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.

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.

IMPOSTER

Fr. Tony Flannery took to Twitter on 7th of June 2011 and was happily tweeting away until the 13th of March 2012 when he more or less lost interest and the account lay dormant until quite recently.

Meanwhile, Fr. Tony was preoccupied with his persecution by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (or the Inquisition as it was formerly and rightly known).

Then, suddenly out of nowhere, the above imposter made his/her appearance pretending to be Fr. Tony. This turned out to be not a spoof account satirising or poking fun at Fr. Tony, but a real attempt to pretend to be him and in the process discredit him and give the impression that he had lost his marbles.

I have reproduced four of the imposter's sixteen tweets above to give an idea of the subtle way Fr. Tony was being undermined. The imposter gradually accumulated 12 followers, among which myself and the CofI Bishop of Cork (forgive me Bishop if I'm wrong). These followers believed they were following Fr. Tony. I certainly did. But I got a bit suspicious as it was clear that Fr. Tony either was losing it or there was something else going on here.

If you look at the tweets above (reading down from the top) you'll see an innocuous introduction (5 Feb) followed some days later (11 Feb) by an endorsement of Hans Kung for Pope, an evangelistic lauding of the theme of LOVE in capital letters, and a serious poke at the CDF. This is followed a month later (11 Apr) by an implication that Fr. Tony is thick in with the Freemasons, and finally a tweet (11 May) in which Fr. Tony outs himself as a political activist, a brother of Frank Flannery who is and was for many years prominent in Fine Gael, and threatens the Church authorities that if they excommunicate any of those in Fine Gael, he will go on hunger strike.

This refers to Church disapproval of the stance taken by Enda Kenny and Fine Gael in the abortion debate. The Government have decided that they are obliged to legislate for limited abortion following a Supreme Court constitutional decision a good while back. Various clerics have made threats of excommunication and Cardinal O'Malley of Boston has even refused to appear on the same platform as Enda Kenny whom he sees as "aggressively promoting abortion". There is also an implication, lurking in the background, that Fr. Tony may have had something to do with Enda's anti-Vatican speech in July of last year.

The threatened hunger strike must be the first between meals hunger strike in history.

Needless to say, when Fr. Tony became aware of this he was alarmed and appealed for help through the website of the Association of Catholic Priests, of which he is a founder member. He was immediately well advised by contributors to that site, following which he took up the matter with Twitter, who have now suspended the imposter's account.

I am pleased to see that Fr. Tony has now returned to tweeting about very serious matters, like the state of the Galway football team, and, if you want to follow him, his account is shown below.

Top Gear

Nice gear if you can afford it. These were the vestments specially designed for the International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin in June 2012. There was a holy sea of them to be seen when the bishops turned out for the major formal occasions.

While they may have been pleasing to the eye and, to an extent, conveyed the image of a church triumphant or at least a colourful communion, they did, in no uncertain terms answer a question posed by Fr. Tony Flannery in October 2011 and reported on this blog.

Of the proposed final Congress mass in Croke Park, he said:

... it should be penitential in character. Rather than ceremonial dress, we ask for some modern, imaginative equivalent of the ‘sackcloth and ashes’ of the Old Testament, so that the celebration would be simple and humble, asking forgiveness not just for the abuse of children, but for the other abuses of power perpetrated by Church people in the past.

I know where he was coming from. I have always said myself that I will allow that the Roman Catholic Church might have something to offer when I see a Pope Mendicant rather than the current Emperor (with his new clothes) surrounded by lackeys who would effortlessly grace any catwalk in the world.

Perhaps it was this justifiable barb from Fr. Tony that broke the cross-dressing camels' backs, so annoying them that they immediately set the thought police after him.

Well, they have now found him wanting and stripped him of his ministry. Condemned without a trial in incense filled rooms. They have deprived him of not just his living but of his life. No doubt they, and their merry band of adherents here, would be happy to see him join the "heretics" in one of the local Protestant Churches on the grounds that if you can't stand the heat, then get out of the kitchen.

But they have clearly got the wrong man if this is what they expect to happen. Fr. Tony loves his church, hijacked and all as it has been post Vatican 2, and he has no intention of leaving despite continued spiritual waterboarding by the CDF.

Listen to his recent interview with Canadian radio and then make up your mind who are the real heretics here.

MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU

Silk or Sackcloth?

I wonder will heed be taken by the Powers That Be of Fr. Tony Flannery's advice, on the ACP website, regarding the IEC roundup mass:

We regard the forthcoming Eucharistic Congress as a real opportunity for the Irish Church. But it must have no element of triumphalism about it. The celebration of the final mass at Croke Park will be the crucial factor here. If it is a big display of bishops and cardinals wearing mitres, surrounded by hundreds of vested priests, it will give out the wrong message. Instead it should be penitential in character. Rather than ceremonial dress, we ask for some modern, imaginative equivalent of the ‘sackcloth and ashes’ of the Old Testament, so that the celebration would be simple and humble, asking forgiveness not just for the abuse of children, but for the other abuses of power perpetrated by Church people in the past.

By the way, is there any truth in the rumour that the Vatican are investigating Fr. Flannery for his "liberal views"? I notice that Fr. Flannery, no more than Sr. Benvenuta, is not listed as a Congress speaker.

A list of those not listed is beginning to look like the voice of sanity in a mad mad world.