Why is the Vatican sending a high powered delegation to Ireland? To heal the hurt of those who suffered, restore the dignity of those who behaved honourably but are now being punished under the doctrine of communal guilt, help bring about an intellectual and spiritual renewal in the Church, to help make real changes?

Many Catholics in Ireland are angry. This includes bishops, clergy, religious and people who are none of these. They have been humiliated, both by the wrongdoing of some members of their Church, and by the reaction of others to it.

It has been made to appear that child abuse is mainly a clerical problem. It is not. A particularly Catholic problem. It is not. A particularly Irish problem. It is not. Someone somewhere has decided, however, to make an example of the Irish Church. Summoning the Irish bishops - representing all Irish Catholics - to Rome for a confrontation had the same resonance as the papal finger-wagging endured by one of our Latin American brothers on bended knees some years ago.

Humiliation swells into anger.

So, is the Vatican's 'high powered delegation' meant to sooth the anger of Catholics in Ireland, bishops, priests, religious among them, patching up the splits - Archbishop Martin's criticisms and Vatican severity both rankle - and to bring calm without major change?

Diplomacy

Sometimes Vatican diplomacy works that way. Good Pope John comes to mind.

During the Second World War some French bishops publicly favoured a new German world order, saying the invasion of France was a punishment for rejecting monarchy and faith; nearly all refused spiritual help asked for by fighters in the 'Resistance'. After the war angry people wanted to vent their rage on Churchmen. Into this chaos and anger the Vatican sent a hitherto obscure pacifier, the man who later became Pope John the Twenty Third. This future Pope did what he was sent to do, assuage anger, calm a frightening situation, achieve ''normality'', with as little change as was possible.

Later, as Pope John XXIII (pictured) he applied the same humane methods to the whole Church. He only partially succeeded.

Is something similar expected of this Vatican delegation to Ireland next March?

Degraded

To heal real hurt between Archbishop Martin and other bishops and clergy, between Irish bishops and the Vatican, between those who have been degraded by crime and those who did too little to help them, between innocent adults who behaved honourably and those who should have protected them and didn't? And to achieve this without real change?

Will they point out to Pope Benedict that if he says seminaries must accept some blame for the minority who did wrong, he must also give them credit for the more than 90 percent of their alumni who acted honourably and must never again even suggest that a whole church community be saddled with communal guilt, a doctrine we naively believed the Church had discarded after World War Two.

If the delegation is on a peace mission it will have to insist that relations between the Vatican and Irish people be revised. While Irish clergy showed loyalty to the Pope, their sermons drawing reverent attention thousands of times to what the Pope said and did, Irish spiritual writers and commentators were often treated as though they did not exist. What happened in the Church in Ireland for good or ill often happened because bishops and others followed closely, perhaps too closely, perhaps too uncritically, what the Vatican and scores of 'experts' told them.

Renewal

The Catholic Church in Ireland and everywhere else needs renewal. Renewal, spiritual and intellectual, will neither filter down from the top nor be imposed from the top. Significantly, almost everything now being proposed as remedies for what went wrong in Ireland had already been suggested many times by people who for decades were not listened to.

The March delegation must not be intent on peace without change, it must come to Ireland to find out and understand how the Vatican can recognise and fulfil its obligation of creating a courteous, intellectually and spiritually satisfying relationship with Irish people. That is what it must do. That is what we must insist on it doing.

And we need to know what it really believes it is being sent to Ireland for.