IRELAND
Sunday Independent
Sunday April 15 2012
A SURVEY released last week shows that the majority of Irish Catholics find teachings of the Catholic Church on some matters, such as sex and women priests, irrelevant or wrong.
Yet the Vatican has taken action to silence a couple of Irish priests who expressed opinions that are shared in Ireland among lay Catholics. One of them, Fr Tony Flannery, is a founder of the Association of Catholic Priests, which commissioned the revealing survey.
Rome’s clampdown is a reminder of the bad old days of hysterical Irish censorship, when the self-appointed guardians of public morality scoured bookshops and libraries with coloured pencils. They underlined bits of books that they wanted banned and removed from shelves, then sent those books to censors.
Last week Fr Adrian Egan, head of the Irish Redemptorists, expressed concern that there were “people sitting in churches on a daily basis that are almost listening to hear you express an opinion that might be seen as dissenting and they will report you”.
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