UNITED STATES
Aleteia
GREG DALY
When the “silenced” Irish Redemptorist Father Tony Flannery set out in January on a speaking tour of his homeland, he said he would be “deliberately staying away from Church premises, so as not to cause embarrassment to anyone.”
As recent events in Minneapolis have shown, it seems this was a prudent decision. Father Flannery’s sole engagement on Church property in his current 18-city speaking tour of the United States led to his host, Father Michael Tegeder, being personally asked by Archbishop John Nienstedt to change the location of Wednesday’s talk so as “not to cause scandal.”
After Father Tegeder refused to comply, the archbishop wrote to him, stating that Father Flannery, keynote speaker at this weekend’s Call to Action National Conference in Memphis, Tennessee, “attacks the teaching of the Church.” Pointing out how he had stipulated that Father Flannery “not be permitted to speak on any Catholic premises in the archdiocese,” he asked that it be made clear that Father Flannery’s visit was not supported by the Church. Father Tegeder agreed “to announce this publicly.”
Born in County Galway in 1948, Father Flannery entered the Redemptorists’ minor seminary in Limerick when he was 12 years old, going to the major seminary at 17 and being ordained in 1974. The author of several books, in September 2010 he and a handful of others founded Ireland’s Association of Catholic Priests (ACP), which now boasts more than 1,000 members.
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