IRELAND
Irish Times
PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent
Redemptorist Fr Tony Flannery was threatened with excommunication by the Vatican, according to documents seen by The Irish Times, contrary to claims by “senior Vatican sources”, as reported in this week’s Irish Catholic newspaper.
It quoted such “senior Vatican sources” and “sources in the Roman Curia” as saying there was “no question” of Fr Flannery facing excommunication” and that “the Holy See has not threatened excommunication against the priest”.
A document from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), dated June 11th, 2012, accused Fr Flannery of expressing “heretical or heterodox statements about central church doctrines of the Catholic Christian faith” in “several of his columns” for Reality magazine.
The same document pointed out that “the Church’s canon law (canon 1044) calls a priest who has committed the delict of heresy ‘irregular for the exercise of orders received’, while canon 1364 says that ‘a heretic incurs a latae sententiae excommunication’.”
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