IRELAND
Association of Catholic Priests
The treatment by the Vatican of the Irish Redemptorist priest Fr Tony Flannery is disgraceful, and the scant regard shown by Rome for due process procedures is more in keeping with the modus operandi of Stalinist regimes than a Church supposedly wedded to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
This is a Church that preaches justice and purports to defend the dignity of human beings and individual human rights. Yet when it comes to one of its own, all of these norms are violated. The point is well made by our former president, Mary McAleese, in a foreword to a book Fr Flannery has written about his case.
She quotes a passage from a homily by Pope Francis at a Mass in Rome in April in which he said the Church was not a bureaucratic organisation but a mother. “The imagery is beautiful and heartening,” writes Ms McAleese. “But I ask myself what mother treats a son as Tony Flannery has been treated?”
Equally distressing is the evasiveness of the Irish Catholic Bishops on the whole matter, hiding behind the very thin excuse that Fr Flannery’s predicament is not an issue for them as he is a member of a religious order and not a diocesan priest.
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