IRELAND
International Business Times
By HANNAH OSBORNE
September 9, 2013
An Irish priest who has been threatened with excommunication from the Catholic Church has said there was a link between clerical sex abuse and mandatory celibacy.
Tony Flannery, who has been warned about his outspokenness by the Vatican before, said that the celibate lifestyles that priests were forced to live led to a struggle over sexuality and could, in some cases, result in children being sexually abused.
He was preparing to launch his book, A Question of Conscience, which questions the Vatican watchdog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), in the methods it uses to “stamp out” anything it regards as dissent.
Flannery was a founding member of the Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland. In February 2012, the CDF became unhappy with some of his writings relating to the Church and he was summoned to Rome, where he was ordered to step down as ACP leader.
Months later, the CDF ordered him to issue a statement saying that he believed women could never be ordained as priests and that he accepted all the moral teachings of the Church. He was suspended from ministry and threatened him with excommunication.
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