IRELAND
Irish Times
Fr Tony Flannery
People regularly ask me how I am? The answer to that is complex, and I do not usually burden or bore my questioner by going into details about it. It is more than a year since I was forbidden to minister as a priest.
I miss being able to celebrate the Eucharist and I miss being able to preach. I know I can say Mass privately, but I seldom do, since I regard it as a community exercise. I mostly attend Mass with the people.
Having been out of ministry and in conflict with church authorities for an extended period of time has had a significant impact on my perspective on the church, but more fundamentally on my faith and my life.
Decision making
I have come to know a great deal about how the church operates, particularly in its management structures and methods of decision making, that I would probably be better off not knowing.
Sadly I have found it to be true that the closer you get to the Vatican system, with all its power struggles and careerism, the more disillusioned you can become. I know that faith in Jesus Christ is more important than any of this, but while I can accept that totally at an intellectual level, it is much more difficult to deal with my emotional responses to it. The church introduced me to Christ, and for my whole life my faith has been lived out within the church, most of it within religious life. So I suppose I am now experiencing something of a crisis of faith.
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