A few years ago, Jack Carrigan of the Catholic Herald interviewed Finola Kennedy, who recently wrote a well-researched and comprehensive biography of Frank Duff, founder of the Legion of Mary in Ireland in 1921. The interview was published in the Catholic Herald on July 28, 2011. Carrigan asked Kennedy, a lecturer at University College, Dublin, why the founder of the Legion of Mary was way ahead of his time and possibly Ireland’s greatest Irishman of the last century.

One of Carrigan’s questions was: “What would Duff have made of Ireland today with its few vocations, scandals of abuse and high percentages of lapsed Catholics?”

Kennedy answered he would not have been surprised. As early as 1948 he had written: “An inert laity is only two generations removed from non-practice. Non-practice is only two generations away from non-belief.”

In the 1950s Duff had said that “in Ireland we were thrown back on a caricature of Christianity”.

Duff’s prophetic understanding of the role of the laity received rightful recognition when he was given a standing ovation from the assembled bishops at the fourth and final season of Vatican Council II on September 14, 1965.

Duff was attending as an auditor, and Kennedy writes that it was an unforgettable moment: “The thanks of the Universal Church to the pioneer of the lay apostolate”.

Duff’s belief in the mobilisation of ordinary Catholics in the active service of the Church could very well be the wake-up call needed to reverse the downward trend of the Catholic Church in many countries today, including Malta.

How about parish priests making it a priority on their agenda?