It has been a recurring theme in Church history that periods of profound turbulence and almost insurmountable challenges to the Christian way of life have surfaced. The Catholic Church in Ireland is now embarking on a ‘synodal pathway’ to address the prevailing downward trends in religious participation in the aftermath of Vatican II. Current experience indicates two divergent paths. The first path is to adapt Christ’s message to suit the herd mentality of the day which chooses to reject traditional thinking. Christian doctrine in this approach, must be stripped down to what is acceptable to the present generation. This was foretold by Fulton Sheen in his prophetic utterances in 1947 when he spoke about the emergence of a ‘new church’, which he described as the ‘ape’ of the traditional church due to its parasitic nature