Blog Layout

Ireland’s synodal path – O’Hanlon’s way

Colm Holmes • 26 April 2024

One of the leading thinkers in the Irish Church welcomes the Pope’s ‘change of culture’ but warns that it will peter out unless there are reforms to structures and institutions 


By SARAH MAC DONALD; The Tablet; 27 April 2024

O'Hanlon’s way


“REPRESSED TRUTH turns poisonous,” warned Cardinal Maximos IV Saïgh, one of the fathers of the Second Vatican Council. It’s an insight that could be applied to the debate over synodality, according to Fr Gerry O’Hanlon. “If you rely on control and force to inculcate what’s true, and don’t, as the Vatican decree Dei Verbum says, turn to persuasion, then you are really going down a rabbit hole.”


The Dublin-born theologian and former provincial of the Irish Jesuits welcomes the “change of culture” in the Church that Pope Francis has fostered. Greater freedom of speech has given rise to “an altogether healthier atmosphere”. The 76-year-old believes “a lot of reflection” is needed on the Church’s use of power. He reminded me of Ladislaus Orsy’s suggestion that the Church’s monarchical use of power gave it a very weak immune systemwhen it came to issues such as safeguarding. “That top-down culture whereby clerics were put on a pedestal meant it wasn’t easy to question them; that is not good.”


O’Hanlon recalls that in the 1950s Karl Rahner had argued that there should be open and frank discussion within the Church. “That allows voices to be heard, which can be difficult for those in authority but in the long run, it’s healthier.” It’s also more biblical, he pointed out. “Exegetes tell us there was a lot of conflict and discussion in the Early Church on what was the proper way to receive Gentiles. Searching for truth and being able to endure the conflict that can be part of that process is deep in our roots as a Christian community.”


O’HANLON ENTERED the Jesuits in 1965, having been schooled at Belvedere College, Dublin. At University College Dublin he studied for a degree in Latin and Greek and this was followed by an MA in Classics at McMaster University in Canada. His doctorate was on the immutability of God in the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. As a young postgraduate student he met Balthasar in Rome; he also met Rahner in Munich. “I found Balthasar very intriguing on the big questions of God, Jesus Christ and salvation. I couldn’t accept his reasoning on more contemporary issues such as Humanae Vitae and the ordination of women.”


He did his doctoral studies at Queen’s University Belfast. “I was interested in Northern Ireland because of the political context.” He lived in the Presbyterian chaplaincy beside Queen’s University. “They were a bit shocked at the start that I was a Catholic, a priest and a Jesuit – all their horrors mounted up! But I was still young enough to play for their rugby team.” That built up camaraderie. Travelling to away matches he took their banter on the chin, including their cheering at the River Boyne and booing at the GPO on O’Connell Street. The relationship was tested by the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985. “I was the only one they had to vent their anger on ... they were furious. They felt betrayed, particularly by Margaret Thatcher. There was a cooling of the atmosphere for two or three weeks. I could understand why they were doing it and yet it was very alienating – these were people that I had got to know.” Today, he still counts them as some of his best friends.

His doctorate on Balthasar has proved useful in the current papacy. “Francis has this thing about the ‘Petrine principle’ and the ‘Marian principle’. The Petrine is male – to do with governance and authority; the Marian is female – to do with love and receptivity.” O’Hanlon is unconvinced. “It seems to me a strange kind of theology; I don’t see the rational basis for it.” 



Balthasar, he explains, was trying to argue for the equality of men and women, so he was ahead of what had gone before. “But he was arguing for their complementarity in a way that puts us in difficulty when we look at the role of women in civil life and in the Church. I know where the Pope is coming from, but I think the theology is questionable. I’m open to the fact that men and women are equal but maybe different. But I would say, don’t essentialise that – don’t make it so firm that women can’t do certain things.”


He sees his role as a theologian “to call it as I see it in terms of the adequacy of the foundations given to support certain positions”. He notes that the Catholic faithful in large parts of the world have not accepted church teaching on sexuality and gender, specifically around the ministry of women. Referring to the sensus fidelium, articulated by John Henry Newman and in the Vatican II document Lumen Gentium, O’Hanlon highlights that “when there is a breakdown between what the people accept and what the Church teaches, there are protocols, spelt out for exam- ple in the 2014 document from the International Theological Commission” (signed off by Cardinal Gerhard Müller, not anyone’s idea of a progressive). “That says very clearly that where there is resistance or indifference to or rejection of Catholic teaching, then the Church must try to discern whether it’s the laxness of people – is it the spirit of the age that is seducing people into something false – or does the teaching need better clarification, or does it need reformulation?”


The argument that the Church lacks the authority to ordain women as priests, O’Hanlon believes, needs to be probed. He

points to the 1976 report of the Pontifical Biblical Commission – which included Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini and Raymond Brown – which concluded that there was nothing decisive in the New Testament to determine, one way or another, whether women should be ordained. “So what you have is a quite flimsy basis and one certainly worth looking at again.” He also believes the argument that a woman can’t represent Christ rests on shaky grounds. There are, he says, “lots of good reasons to say that limiting that representation of Christ to just the maleness of human beings doesn’t hold up”. Women can baptise children and in doing so they represent Jesus Christ; in marriage, the sacrament is conferred by the man and the woman on each other – the priest is the witness; the woman is representing Christ for the man. O’Hanlon understands the reluctance of women who feel called to the priesthood to give voice to it. “For a lot of my adult life as a priest and as a Jesuit, the culture in the Church was very forbidding for those who wanted to call out these things.”


O’HANLON IS a member of the Synodal Pathway Committee in Ireland. This synodal journey of the Irish Church is happening in tandem with the Synod on Synodality in Rome. There is some confusion over the two processes. “It is very new and it is going to take time to bed down. But people have already spoken of their positive experiences of being listened to.” There was a lot of scepticism and cynicism about the listening and consultation because many people had become habituated to a very passive notion of the laity, whose role was to “pray, pay and obey”. Increasingly people see that synodality is not just “a pro forma” exercise. “I heard so many people say, with great gratitude, I’m 65 or 70 and this is the first time in my life that I’ve been asked for my view. It’s so liberating when it hap- pens. That change of culture is going on.


He is hopeful that the Synod assembly in Rome in October will see changes emerge which will “concretise what co-responsibility looks like”. For Gerry O’Hanlon, the way the role of women is addressed will be absolutely key to the success of the synodal process. “There is a real urgency and a real opportunity,” he says, but he fears it will “peter out” unless new structures, institutions and laws follow. His message to those attending the synod is “don’t be foolish or reckless – but don’t avoid taking decisions.”


Sarah Mac Donald writes for The Tablet from Ireland.


17 March 2025
Interview with Soline Humbert Irish Daily Mail 15 March 2025
by Soline Humbert 25 February 2025
A reflection by Soline Humbert for the Women’s Ordination Conference Retreat “Hidden Springs, Holy Radiance” 9 February 2025 [ see recording on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szP5h1kzEsU ] We have been gathering over the past three days in the presence of Brigid of Kildare, and I am sure she has brought gifts to each one, for my experience is that she is attentive to our needs and very generous with her help. At this stage I just want to share some of my own life journey with Brigid. I first encountered her in 1969 when I came from France to Ireland as a child on holidays to learn English. I went to a small Irish town called Tullow. As it happens it was in Tullow that on the first of February 1807 the order of nuns of St Brigid which had been dissolved at the Reformation, had been refounded by a far-sighted bishop. Symbolically an oak sapling had been brought from Kildare Town, from the church of the oak, to Tullow and planted in the grounds of the Brigidine convent where I took English classes. It was by then a majestic oak tree. It still stands to this day. Coincidentally and somewhat ironically, 1969 was also the year that Pope Paul the 6th removed St Brigid, along with 193 other saints, from the Universal Roman Calendar of saints. The reason being that there wasn’t enough evidence for her existence! That despite the fact she was the most mentioned Irish person in the writings of several centuries after her death... What was true was that her flame had been somehow extinguished, and her importance diminished in a deeply clericalised and patriarchal church as Ireland was at the time. She was in the shadow of St Patrick and very much the secondary patron Saint, reflecting the secondary position of women in general. But change was slowly happening. Having discovered in myself a vocation to the priesthood I eventually co- founded a group for women’s ordination and launched a petition to open all ministries to women in February 1993. At the very same time, which I consider providential, the flame of St Brigid was rekindled by the Brigidine sisters in Kildare Town. Women were stirring after a very long wintertime in the church and in society and becoming more fiery. Brigid with her torch was blazing a way for equality. It is then, and only then, that I came across the story of her ordination as a bishop and I remember my astonishment for I had never read anything like that before, or since, for that matter. Of course, while this fact was mentioned in many of the lives of Brigid going back to the first millennium it had been quietly left out of the pious descriptions of her life which were fed to the people. The way the story is recounted makes it clear that her ordination was considered to be very much the doing of the Holy Spirit. Objections about her gender were voiced but powerless to negate what God had done. It reminds me very much of the passage in the Acts of the Apostles when St Peter is amazed to discover that the Holy Spirit has descended on Cornelius, a gentile, and which leads him to conclude that “God has no favourites”. Brigid’s episcopal ordination at the hands of a bishop overcome by the Spirit is also a powerful affirmation that when it comes to ordination God has no favourite gender. Her ordination’s divine origin shows that Brigid was a bishop because God ordained it, and her. A very subversive truth our Church has yet to learn... As we campaigned for women’s ordination we made sure that this episode from Brigid’s life was brought into the open, again and again, despite clerical efforts to dismiss this dangerous historical memory as pure legend and keep it buried. Interestingly when the Anglican Church of Ireland, (Episcopalian) ordained their first woman bishop in 2013 it was to the diocese of Meath and Kildare! A very symbolic act. I have often gone to St Brigid’s Well in Kildare, a little oasis of peace, to spend some time with Brigid and re-source myself by the gently flowing water. After the First Women’s Ordination Worldwide Dublin international Conference in 2001 I went there again on the anniversary of my baptism and I hung my purple stole on a tree overlooking the well. I had worn that stole for many years as a sign of waiting. From now on I would wear stoles of other colours. And a few years ago, I found myself back in Tullow, as a guest speaker at the invitation of the Brigidine sisters for an international celebration. It was very moving to be able to speak of my calling to priesthood in the place where the order of St Brigid had been revived and where I had first come as a child half a century beforehand! That day I sensed very much the presence of Brigid the bishop and I was filled with joy and gratitude. In some ways we can say St Brigid has risen up and is leading the way for women to rise up. Although a woman in what was very much a man’s world and a man’s church, Brigid exudes a remarkable confidence in her being, in her words and in her actions. No doubt that confidence was rooted in a deeply contemplative life nurtured by prayer. “From the moment I first knew God, I have never let him out of my mind, and I never shall”. She embodies the authority which stems from being filled by the Spirit and a leadership at the service of peace, justice, hospitality to the strangers, charity to the poor and marginalised, reconciliation, healing and harmony with creation and care of the earth. The two Scripture readings we have just heard are very fitting for she was renowned for her practical care and generosity to those in need or suffering. Like Christ, she went around doing good. I must not be the only one who saw and heard in Episcopalian bishop Mariann Budde’s recent words the spirit of St Brigid as she used her God- given authority to plead for mercy for the people in vulnerable situations in the face of unbounded cruelty. Brigid is a bold, dynamic presence. She is said to be a woman of the threshold, of liminal places, and she is a sure guide for our times when we also are in transition on the threshold of a new church and a new world too. She calls to us to step boldly forward with our torches burning brightly, bringing the light and warmth of God’s Love to a world gone cold in the grip of darkness and despair. Her life reminds us that with “God nothing is impossible” and to expect miracles. I shall end on a light- hearted note: I went on pilgrimage to St Brigid’s Well and Solas Bhride in Kildare last Tuesday to prepare for this retreat. On the way back from the well and driving through the wide expanse of the Curragh where thousands of sheep graze freely I started seeing a multitude of rainbows. It reminded me of one of the many whimsical stories about Brigid: Caught in a rainstorm, she hangs her mantle on a sunbeam to dry. Dripping from its edges, colourful rainbows form in the water droplets, and her mantle is ‘bright’ with colour. Lady, from winter’s dark, Star of Imbolc, rise! Dance across our threshold: Scattering warm laughter Seeds of hospitality, Tolerance, forgiveness! Return again to the folk: You the Spring we yearn for! (Tom Hamill)
by Colm Holmes 4 November 2024
Papal plámás is no substitute for an end to discrimination against women
by Colm Holmes 15 October 2024
Vatican says NO to EQUALITY?
by Colm Holmes 4 August 2024
Dr Luca Badini Confalonieri with Fr Helmut Schüller
by Colm Holmes 12 July 2024
WAC International response to Instrumentum Laboris
by Colm Holmes 11 July 2024
It is a dull document but perhaps all the cans that have been kicked down the Synodal road will yet create a din that cannot be ignored.
by Colm Holmes 1 July 2024
Christchurch Cathedral June 30th 2024
by Margaret Hebblethwaite 9 May 2024
The Tablet used WAC Ireland's "Last Supper" painted by Irish artist Nora Kelly on its cover
by Colm Holmes 15 April 2024
Press Release 15 April 2024: Response to the Vatican letter "Dignitas Infinita"
More posts
Share by:
Privacy Policy