As you read this column today it will be the eighth anniversary of the death of Matt Wallace. Matt was a legendary priest based in west Belfast.
A Facebook photo of his wide grin and cigarette in hand popped up and prompted me to recall this great human being. Not that I had forgotten him. That would be impossible.
I had the great privilege of working with Father Matt. He literally burned himself out in the service of his people. And it didn’t matter to him if those people never crossed the door of a church.
If they struggled with faith, Matt bore them the witness they needed to restore it. Matt was also a builder. He established physical structures around people to support them.
The Irish Catholic Church has need of men like Matt Wallace.
And it’s too easy to dismiss the contributions of certain clergy/religious to the wellbeing of many communities across Ireland because of bad experiences at the hands of less than Christian priests or religious. Purveyors of false piety and pomposity are as rife today within the Irish Church as the hypocritical Pharisees of the New Testament.
But rafts of energetic Irish clergy and religious rose to the challenge of ministering to the whole needs of the faithful and left their mark in many, many walks of life.
They recognised that people don’t live in some kind of ‘holy’ bubble. They practised their vocations as servants to the people - not their overseers.
The work of these pioneering clerics/religious should not be washed out of memory because of the shocking revelations about sexual abuse and worse still the systemic cover up by Church and religious authorities of the abusers within their ranks.
However unfashionable, there needs to be moderation and perspective in appraising the contribution of many religious throughout Ireland.
On a trip to Donegal I was reminded of the work of Fr James McDyer. James was truly an entrepreneur. He recognised that poverty is a cycle that needs broken. And he set forth lobbying government for support in deprived rural areas.
But he also knew that to sustain growth, teaching a person to fish was better than merely feeding them. McDyer encouraged the growth of cottage industries by revitalising traditional crafts and more importantly marketing them. His success is evidenced across today’s Gaeltacht.
With the huge success of modern day credit unions some members will know that John Hume was involved with the creation of the movement in Northern Ireland but before him there was Father Paddy Gallagher who was the first President of the Irish League of Credit Unions.
Here in the north two pioneering clerics set up very different types of industry in the hope of creating employment opportunities. The late Fr Austin Eustace took the unusual step of founding a crystal factory in Tyrone and Fr Oliver Kennedy helped set up the still flourishing Lough Neagh Fishermen’s Cooperative in Toome.
And it wasn’t always about creating jobs. Sister Consilio of Cuan Mhuire and her network of addiction recovery centres has helped thousands to rebuild their shattered lives. Or Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, who founded the homeless charity Focus Ireland. She would later set up the Immigrant Council of Ireland to support the ignored social needs of immigrants too.
Newry born Jesuit and social campaigner Fr Peter McVerry is another radical who runs a charitable trust to serve the destitute of Dublin. There are countless others too like Fr Martin Magill who is trying to forge inter community understanding in Belfast, a city still riven with sectarianism.
Not every priest or religious can become a social campaigner or champion for enterprise - but too few even try.
One thing is for certain, if the recovering Catholic Church in Ireland is to survive it needs more reformers and activists within its ranks, not bean counters and serial committee-sitters.
