Pressure from the pews

THE revelation that the Dublin Archdiocese — the country’s largest with over one million registered Catholics — is close to financial collapse is likely to be mirrored in other parts of the Church in Ireland.

I say likely because it is hard to pin down exact figures when it comes to the Church’s finances. What we do know for sure, however, is that the Church has spent a lot of money compensating victims of sexual abuse and that the value of investments have plummeted.

It isn’t just the handling of allegations of clerical sexual abuse that has seen the Church adopt a veil of secrecy. The internal consultation document obtained by The Irish Catholic newspaper that sheds such revealing light on Dublin’s financial crisis was never meant to see the light of day. Church leaders would likely have been much more circumspect if they had expected the document to make its way into the public arena.