The Association of Catholic Priests members in Cloyne diocese and Cork & Ross have a meeting in the Ovens Parish Centre on Monday week, 21 May. The meeting will start at 2.30 and will include reports on the recent gathering in Dublin, ‘Towards an Assembly of the Irish Church’ and other ACP news.
Fr Tony Flannery CSsR will represent the Leadership Team at the meeting.
Members and new members welcome!
About eighteen months ago some priests of Dublin Archdiocese approached the ACP Leadership with the proposal that a study of Judge Yvonne Murphy’s Investigation of Clerical Child Abuse in the Archdiocese be conducted.
Retired High Court Judge from Hong Kong, Mr. Fergal Sweeney, was commissioned to do this work.
We here publish his report:
Commissions of Investigation and Procedural Fairness Report (40 pages, PDF)
In conjunction with this, Fr. Padraig McCarthy of the Archdiocese has just published a book on the same subject. This does not duplicate Fergal Sweeney’s work but includes further areas of analysis of the Murphy Report. Padraig’s book, An Unheard Story (published by Londubh) will be available in most bookshops.
Tony Flannery reflects on the remarkable exchange between the Austrian bishops and Pope Francis, in which the the bishops were challenged to stay in close contact with their priests. He calls for the Irish bishops to do likewise.
Robert Dore, the ACP’s solicitor, advises priests to be cautious about undergoing assessments at the request of their bishops. The ACP Leadership thank Mr Dore for this very important advice — and encourage all our members to pass the word around among priest and Religious friends.
Would you believe it? Prime Time Investigates gets an award tonight. I have no doubt that, if we hadn’t been in the position to challenge them through the courts, the…
As a preparation for our discussions ‘The Vocations Crisis, will clustering work?’ at our AGM on 01 October, we commend to our members two articles from the September Furrow, On the Edge by Donagh O’Meara and The Last Priests in Ireland by Donald Cozzens, which map out the context for our discussion.
We encourage as many of our members as possible to attend the AGM in the Hodson Bay Hotel, Athlone, 01 October 2.00 p.m. to 5.00 p.m.
There is good precedent for remonstrating with the Pope!
Hopefully, one day when parish priest meet it will be under a new and “Reformed” Irish version of the Roman Catholic Church, without the controls and oversight of Rome! Oh, they’ll be looking all right, but it’ll be from the outside looking in!