Mary McAleese was speaking of the late Fr Seán Fagan, who died at St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin last Friday.

For many years he was critical of Vatican stances on issues of conscience and sexual morality, notably in letters to The Irish Times.

In 2003, he published the book Does Morality Change? , for which he was censured by the Irish Catholic bishops in 2004, and in 2008 Whatever Happened to Sin?

He was first censured by Rome in 2008, and, in 2010, he was informed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) that he would be laicised should he publish anything it considered contrary to Church teaching, and should he disclose this censure to media.

Then in 2012, he was one of five Irish priests silenced by the Vatican.

In April, 2014, Pope Francis had all sanctions against the very ill Fr Fagan lifted.

It later emerged that in December 2013, Ms McAleese had written directly to Pope Francis asking that he personally intervene in the case.

Ms McAleese told The Irish Times she was "saddened by the death of that great questioning mind that was Fr Seán Fagan's".

"A brilliant theologian and thinker who brought great distinction to Ireland, his long and illustrious priestly career was blighted in latter years by being silenced by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith," Mrs McAleese said.

"His heart and spirit were broken but his fidelity to the Church and quiet acceptance of such an unjust fate won him even more admirers," she said.

Ms McAleese said the lifting of sanctions against Fr Fagan came too little, too late.

"A great and good man's life and his life's work had been ruined.

The former president said the priest had been "hounded" by forces "using byzantine processes with no regard for due process or human rights".

Ms McAleese wished Fr Fagan's legacy would be "an inspiration to restless inquiring minds who pursue justice and truth no matter what the personal cost".

Sources

• Irish Times
• Image: Irish Times

In an interview for Irish TV, Fr Brian D'Arcy, CP, said it took him years to get over the sexual abuse inflicted upon him.

"One never ever gets over the fact that they were abused and the older one gets, the worse it gets," he said.

"I can live with it but just barely at this stage because abuse destroys your inner soul," he said.

In 2012, The Tablet revealed that Fr D'Arcy had been formally censured by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Fr D'Arcy, who was well known for his media work, had spoken out against mandatory celibacy for priests, Church teaching on contraception and had criticised the handling of clerical sexual abuse.

In the wake of the Murphy Report into clerical abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin, Fr D'Arcy called for reformation of Church structures and accused the Holy See of using legal procedures to shield itself from criticism over its handling of abuse.

Speaking on Irish TV this week, Fr D'Arcy recalled his pain over the Vatican censure, saying it was like being abused all over again.

"It was a big burden - in many ways it kind of destroyed me," Fr D'Arcy said.

"It took a long time and counselling to find out why I took it so badly.

"The reason I took it so badly is because it was being re-abused by clerics. It brought it to the top again, the abuse I had been dealt by clerics," he said.

"I knew I was right to say what I was saying - to protect children and that people who have abused children should not be practising or that clerics should [not] be investigating each other."

Fr D'Arcy was also critical of how the Church has handled child sex abuse scandals.

"We, as a group of clerics, are not able to handle child abuse because we're old, we're celibate, we're away from families, we're living in an unreal world."

Sources

• Irish Times
• Irish Independent
• Catholic Ireland
• BBC
• Image: Catholic Ireland

A High Court judgment released on Wednesday said it was sufficient for the Church Property Trustees (CPT) to repay the $4 million it used from the quake-damaged Christ Church Cathedral insurance payout to construct the Transitional Cathedral near Latimer Square.

The CPT holds property on various trusts for the diocese.

The Great Christchurch Buildings Trust (GCBT)- a pressure group led by former MPs Jim Anderton and Philip Burdon took the CPT to court over the use of insurance money to build he Transitional Cathedral.

The CPT repaid the money with funds diverted from a trust account after an interim High Court judgment in 2012 said the $39m payout for the Christ Church Cathedral could only be used for work on the existing structure or its successor in the Square.

The Great Christchurch Buildings Trust believied the CPT should be penalised for its breach.

The CPT's lawyer Jeremy Johnson asked the court to rule on whether it was still an issue still an issue.

Source

• anglicantaonga.org.nz
• newstalkzb.co.nz
• Image: anglicantaonga.org.nz

Fr Mike Tegeder of St Frances Cabrini parish in Minneapolis was told by Archbishop John Nienstedt that the venue of Fr Tony Flannery's talk be changed to a non-Catholic location.

Fr Tegeder said the archbishop wanted this so as "not to cause scandal".

The talk went ahead last week, with the audience filling the church to overflowing.

Fr Tegeder also said that Archbishop Nienstedt described the Irish priest as "not a Catholic".

During a 30-minute meeting with the archbishop before the talk, Fr Tegeder said he pointed out that Fr Flannery is a Catholic of good standing.

Fr Flannery is a founding member of the Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland,

"To say he is not Catholic is to suggest he has been excommunicated, which is not the case, and in fact is a defamatory statement," Fr Tegeder said.

The priest told his archbishop that the very issues Fr Flannery discusses are those which got an airing at last month's synod on the family.

Fr Tegeder said if they can be discussed in the Vatican, they can be discussed in Minneapolis.

In follow-up correspondence, Archbishop Nienstedt dispatched a registered letter to Fr Tegeder.

This requested that Fr Flannery "not be perceived in any way as being sponsored by the Catholic Church", but stated the archbishop had not cut off dialogue.

The parish priest agreed to "announce this publicly" and said he would "have a sign up at the lectern to that effect noting that it comes from you, the Chief Catechist of our Archdiocese".

Fr Flannery "is trying to reform the Church", said Fr Tegeder.

"He said listening to women in confession talk about sexual issues and birth control, it's transformed him."

Fr Flannery, who is a Redemptorist, was touring the US talking about reform in the Church and his 2012 censure by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith.

The CDF ordered Fr Flannery to be silent after he questioned elements of Church teaching including whether current understanding of the priesthood directly reflected Jesus' actions at the Last Supper.

Sources

• The Tablet
• Minneapolis Star-Tribune
• Tony Flannery
• Image: CathNews USA

In a new book, Augustinian Fr Gabriel Daly examines the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's 2012 silencing of Fr Tony Flannery and its suspending him from ministry.

Flannery, a Redemptorist, had written in "Reality" journal that Jesus didn't intend the kind of system that is the modern Catholic Church.

"I no longer believe that the priesthood, as we currently have it in the Church, originated with Jesus," Flannery wrote.

Daly told The Tablet, however, that these views "are both theologically and historically unexceptionable".

"His attackers have simply failed to reckon with his qualification ‘as we currently have it in the Church'."

Daly added that it was "abundantly clear" that today's Catholic Church is very different from the gathering of disciples around Jesus.

His new book, The Church: Always in Need of Reform, will put the case for reforming the CDF and will discuss the "meaning of reform in the light of some theological principles and insights".

It is due to be published later this year.

Daly said the CDF seems intent on claiming that everything in today's Church is consonant with the will and intentions of Jesus.

"I can do no more than point out that this cannot be historically true," he said, adding that much depends on one's interpretation of development.

Flannery wrote on his website that the CDF's former prefect Cardinal William Levada once told him during a visit to Ireland that he was "formally in heresy".

But his order has received no notification of this, he wrote.

Flannery stated there is no justification for banning him from ministry, adding that his order is afraid to stand up to the CDF, even though "Pope Francis has created the climate in which this is very possible".

In 2012, former Irish president Mary McAleese labelled as "dreadful" the way the CDF treated Flannery and several other Irish priests who had been investigated.

Sources

• The Tablet
• Tony Flannery.com
• Irish Examiner
• Image: Catholic Ireland