The ACP, in conjunction with some others, are organising a gathering, which we are calling “Towards an Assembly of the Irish Catholic Church”. It will take place on Monday, May 7th in the Regency Hotel, Dublin.
This is meant to be a first effort at bringing people together to discuss the current state of the Church in Ireland; and hopefully to be the beginning of a process that will continue at all levels in the Church.
More details later.
Alan Hilliard (a priest of Dublin diocese) wrote this open letter to Fr Tony Flannery as a response to a talk given by Tony at the meeting of ACP priests in Athlone.
Adrian Egan C.Ss.R. is disappointed with the populism of Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Minister Alan Shatter in criticising the Sisters who ran the Magdalene laundries for not contributing to the compensation fund. He finds the comments of survivor support groups and others outrageous and ill-informed.
The ACP offers sincere sympathy to our colleague Liamy McNally, Administrative Secretary ACP, and to his extended family on the death of his mother, Peigí.
The ACP is following up issues raised at the recent AGM on the care and wellbeing of priests with a series of Regional Meetings.
A series of public meetings on church reform issues is planned for later in the year.
Tony Flannery reports from Chicago on the recent 3rd International Conference of Church Reform Network.
” A wide range of issues were discussed and worked on. The one I myself was most involved with had to do with the need for some type of Declaration of Rights in the Church. We believe that at all levels in the Church there is a lack of accountability in the exercise of authority, and little or no means of appeal or redress. A group, of which I am a member, was set up to work on this over the next year.”
Former Irish president Mary McAleese has urged disgraced Cardinal Keith O’Brien to tell his life story — to help gay people in all walks of life who have felt the need to pretend to be heterosexual.
Monday 7 May 2012 is the May Public Holiday in Ireland, so this should make it possible for those normally working on Mon. to attend.
The Regency Hotel is on the Swords Road (between city and airport), near Griffith Avenue. Their largest conference room capacity is 735!
Maybe a Novena for the Irish Church before St Patrick’s Day. He ends his Confessio: “You can judge and believe in all truth that (whatever little I did) was a gift of God.” See http://www.confessio.ie for a wealth of resources on St Patrick.
7 May is three weeks before Pentecost: Veni Sancte Spiritus …
A Phádraig, sincere thanks for linking to this HyperStack project on the Confessio. A source of sources that raises ‘synoptic’ to a whole new level.
Surely Patrick’s opening lines are the best argument we could look for against ‘anonymity’ or the ‘man-from-God-knows-where’/ ‘woman-from-Ballina’ syndrome?
“Ego Patricius . . . a sinner, a simple country person – rusticissimus – peacach ró-thuathach. My father was Calpornius, a deacon; his father was Potitus, a priest, ó bhaile Bannavem Taburniae . . .”
No bishops in the family, apparently. His Deacon Da may have been the first of the McEnteggarts, if not of the McAnespies. Of course the Moderators have been badgering him for more than a millennium and a half, trying to verify his credentials and asking him for his mother’s maiden name and his usual postcode, and even whether there are two or three persons in the one true Patrick. No shamrock could satisfy an ACP moderator on that mystery. But in general his bona fides seem(s)to be in order.
I don’t know whether Patricius ever made it to a movers-and-shakers’ privacy seminar in Davos – maybe Gall or Columbanus did – or whether he ever found a pseudonym came in handy to sign a petition. But for all of us culchies and rusticissimi/ae, Patricius on HyperStack is our best guarantor that “civilisation” is not just a mark of urban spaces, and that the internet or world-wide-web need not develop the kinks of urban/e anonymity or anomie to be modern. They can survive and thrive with all the best features of rural townlands, of Slemish slopes, of shared cramped scriptoria on the Shannon or in Armagh, or even behind the squinting windows of Bannavem Taburniae.
Unfortunately those of us in Ardagh & Clonmacnois will be on Day 2 of our Annual Retreat. it’s earlier this year owing to the Eucharistic Congress.
You could do worse than to cancel the lectures for Day 2, to give the preacher a day off, and more importantly to facilitate attendance. This is a one-off occasion. You can have an uninterrupted annual retreat in 2013 DV
if this is a male white show sticking the dictatorship of Rome it should be ignored. it should be standing in solidarity against the political economic right and religious agenda
Hope to be in attendance and hope to pass the word along. I agree with Mary that a ‘day off’ to facilitate this once off meeting – hopefully the start of many more – would be a forward looking step to take.
This assembly will be little more than like-minded individuals who are not open to their views being challenged gathering together in a hotel room to comfort each other and pretend that they are radical when really they’re fighting battles from decades ago…it would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic and pitiful…
Oh ye of little faith, Kyle! We destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion and that’s not what we are about. We are a people of hope.There’s a range of views expressed on this forum and I look forward to an equally lively sharing of diverse opinions at this “Towards an Assembly” in The Regency Hotel.
I am relieved to read that the meeting with the bishops was a positive experience. It takes time to dismantle the defence walls of fear and pride and it takes time to learn to truly listen to others who may have, at first hearing, an entirely different slant on things but who basically share what we all share, a commitment to living out the message of the Gospels, to searching for the Christ child in each of us. I am hopeful. One day at a time…
Mary V
Is this event open to anyone to attend? I don’t think we have to change the world, but we must have some channel of communication from the ground up. The Holy Spirit working through good hearts will move mountains. Denis