Bridget Mary's Response;
Prominent Irish journalixt, John Cooney, does an outstanding analysis of the Vatican vendetta against one of our modern day prophets, Irish Redemptorist, Tony Flannery in the article below. Tony received an enthusiastic welcome here in Florida in 2014 on his 23 city speaking tour: "The Catholic tipping point." With Irish wit, he named the challenges that our church faces to be credible in our world today. No surprise, Tony has been banned as a speaker in Ireland by Bishop Crean of Cloyne as he prepares to come to the United States to speak at Women's Ordination Worldwide. As we prepare to welcome Pope Francis to the United States, we also welcome Tony and his message of gender equality! Bridget Mary Meehan, ARCWP, www.arcwp.org
Irish Journalist John Cooney from Dublin writes:
Ireland’s Papal Nuncio Charles Brown scored a spectacular
own goal by highlighting the ineffectuality of the Vatican’s ‘silencing’ of
dissident Redemptorist priest Tony Flannery, whose continued marginalisation
from public ministry at home is more than matched by his celebrity emergence as
a top speaker at an international conference next month in Philadelphia in
support of the ordination of women priests just days before Pope Francis’s first
visit to the Land of the Free.
In his first extended interview last week-end since his
promotion to Ireland three years ago an unusually reverential Irish Times
coverage backfired on the Manhattan-born Brown when Religious Affairs
Correspondent Patsy McGarry twinned the lofty musings of Rome’s domineering
clerical governor in Ireland about the piety of the natives with a news report
that the Bishop of Cloyne, William Crean, had ordered the east Cork parish
pastoral council of Killeagh to cancel its invitation to the co-founder of the
Association of Irish Priests to address it in the local community hall at the
end of September.
Flannery, who in 2012 was suspended from public ministry
for his liberal views on the ordination of women, homosexuality, divorce and
contraception by the Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog, the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith, (CDF), hit a bull’s eye with his immediate retort that
“the ease with which the bishop dismissed the pastoral council” illustrated how
“meaningless is all this talk of giving more power to the laity”, particularly
“in the age of Pope Francis.”
While paying due filial homage to the current
reform-minded occupant of the Petrine See, the garrulous Brown spent much of his
interview congratulating himself on masterminding the appointment of 10 new
bishops including his Munster mole, Crean of Cloyne, in the wake of the clerical
child abuse scandals. Nor did the swaggering Dean of the Diplomatic Corps hide
his awe of Pope John Paul II’s unconcealed intolerance of an “open church’, as
well as his abiding admiration for the intellectuality of his former boss at the
CDF, Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Emeritus Benedict.
What the Flannery-deprived simple faithful of Killeagh are
deemed unfit to hear will not extend to the star-filled panel of speakers at the
Women’s Ordination Worldwide conference in Philly from September 18-20.
Actor Martin Sheen and leading Benedictine nun Sister Joan Chittister have
endorsed the conference goal of promoting the admission of Catholic women to all
ordained ministries.
Worse still from the perspective of the Brown-Crean
exclusively male boys-only club is that the excommunicated Association of Roman
Catholic Women Priests (ARCWP) led by Irish-born Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan will
be in a stone’s throw to Philadelphia on September 24. At Pendle Hill,
Pennsylvania Blessed Bridget Mary will ordain three new women bishops from Latin
America, Canada and the United States, Olga Lucia Alvarez of Medellin, Colombia,
Michele Birch Conery of Windsor, Ontario, and Mary E. Collingwood of Hudson,
Ohio. Meehan, who hosted a previous visit by Flannery to Sarasota, Florida, told
Goldhawk of how popular a public speaker he is. ‘Everyone lines up to attend
Tony’s talks and buy his books especially his Question of Conscience,
banned by the hierarchy. Doesn't the bishop of Cloyne realize that Tony is
promoting reform in the church?”
Obviously, not Charlie Broon, who was
faced with the glum statistic on Sunday when the national seminary of Saint
Patrick’s College Maynooth welcomed a mere 17 new seminarians for the
priesthood, four of them Northern dioceses who will study in the unworldly
sanctuary of Saint Malachy’s College in Belfast. Remarkably, Charlie stressed
that it was the CDF, not his office, which launched the vendetta against
Flannery and four other Irish theological writers. He displayed American amnesia
that ex-President Mary McAleese pleaded with him to promote, not punish,
Flannery. Nor did Brown show any sign of realising the enormity of Mother
Church’s defeat in the marriage equality referendum in May.
Without mentioning Eamon Gilmore who
closed the Embassy to the Holy See, the New Yorker waxed eloquent about how Emma
Madigan, Ireland’s “incredibly competent” envoy to the reopened embassy is
“doing an amazing job” and is “well-liked by everyone, including the pope.”
Amazingly, Brown gave no update on what
he prematurely revealed last year – Pope Francis is likely to make a short visit
to Ireland next year. Is that what Emma is chatting to Francis about and was
this why Brown was in Rome for high level talks in May. Is a planned papal visit
in 2016 – the first since John Paul II in 1979 – on the cards and is that why
Taoiseach Inda is rediscovering Catholic devotionalism at Knock Shrine in his
shiny warden’s uniform along with his new best friend, Gov. Brown?
Hopefully, Francis is also sounding out
Marie Collins, who is advising him as a leading member of the Pontifical
Commission for the Protection of Minors, on how secular Ireland might not yet be
ready to welcome him.
More about Father Tony Flannery:
People of Conscience:
A conversation with Fr. Tony Flannery
An evening hosted by Mary Mother of Jesus Inclusive Catholic
Community, Sarasota, Florida
This document is intended to provide basic information to answer
commonly asked questions about the Catholic Tipping Point tour with Fr. Tony
Flannery
Why we are here:
- Fr. Tony Flannery is an
example of what a priest should be: a pastoral, thoughtful, inclusive and
engaging leader, yet he’s been bullied by the Vatican for working to
revitalize our wounded Church. We are inspired by Fr. Flannery’s determination
to make Vatican II reforms a greater reality in the Church and excited to
hear more about how lay people and priests can work together to co-create
the Church we believe in. The Church we deserve.
- The institutional Church
has tried to silence Fr. Flannery and has suspended him from his ministry
claiming his writings were in conflict with Catholic teaching. Yet Fr. Flannery has refused to violate
his conscience or abandon his work for justice in the Church he
loves. We too face pressure from
the hierarchy to quietly acquiesce, but we know our Church needs members
who believe it can be better. We are proud of our history and inspired
by the many saints who questioned authority, stood strong for what their
conscience told them was right and demanded dialogue over unjust
punishment.
- For our Church to regain
its vitality, we need to join together to honestly discuss the issues and
be work to make our Church a more open place. The Catholic climate has changed.
Priests are organizing, sisters are speaking out, and the laity are
assuming their rights as expressed in Vatican II. We are ready to work together to transform the Church. We are
ready for the Catholic Church to embrace the radical notion of dialogue.
Background:
- The Catholic Tipping Point
speaking tour is co-sponsored by 11 lay-led Catholic organizations. We have joined together to bring Fr.
Flannery to audiences of progressive Catholics and advocates of a more
open Church across the country.
This is the second national tour which the coalition has organized
to discuss the future of ministry and leadership in our Church.
- Like many of his
generation, Fr. Tony Flannery began his journey to priesthood as a
teenager in the 1950s and has been a faithful servant of the Church ever
since. As a young priest his
formation was infused with the values and spirit of Vatican II, and it is
in that spirit that he continues to advocate for a Church that is in step
with the modern world. He is “one of many Catholics who claim the freedom
to find God and proclaim the God they see in the community, rather than
serving a God of clerical systems and canonical limits,” writes Anthony
Padovano in his book review.
- Fr. Tony Flannery is a
founder and active leader of The Association of Catholic Priests (ACP), a
grassroots group which acts to provide priests with an opportunity and a
voice to engage in the debates taking place in Irish society and which
advocates for a “full implementation of the vision and teaching of the
Second Vatican Council.”
- In 2012, the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith demanded that Fr. Flannery step down from
leadership at the Association of Catholic Priests and sign an oath
agreeing to official Church teachings about contraception, ordination,
homosexuality and the inability of women to be priests. He refused.
- The CDF tried to silence
Fr. Flannery but he has continued to lead the ACP, which stood with him,
and to speak out for Church reform through his book, speaking tours and
interviews with the media.
More information
