Of all those who have commented publicly on the current Church crisis, Fr Timothy Radcliffe is perhaps the most learned and qualified of speakers to hold forth on the state of the Catholic Church. A former Master General of his Order and distinguished scholar, orator and author, his is a voice that carries respect and authority of experience and learning.

So when Radcliffe tells Dublin's priests that this terrible crisis can be a blessing if we all seize the day it is worth noting that this is a man who weighs his words carefully and does not promote optimism for its own sake. Nor does he pull his punches. He challenges the Church, from the Vatican down to the parish sacristan about how they use and sometimes abuse power.

Lay people often complain that some parish priests abuse their power with the skewed formation and working of the parish council. Curates complain that often their parish priest abuses his power over them, resisting real change, resisting their gifts being used in the parish, denying them basic rights like having a warm and clean home. Some parish priests complain about how their Bishop doesn't want to listen, or doesn't respond to letters. Many priests complain about the abuse of power that sees them shunted around a diocese with little or no consultation. Why are priests afraid to speak out? The liberal bishop Willie Walsh once told a gathering that he was nervous about the appointment of a layperson to a bishops' agency for which he had oversight because he couldn't move that person to a remote parish if they stepped out of line. If a liberal bishop can say that, then the reticence of priests is understandable.

Laity too cannot evade the analysis of the abuse of power in the Church. Irish Catholics absolved themselves often of the need to inform themselves of their faith, inform their consciences and preferred to 'let Father do everything'. If the Pope said black was white, a large section of Irish Catholics would have happily agreed. It was the laity who put priests and bishops on pedestals and often left them isolated and lonely.

The abuse of power is the key to the child sexual abuse crisis and the extent of this abuse extends to all areas of the Church; from the way morality was taught, from the lack of real communications, lack of transparency, lack of consultation with priests and laity. How did this abuse of power affect the finances of dioceses? Were there cover-ups of abuse of parish and diocesan funds? Will outside authorities be needed to investigate? Can bishops honestly be expected to reform a Church where the abuse of power has been carried out by them and their fellow bishops? Is this credible?

Radcliffe points out that we are living through the crisis of the Tridentine model of the Church. Yet he says that it was precisely the crisis of the Reformation that led to renewal and that this time is potentially a time of great renewal also. It is not a time to circle the wagons as many priests and laity feel tempted to do. ''Painfully the Lord is demolishing our high towers, our lofty walls, our pretensions to glory and grandeur, so we can be at home with him who is lowly of heart,'' says Radcliffe. It is a time for openness and communication. The bishops need to communicate exactly what is going on and what is being proposed. This is not a reform to be led by bishops alone, this is everyone's Church and non-clerical voices need to be heard and listened to.

There can be no going back to something short of a solution to the widespread abuse of power on a national level, and not just in the area of child abuse, in the Church in Ireland.