The Indo's ageing liberals

Today’s Irish Independent has three separate articles, including an editorial, devoted to the fact that liberal Redemptorist and “Association of Catholic Priests” founder Fr Tony Flannery has been contacted by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith over his dissident views. The first of these comes under the headline “New Vatican ordeal for Fr Flannery.”

You know the sort of stuff the articles contain. Church’s theological watchdog, increasing scrutiny, language of the past, 16^th century mindset, out-of-touch men in the Vatican, where is Christian compassion in all this, and so on and so forth. But the style is strikingly lazy and puerile, even by the standards of the anti-clerical Irish media.

Three times we are told that Fr Flannery has been “silenced”, without any explanation of what that “silencing” consists of. Has he been forbidden by the Church to open his mouth? Forbidden to preach? Forbidden to publish his opinions? Well, as far as I am aware, he has been asked not to publish articles in the liberal Redemptorist magazine Reality. And, um ... that’s it. That doesn’t seem like too much of a silencing, given that Reality is one of those magazines you see getting dog-eared and mouldy on the magazine rack at the back of churches. Meanwhile, the ACP’s website announces that Fr Flannery will be the main speaker at the group’s AGM in Dublin on 10 November. “Silenced”, indeed!

One of the articles is written by Garry O’Sullivan, managing director of the increasingly risible Irish Catholic. Mr O’Sullivan thinks the likes of Fr Flannery have done sterling service to the Church and should be rewarded by being allowed to air whatever opinions they like without anyone contradicting them:

“Fr Flannery and others hope for a church that is open to married and women priests; want a re-evaluation of the teaching on contraception and a more sensitive teaching on homosexuality. Of course, those in the CDF would say that if we want to evangelise Irish people and tell them about the good things that the church teaches, then we have to have our priests on the same page. But that is an old church way of looking at this.

Would it not be better to take on the liberal priests and instead of silencing them, offer counter arguments, as St Paul says, but in love? I'm not seeing the church St Paul spoke of and I'm certainly not feeling the love, but I am seeing a well-meaning group of clerical lawyers and officials locked away in a Vatican cocoon creating a climate of fear among elderly clergy in Ireland. They have, by virtue of 30 or 40 years ministering in the priesthood, earned the right to disagree with me or you or even an official in the CDF who, looking out on St Peter's Colonnade, wishes complicated Irish Catholics could be as easily cleaned up for a speedy return to a time of supposed certainty.”

Well, in those “30 or 40 years” we have reached a situation where only 14% of Dubliners go to Mass every week and where half of Mass-goers, according to one poll, do not believe in Christ’s Real Presence at Holy Communion. Fr Flannery and his ilk appear to have done a strikingly abysmal job of passing on the faith. I am not sure that they have “earned the right” to anything.

There was one bright note in this otherwise gloomy collection of pieces, however. Mr O’Sullivan, in his article, refers to “liberal ageing priests like Redemptorist Fr Tony Flannery and, among others, Fr Brian D’Arcy.”

Of course, traditional Catholics like to point out that liberal Catholics tend to be a greying bunch, and that they are not leaving many theological heirs. But it’s a fact seldom mentioned by the liberals, whose whole worldview is after all based on the premise that their watered-down form of Christianity is more “relevant” and in tune with the times than that nasty old pre-Vatican II stuff. So it is striking to see a journalist who is highly sympathetic to the liberal priests stating frankly that they are a dying breed. The phrase “ageing liberal” is repeated in the editorial; the writer seems unaware of its pejorative edge. There can be no doubt that liberal Catholics are suffering from a demographic crisis when even their friends in the media are admitting as much.

Oh, and tucked away on page 26 of the Independent is the story that 14-year old Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan was shot in the head by Islamists for spreading “Western, secular values” on her blog. But never mind that – the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith are the ones we should be afraid of!