Tony's Tribulations

Tony Flannery
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It's a while now since I mentioned Tony Flannery and no doubt people are wondering how he is bearing up under CDF abuse.

For those who have not been following the story, Fr. Tony was taken to task for his views on a variety of, relatively minor, issues by the CDF (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly the Holy Office and before that The Inquisition). These concerned, inter alia, homosexuality, the origins of the priesthood and possible ordination of women. Not exactly earth shattering, but I suspect there were some other trickier issues such as the Real Presence, hovering in the background.

Anyway Fr. Tony came up with a statement with seemed agreeable to the CDF and all was set for a kiss and make-up when the head of the CDF, Cardinal Levada, retired and was replaced by the hard line German, Cardinal Mueller. Fr. Tony was now expected to sign a blank cheque, as it were, swearing allegiance to the teaching of the Church as presently construed and in all its minutiae. He baulked at that, was not supported by his Order, the Redemptorists (REDS), and has been out of ministry and supposedly silenced ever since. There was some hope of a compromise when Pope Francis acceded to the throne of Peter but he is a festina lente man, quite cautious in practice, and currently in the throes of a civil war within the Vatican administration.

Latest vibes from the CDF and the REDS are that Fr. Tony now faces a choice between unconditional surrender or spending the rest of his life out of ministry and probably having to find another way to earn his living at the age of 68. And that's where we're at today.

While he has had to put up with a lot of sniping, including an imposter trying to undermine him on Twitter, Fr. Tony has said that, despite all the difficulties, his recent period of "exile" has been a fruitful one. He has got a lot of support from those, including colleagues, who know in their heart and soul that the Church will have to change if it is to have any meaningful future. He was one of the founders of the Association of Catholic Priests. He has published a book detailing his position and his appalling treatment by the Vatican (CDF). He has just come back from a speaking tour in America which has deepened his understanding of the reform movement.

And he has tweeted his two most recent radio interviews. The first of these was on an American faith station, where a very capable interviewer put him through his paces. This was immediately followed by an interview with a young traditional whippersnapper of a Dominican, who was also put through his paces, but who, in my view, came immeasurably worse out of it. [Tony is 2mins 40secs in and Thomas Petri is 19mins 11secs into the broadcast]. The second of these interviews was with Áine Lawlor on RTÉ radio this morning[9mins 18secs into broadcast]. It was a sympathetic interview which would make your blood boil and your heart cry at the same time.

When the American radio station tweeted a link to their programme the whippersnapper shot back:

On reading Fr. Tony's reply, the whippersnapper immediately deleted his own tweet. Unfortunately for him I had taken a screen shot (above). Otherwise it would not have been clear what Fr. Tony was replying to. He then replied to Fr. Tony (below):

I took him to task for deleting his original tweet (above) and he accepted that he had been thinking of the wrong priest, this one, rather than Fr. Tony. Really sloppy stuff from a Dominican academic.

Anyway, the big question now for Fr. Tony is: does he follow his conscience or buckle. Unfortunately, in an ideal world, or one in the spirit of Jesus, he would not have to face this dilemma. Pre-Vatican II questioners were silenced etc. but were brought back into the Council as periti. People had then thought that the Church would henceforth be able to accommodate questioning or even dissent as it trod the path less traveled into the future. However the old ways reasserted themselves and the big stick has been persistently waved ever since.

The traditional Church attitude to conscience was that you were obliged to follow your informed conscience, and that following this informed conscience took precedence over everything else, including the teaching of the Church. Pope Benedict, in his younger days, taught this.

Even if we accept this view there remain two issues: (i) what exactly is an informed conscience, and (ii) if you have one which is in conflict with the perceived teaching of the Church, are you obliged to follow it out of the Church.

The American whippersnapper, and Fr. Vincent Twomey of this parish, take the view that the proof of an informed conscience is that it leads to an endorsement of existing Church teaching. The Church can never be wrong, therefore any conscience which is in conflict with it is not sufficiently informed. So that part of the problem is defined away. Then if your conscience is in conflict with the Church, you either change your conscience or get out. QED.

+John (Charles), +Connie (Lucey) & +Michael (Browne) are surely locked in a St. Valentine's Day embrace in Heaven (or wherever they are) at that one. You will have noticed that this line of reasoning precludes any change in, or evolution of, Church doctrine initiated from within the Church itself.

Fr. Petri's Twitter banner

Although I had never heard of him before today, I was trying to figure the whippersnapper out. I sense a bit of insecurity there. He is pompous in his presentation, soaks up adulation and has a bevvy of uniformed nuns, listening to him expostulating on the annunciation, in his Twitter banner. Nuff said.

Mr. Oppornockity

Vincent Twomey, SVD

Vincent Twomey has already given us his definition of the informed conscience. It is not one I agree with but it is in keeping with the teachings of the old régime and it has a very fine punch line in: the Church can teach no wrong.

My own feeling is that the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church has, on at least two occasions in the last half millennium, looked a gift horse in the mouth.

The first was Martin Luther, who presented the church with a real opportunity to reform itself, protect its mission, and stay in touch with the rest of humanity. Rejected. Heresy.

The second was the Modernists who attempted to rid the church of some of its most objectionable and obstructive features, such as bureaucratisation and excessive centralised control. Rejected. Heresy.

We are now in an age when many of the features of these two opportunities are re-presenting themselves and show signs of being embraced enthusiastically by the new régime.

There is, however, one big stumbling block which is not being tackled and it is one that is contributing to an enduring, scandalous and unnecessary breach within the Christian community. This is the Real Presence (of Christ in the Eucharist).

I touched on this matter myself in my paper for the 2012 Eucharistic Congress but I think the time is now ripe for a deeper and more authoritative treatment of the matter from a perhaps more sympathetic source. It is an opportunity that, if now missed, may not come again.

I think Vincent would be just the man for the job. It would give him a chance to display any qualities he might think would endear him to the new régime. But, of course, there is always the danger of reverting to form and to guard against this his output would need to be peer reviewed before seeing the light of day.

And what better peer reviewers than Frs. Seán Fagan and Tony Flannery.

Over to you Vincent.

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

Pro Vita Sua

Seán Fagan is in his eighties but he writes and thinks like a young man, a wise young man with buckets of experience behind him.

I have just finished reading his book What happened to sin? Originally written in 1977, he has since updated it in 2008.

I really don't know where to start. It is such a relevant and inspirational book that it is hard to see anyone of good faith taking issue with it.

One of his other books, Does Morality Change?, originally written in 1997, was condemned by the Vatican (CDF) on its republication in 2003, on the following grounds (as reported by the Irish bishops):

“the denial of the binding force of the Magisterium [Rome] on conscience”; “the uncritical acceptance of the tendency ‘to substitute a dynamic and more evolutionary concept of nature for a static one’,”; “the effective rejection of the church’s understanding of the natural law (illuminated by revelation)”; “the explicit denial of moral absolutes, specially those concrete acts which are intrinsically wrong”; and “the promotion of a false understanding of conscience”.

I would have thought that these sound more like grounds for praise than condemnation. Of course, they are a hostile presentation of Seán Fagan's ideas by a power-mad bureaucracy that feels threatened by him. They fail to present the inspirational context in which these ideas are put forward, and they fail completely to see that Seán Fagan's thinking could be the salvation of a church which is failing in its duty to its members and which even some of its own highest officials acknowledge is rotten at parts of its core.

I found What happened to sin? the most inspirational book I have read since John Robinson's Honest to God. It is a game changer. Don't be put off by the use of the word sin, and you could even dispense with the divine in its content, and you would still have a programme for good (Godly?) living to bring you in sight of the Promised Land.

I read it as an unbeliever, but with an eye to what its thinking might mean for the renewal of the Roman Catholic Church on the lines promised by Vatican II some half a century ago.

It is a plea/recipe for individual moral responsibility in a buck passing and uncaring world. It debunks the power-enhancing strategems of church administrations over the last decades, centuries even, in favour of person-based moral growth.

It is a disgrace that this man has been silenced, though not very effectively it would seem. It is a sad reflection on the moral pygmies who reported him, those who silenced him, and those, who by their own silence, consent to the outrageous treatment of this holy man.