I love my Local Library

You can't beat a good book burning. It's the next best thing to burning the author, which, unfortunately, is no longer allowed under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Mind you, it is not clear whether the Inquisition (Vatican CDF) subscribes to some of this modern pussy claptrap, as they seem to be still seriously embedded in the business of burning holy authors without any heed to claims for fair treatment under human rights legislation. Of course, the Vatican State is a strange sort of creature in the community of nations. Now you see it, now you don't.

Anyway, when Seán Fagan published his latest book, What happened to sin?, in 2008, a complete rewrite of an earlier 1977 book, all Hell broke loose. The Good Father was silenced and his order, the Marists, ordered to buy up and destroy all available copies of the book (or all of his books, I can't quite get a handle on this one).

Well the Marists jumped to comply with this medieval instruction and, as any economist would tell you, the value of any remaining copies must have rocketed.

There were two sources they couldn't touch, however: those people who had already bought the book, and, a little surprisingly for those of us brought up under Pius XII, copies in the public library system.

Now, in my day, the libraries would have been pressganged into this witch-hunt, and any copies not surrendered by the authorities would have been vanished from the shelves by over-zealous Catholics.

So I got to wondering just what was the current position on Sean Fagan's books in the public library system. I had just got a copy myself of What happened to sin? in my local library, so I checked out the position online.

The sin book was plentiful in the Dublin City Public Library system with 9 copies of the 2008 version, 2 copies of the original 1977 version, and 1 copy of the 1989 reprint, all available. And his other major book, Does morality change? was also there in abundance with 6 copies of the 1997 original and 7 copies of the 2003 version available. And remember, this is only the Dublin City branches.

So the day is thankfully gone when a heretic church could dictate what the public could, or could not, read. Isn't this some progress?

I'll end with the craven statement from Seán Fagan's order, the Marists, presumably aimed at those lucky enough to be able to read those copies of his books which escaped the eternal (man made) fires of Hell.

Why, oh why, could the Marists, or the Redemptorists for that matter, not have a guy like the one below incharge?

Benedictine Prioress Christine Vladimiroff

A Question of Conscience

I first came across Tony Flannery in a piece of his writing on the website of the Association of Catholic Priests, of which he was a co-founder, offering the opinion that the then upcoming International Eucharistic Congress (IEC) in Dublin would be an opportunity for the Roman Catholic Church to pursue the theme of repentance and humility and avoid any of the triumphalism which dominated the last Dublin IEC in 1932. A rock of a sensible suggestion, I thought at the time.

Did the hierarchy pay a whit of attention to this good advice. Not at all. They went out and got brand new bespoke uniforms (vestments to you) for all the clerical participants and had a right extravagant Communio Fest. Mind you, their use of media, including social media, was first class professional, really. Had the message matched up to the quality of the dress and the media we might have been getting somewhere.

The day after I first came across Fr. Flannery, I read a piece in the Irish Catholic newspaper which said he had been silenced by the Vatican and his regular column in the Redemptorist magazine Reality had been pulled.

There followed a good eighteen months when none of us knew what Fr. Flannery's status was, and in the course of which it came to light that other priests had been silenced, not least Fr. Seán Fagan, an inspirational theologian now ageing and in bad health.

Fr. Flannery eventually came to the conclusion that, despite various attempts on his part to satisfy the outrageous demands of the Inquisition (now the Vatican Curial Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - CDF), there was no satisfying them, so he unsilenced himself and gave interviews and wrote articles about his case, and he has now written a book which sums it all up. The book publishes the texts of his correspondence with the Superior of his Order (who was, in effect, a Vatican proxy) and it attempts to explain the context of the views and remarks of his on foot of which he was being condemned.

Among the reasons for his coming to the conclusion that he would never be allowed return to ministry, was the conviction that he was simply being used as a pawn in a wider Vatican game to undermine the newly formed Association of Catholic Priests, of which he was a co-founder and member of the leadership team, and whose independence scared the bejaysus out of the Vatican.

His book is a bloodboiling read, all the more so if you have heard him interviewed on radio or tv. How such a holy man could be so outrageously treated by the Church to which he had given some forty years of sterling service is unbelievable. The saga is a testimony to the unfitness for office of all of those he has come up against.

Funnily enough, the present Pope, Francis, seems to endorse this view in his recent interview. He says, among other things, that

the dicasteries [departments] of the Roman Curia are at the service of the pope and the bishops. They must help both the particular churches and the bishops’ conferences. They are instruments of help. In some cases, however, when they are not functioning well, they run the risk of becoming institutions of censorship. It is amazing to see the denunciations for lack of orthodoxy that come to Rome. I think the cases should be investigated by the local bishops’ conferences, which can get valuable assistance from Rome. These cases, in fact, are much better dealt with locally. The Roman congregations are mediators; they are not middlemen or managers.
[my emphasis]

And now that the cat is out of the bag, the courageous Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, is echoing these sentiments. Pity he didn't say this earlier, if that's what he really thinks.

Meanwhile the question now is: has Fr. Flannery blown it, or will he benefit retrospectively from the Pope's views. His own view is that the Pope's intervention has effectively emasculated the CDF and that his fate is now in the hands of his Redemptorist superiors.

Among the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune which he has suffered in the interim was a crude attempt to impersonate and discredit him on Twitter.

With the help and advice of good friends and supporters, he got the imposter "silenced". Slight irony there?

ACP founders, (l-r) Frs. Flannery, Hoban and McDonagh

Anyway, the book is a great read. It is sold out at most outlets and is going into its second run, which should appear next week. I hope to see it going viral, translated into many languages, and on the curriculum of all seminaries (while such institutions last), first as a warning and eventually, hopefully, on the history shelves.

Recant, recant ...

Pray, a minute's silence please for Roy Bourgeois, who has been unceremoniously ejected from the Catholic Church and Ministry for following his conscience, a course formerly recommended by the pre-Pontifical Ratzinger.

The saga is summarised in a post on the ACP site, and if you already feel strongly enough about the matter, or wish to have your conscience pricked, you could do worse than spare a half an hour to read Roy's book.

It is both a biography and an apologia. It is an inspirational and deeply moving read and a very clear statement of the irrefutable case for the Roman Catholic Church acknowledging women's vocation to the priesthood.

It speaks for itself.

I am silent.