Manchester, Monday, 22 May 2017, 10.30 p.m.

Seamus Ahearne draws on the experiences of varied people, ‘the chorus line in church life’, because they ‘are the ones that help us create a different model of priest and church.’

Next week, Hans Küng, the Catholic priest and Swiss theologian, will mark his 88th birthday. The fifth volume of his complete works, titled Infallibility, has just become available from the German publishing house Herder. In connection with the release of Infallibility, Küng has written the following “urgent appeal to Pope Francis to permit an open and impartial discussion on infallibility of pope and bishops.” The text of his urgent appeal was released simultaneously by National Catholic Reporter and The Tablet.
“Receive this comprehensive documentation and allow a free, unprejudiced and open-ended discussion in our church of the all the unresolved and suppressed questions connected with the infallibility dogma.”

Brendan Hoban in his Western People column takes a look at the debate on abortion and how current opinion polls are indicating outcomes to the ongoing discussions and disagreements in society. But, as he says, ‘ who knows how extremists on both sides of the debate will eventually, by campaigning not wisely but too well, alienate their own ‘supporters’, as they are prone to do.
In any event, I suspect we have a long way to go.”

Stan Mellett, a Redemptorist priest, suggests we have a problem with our identity as catholics.
Stan is suggesting we begin to make an attempt this Advent to forge a new catholic identity for ourselves, even if “With our age profile coupled with ill health, weary with poor response and poor participation in the parish, it is an effort to muster up enthusiasm for a new start. Our attending faithful flock is also ageing and weary. But they are regular – in this lower income parish we count about 700 at three Masses between Vigil and Sunday. Politicians, Summer Schools and other organisations make headlines with that kind of attendance. Surely the alarming prospect of losing our identity totally, will rake the embers to stir up new life in our old bones! There’s fire in the grate still even in our eighties!”