Best-selling author and conservative thinker Rod Dreher has urged the Irish laity not to passively wait for their bishops to \u201cget their act together\u201d but to speak out and defend the faith themselves.<\/p>\n
In an address at University Church in Dublin, hosted by the Iona Institute and the Notre Dame Newman Centre for Faith and Reason, the author of \u2018The Benedict Option\u2019 told a crowd of 350 that Catholics in Ireland that he knew “from bitter experience that the institutions of the Catholic Church cannot be relied on to teach, defend, and evangelise for the faith\u201d.<\/p>\n
The popular blogger and editor at \u2018The American Conservative\u2019, who is author of several books, told The Tablet that it would be \u201ca fatal mistake to sit back and wait for them [the bishops] to get their acts together\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cPray that they do but in the meantime faithful Catholics must catechise themselves and their children. They must act themselves to deepen their experience of faith through prayer, the sacraments, Bible reading, and embracing spiritual disciplines.\u201d<\/p>\n