In this ground-breaking book O'Hanlon offers an Irish theology for a Church in crisis, carefully crafted in the light of his experience of having travelled the length and breadth of Ireland over the last ten years. This is not an armchair theology but one that has been chiselled out of the experience of listening to and learning from others in high and low places, engaging with diverse groups, attending to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, and heeding the prophetic voice of the Bishop of Rome. From the Foreword by Dermot A Lane. draws on decades of reflection, by himself and by others, upon the immense challenges facing the Catholic Church in the post-Second Vatican Council period, in Ireland and beyond. We have lacked neither the vision nor the goodwill to move forward; but the institutional and organisational reforms needed to make the Second Vatican Council an embedded reality have eluded us, until now. Pope Francis, the 'gentle revolutionary', has called for a new, 'synodal' way of being church. 'Synod'means 'the path which we walk together', and it looks like the missing piece of the jigsaw. O'Hanlon's wise, critical but hopeful diagnosis offers the glimpse of a longed for sea-change for the Church. Michael Kirwan SJ. Loyola School of Theology at Trinity College, Dublin.

• Cover
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part One: Setting the Scene: Nazareth, Rome and Ireland
  • Chapter One: Background to the Crisis: the Roman Catholic Church
  • Chapter Two: Background to the Crisis: a Post-Catholic Ireland?
• Part Two: Pope Francis and the Quiet Revolution
  • Chapter Three: The Main Lines of Francis’s Revolution
  • Chapter Four: The Core of the Revolutionary Strategy
• Part Three: Emerging Issues: Teaching and Governance
  • Chapter Five: Teaching in a Synodal Church
  • Chapter Six: The Art of Communal Discernment
  • Chapter Seven: Governance in a Synodal Church
  • Chapter Eight: The Role of Laity, including Women, in Authority
• Part Four: Ireland Revisited
  • Chapter Nine: Synodality and the Catholic Church in Ireland
• Conclusion
• Select Bibliography
• Acknowledgements