The Church needs a "wake-up call" from inertia in Ireland, the Archbishop of Dublin has said.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin called on the Church to "free itself and become unencumbered" from positions that once might have been "positive and useful to both Church and society" but no longer are. These include "the control of schools and institutions," he said.

Speaking at a mass marking 150 years of the Catholic Institute for Deaf people, he said: "The Church is slow to change. Inertia may seem to mean that things can go on as they were and are; but the opposite is the case."

Noting that "times have changed in Irish society", Martin said it was necessary that the Church also change. However, he sought to dissuade it from both disengagement and assimilation.

"The Church must change not to go along with society and neither to opt out of society but to find the best space possible to be free and unencumbered to bring the challenging message of Jesus Christ to society," he said.

"The message of Jesus is always a wake-up call, and wakening up – at least for someone like me who is not an early-morning person – is always uncomfortable."

When the Church "becomes trapped into a logic of looking after its own privilege and power first, then a situation arises very quickly in which nothing else counts," he added.

"Jesus says of the scribes that they were even prepared to 'swallow up the property of the widows' to achieve their own satisfaction and we know that in biblical terms widows and orphans represent the marginalised of any kind."

In a reference to the abuse of deaf children, Martin said: "When we reflect on the history of this institute, we have to remember that that history was marked over the years also by dark moments in which the cry of children was not heard, betraying the message of Jesus."

The Archbishop also highlighted Jesus' teaching on the temptation to become self-serving. "Jesus is reminding his hearers – and indeed reminding us many generations later – that the temptation to hypocrisy and disregard for others is in fact a temptation which is recurrent in history, a temptation which can continuously repeat itself," he said.