initiative’.

"The desire for a comfortable life can be very strong in church and outside of it. But it is not very smart to keep doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results,” he observed.

He alluded to synodal discussions about the future of the Catholic Church that commenced in 2021 and 2022 and involved contributions from parishioners from around the country.

"I think we are at crucial time in the Irish Church and in the Diocese of Derry for example. We've had plenty of local conversations and talks of synodality.

"But in some ways that's the easy part, the challenge is finding new ways to start moving forward, bringing the gospel to this generation,” he stated.

Bishop McKeown used the homily to once again rail against what he characterised as a ‘new secular ideology’.

“Some decades ago Christianity was taken for granted. Now in our modern secular and consumerist culture anything that dares to speak of morality, of right and wrong, of self-control, of sacrifice, is seen as a threat to the new ideology, to the market, to its dominant power,” he declared.

He continued: “If I am at the heart of what the world is all about then nobody will tell me or challenge me about my role as a little self-defining God.

"We know that most political parties here seem to assume that Catholic education has no place in a modern society, that there is no place for a dissident voice that doesn't support the new secular ideology.”

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