1/28/13 Tony Flannery-an Angelic troublemaker
A statement from the Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland.
http://www.associationofcatholicpriests.ie/2012/05/statement-from-towards-an-assembly-of-the-irish-catholic-church/
Video-100,000 gathered in Dublin to support the 800 priests....wow...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17982360
4/19/12 800 Priests Warn Vatican
Diane Dougherty's Blog: 800 "Priests Warn Vatican over Gag Move"/ Justice is Rising Up
Ireland to close Vatican embassy following child abuse row
(AFP) – 4 hours ago
DUBLIN — Ireland said Thursday it would close its embassy to the Vatican as part of a shake-up of its missions abroad following a row with the Holy See earlier this year over a child sex abuse scandal.
"It is with the greatest regret and reluctance that the government has decided to close Ireland's (embassy) to the Holy See," said a statement from the foreign ministry.
Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore said the move was not connected to the row with the Vatican which was sparked by a July report into a long-running abuse scandal in the diocese of Cloyne, insisting it was aimed at saving money.
"I very much regret that due to the financial constraints that this country is under at the moment that we have to reduce the number of missions that we have abroad, including the mission that we have at the Vatican," he told RTE state radio.
The foreign ministry added in a statement that "the government believes that Ireland's interests with the Holy See can be sufficiently represented by a non-resident ambassador."
Cardinal Sean Brady, the ecclesiastical head of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, expressed his "profound disappointment" at the decision, which was relayed to him by Gilmore in a telephone conversation earlier Thursday.
"This decision seems to show little regard for the important role played by the Holy See in international relations and of the historic ties between the Irish people and the Holy See over many centuries," said Brady in a statement.
"I hope that today's decision will be revisited as soon as possible," he added.
The Vatican took note of Ireland's decision and stressed in a statement: "What is important are diplomatic relations between the Holy See and other states, and in the case of Ireland they are not brought into question."
The Irish ministry also announced the closure of the embassy in Iran and a representative office in East Timor as part of the overhaul, which it also insisted were aimed at saving money in the wake of the financial crisis.
Predominantly Catholic Ireland has traditionally had close links with the Vatican and the embassy was opened in 1929 but Dublin and the Holy See fell out dramatically earlier this year.
The July report into more than a decade of abuse by priests in the diocese of Cloyne condemned the Church's handling of abuse claims against clerics as inadequate.
The report sparked outrage in the Irish government and triggered an unprecedented attack by Prime Minister Enda Kenny who called the Roman Catholic Church's behaviour "absolutely disgraceful".
The Vatican subsequently recalled its envoy to Ireland in order to formulate an official response.
The decision to close the missions followed a 2009 report on public expenditure savings choices for the government which said Ireland had 76 embassies and consulates compared to 40 in 1989.
The report recommended reducing the number of embassies and consulates to 55.
Thursday's foreign ministry statement insisted the closures were aimed at saving money and made no mention of the child sex abuse row.
"In order to meet its targets under the EU/IMF programme and to restore public expenditure to sustainable levels, the government has been obliged to implement cuts across a wide range of public services," it said.
"No area of government expenditure can be immune from the need to implement savings."
Dublin was forced to turn to the European Union and International Monetary Fund in November last year to seek an 85-billion-euro rescue package following a financial crisis.
Ireland has had an embassy in Tehran since 1976 but trade volumes with Iran had fallen short of expectations, said the statement.
The Irish mission in East Timor had been in place since 2000, two years before independence, said the ministry.
Comment: As one man, Edna Kenny, dared to address the abuses of children, the entire country is now "recalibrating" their relationship with the Vatican. I have done this also. As I experienced the use of political power to "recalibrate the church to a pre-Vatican tradition", I have come to terms with "Catholic Identity." realizing the present administration is working to move us far afield from gospel witness to their false notions that Christ is represented best in a clericalized monarchy.
Rupture With Vatican Reveals a Changed Ireland
By SARAH LYALL
DUBLIN — Even as it remains preoccupied with its struggling economy, Ireland is in the midst of a profound transformation, as rapid as it is revolutionary: it is recalibrating its relationship to the Roman Catholic Church, an institution that has permeated almost every aspect of life here for generations.This is still a country where abortion is against the law, where divorce became legal only in 1995, where the church runs more than 90 percent of the primary schools and where 87 percent of the population identifies itself as Catholic. But the awe, respect and fear the Vatican once commanded have given way to something new — rage, disgust and defiance — after a long series of horrific revelations about decades of abuse of children entrusted to the church’s care by a reverential populace.
While similar disclosures have tarnished the Vatican’s image in other countries, perhaps nowhere have they shaken a whole society so thoroughly or so intensely as in Ireland. And so when the normally mild-mannered prime minister, Enda Kenny, unexpectedly took the floor in Parliament this summer to criticize the church, he was giving voice not just to his own pent-up feelings, but to those of a nation.
His remarks were a ringing declaration of the supremacy of state over church, in words of outrage and indignation that had never before been used publicly by an Irish leader.
“For the first time in Ireland, a report into child sexual abuse exposed an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate an inquiry into a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago,” Mr. Kenny said, referring to the Cloyne Report, which detailed abuse and cover-ups by church officials in southern Ireland through 2009.
Reiterating the report’s claim that the church had encouraged bishops to ignore child-protection guidelines the bishops themselves had adopted, the prime minister attacked “the dysfunction, the disconnection, the elitism” that he said “dominate the culture of the Vatican.”
He continued: “The rape and torture of children were downplayed, or ‘managed,’ to uphold instead the primacy of the institution — its power, its standing and its reputation.” Instead of listening with humility to the heartbreaking evidence of “humiliation and betrayal,” he said, “the Vatican’s response was to parse and analyze it with the gimlet eye of a canon lawyer.”
The effect of his speech was instant and electric.
“It was a seminal moment,” said Patsy McGarry, the religious affairs correspondent for The Irish Times. “No Irish prime minister has ever talked to the Catholic Church before in this fashion. The obsequiousness of the Irish state toward the Vatican is gone. The deference is gone.”
While both sides are talking in more emollient terms now, there is no question that Mr. Kenny’s declaration deeply angered the Vatican. It immediately withdrew its ambassador from Dublin, ostensibly to help fashion the Vatican’s formal response. (The ambassador has since been reassigned to the Czech Republic.)
The position of Irish ambassador to the Vatican is currently vacant, too, and there is talk here of merging it with the ambassadorship to Italy. While government officials say the question is part of a general re-examination of the diplomatic budget, such a move would be seen as a pointed snub to the Holy See, a sovereign state to which countries generally dedicate separate embassies.
Meanwhile, in what has developed into a tit-for-tat war of words, the church’s latest formal communication with Dublin — 24 pages of densely argued prose — took issue with both the Cloyne Report and Mr. Kenny’s remarks, saying that a crucial document had been “misrepresented” by the inquiry and calling “unsubstantiated” Mr. Kenny’s assertion that the Vatican had tried to “frustrate an inquiry” into the abuse scandal.
Sympathizers with the church’s position say the Vatican made valid and nuanced points. And they say Mr. Kenny went too far. “Personally, I think it was excessive,” David Quinn, founder of the Iona Institute, a right-leaning religious advocacy group, said of the prime minister’s speech.
In an interview, Mr. Quinn said that the relationship between the Vatican and the Irish government was “at a very low ebb.” The state of affairs had not been helped by the fact that newspapers in China, he said, had written editorials using Mr. Kenny’s remarks as an argument for “why the church should be under government control.”
Mr. Kenny, who took office in March after the long-dominant Fianna Fail party imploded over the financial crisis, has been accused of opportunism by some critics. But his position as a practicing Catholic from a conservative area helped give moral weight to his speech. And his government’s feisty new tone has been met with widespread approval in a place that feels doubly betrayed: first by the abuse itself, and second by what many see as a cover-up by the church, compounded by the often opaque, legalistic language with which it defends itself.
“You can talk about the finesse of diplomatic ties and maneuverings, but what Kenny was actually saying was that you have to prioritize the victims of abuse, and you have to assert very loudly that this is a republic and civil law has to take precedence over canon law,” said Diarmaid Ferriter, professor of modern Irish history at University College Dublin.
While most people have not abandoned their religion, many seem to have abandoned the habit of practicing it. The archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, recently estimated that only 18 percent of the Catholics in his archdiocese attended Mass every week.
The government has announced that it will introduce a package of new legislation to protect children from abuse and neglect, including a law — considered but rejected as too contentious by previous governments — that would make it mandatory to report evidence of crimes to the authorities. It has also established a group to examine how to remove half of the country’s Catholic primary schools from church control.
In a recent interview, Eamon Gilmore, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, said that Ireland had asserted its role as a “modern democracy.”
No longer would the church enjoy its previous privileges and powers as in times past, when it, with the government’s collusion, “effectively dictated the social policy of the state,” he said.
“Historically, there was a view within the Catholic Church that there was a parallel law, that they had their own system of law, and that was the law to which they were accountable,” Mr. Gilmore said. “At a minimum, that blurred the understanding of the necessity for full compliance with the law of the state.”
He added: “The Catholic Church is perfectly entitled to have its own view and its one rule and to view matters according to its own light. But this is a republic. And there is one law.”
When it comes to protecting children, Mr. Gilmore said, “Everybody in the state — irrespective of whether they’re ordinary citizens doing everyday work, or a priest or a bishop — has to comply with the law.”
Bystanders No More-Standing Up to Hierarchical Bullying
This series of articles gives witness to those who remain no longer choose to be a bystander. All articles promote a change of heart and a courageous stance against violence of any kind made by a hierarch toward the faithful.
Click on the dot below! It is from Pittsburgh-put up by their Call to Action the week Fr. Roy spoke about Women's Ordination. 157 priests signed a petition in support.
Civil Servants Speak out in Ireland.....
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2085306,00.html#ixzz1TJdobwr5
The Breakup: Why Ireland Is No Longer the Vatican's Loyal Follower
http://www.ocala.com/article/20110722/ZNYT02/107223025/-1/news?template=printart
In 3 Countries, Challenging the Vatican on Female Priests
LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: Friday, July 22, 2011 at 6:30 a.m.
What You Won't Hear in Your Parish
Oakland, CA - April 7, 2010 - Fr. Tim Stier speaks up: Five years ago, March 15, 2005, while on sabbatical after 25 years of ministry as a priest in five parishes in the Diocese of Oakland, California, I met with my bishop, Allen Vigneron, and informed him I was choosing voluntary exile from active priesthood until he was willing to initiate a public dialogue about clergy sexual abuse, the exclusion of women from the priesthood, and doctrinal and actual discrimination against gay persons. Because I was refusing an assignment, I stopped receiving a salary, health insurance and retirement accrual.
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As for my fellow priests and why we don’t hear from many of them about this crisis, they tend to place obedience to their bishop ahead of the protection of children, full inclusion of women, and justice and respect for gay persons.
http://www.richardsipe.com/Miscl/2010-04-07-priest_speaks.htm
Comment: To answer this question- they, your fellow priests, are not willing to be put in your position Fr. Tim.....no salary, health insurance and retirement.....if laity could attend to and solve this problem...many more would speak truth to power! God bless you Fr. Tim....Thank you Richard Sipe for continuing to hold the flame high so I can see.
Criminal Charges against Dr. Joseph Ratzinger, Pope of the Roman Catholic Church on grounds of Crimes against Humanity
pope-lawsuit-2011(4).pdf
Diane Dougherty add57@numail.org
http://www.associationofromancatholicwomenpriests.org/
