Editorial – What would Galileo say?

IT'Sâ€Ë†NOTâ€Ë†OFTEN that the internal politics of the Catholic Church have a local impact on this part of the world. That is if you exclude the child abuse scandals which had a very personal impact on many people, for various reasons. But for the second time the case of Fr Tony Flannery, a native of the Archdiocese of Tuam, has come to national and international prominence. He is a member of the Redemptorist order, who have gone down in folk memory as the expert practitioners of the fire and brimstone sermon at the parish mission. Not the kind of men you would expect to stand behind a colleague who is questioning some of the central rules of their church. [private] Fr Flannery has for decades been writing on touchy subjects like contraception, homosexuality, priestly celibacy and the ordination of women priests, and usually going counter to orthodoxy. The first official church response came almost two years ago when he was effectively silenced. Now he has been threatened with excommunication unless he writes and publishes an article stating to the satisfaction of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) that the Catholic Church can never ordain women to the priesthood and accepting the current stance on the other matters he has questioned. The CDF previously went under the title of the Holy Inquisition, and was in dark times responsible for the burning to death of people who questioned its authority, men like John Hus and Giordano Bruno, who spoke the truth as they saw it. Galileo would have been another pile of ashes were it not that he had powerful friends who protected him, so that he spent the rest of his life under house arrest. The fact that it took over 350 years for a pope to apologise for his trial is an unfortunate indication of the glacial pace of church thinking. One of the problems facing the Catholic Church in recent decades is the advance in scientific knowledge in many areas, from biology to neuropsychology to the unravelling of our DNA. Such arcane scientific breakthroughs are slowly changing the perceptions of ordinary people regarding, for example, homosexuality. The movement for the equality of women has stood the prejudice of thousands of years of misogyny on its head. And still the church adamantly refuses to countenance the ordination of women â€â€ the 50 per cent of its members who in every parish shoulder most of the burden of the laity. It is to Fr Tony Flannery's credit that he questions such tradition, and to the credit of his order and the Association of Catholic Priests that they support him. That a church which for so long denied and covered up child abuse should threaten excommunication on one of its faithful and thoughtful servants is astounding. The new psychology has an expression, 'self-sabotage' to explain apparently irrational or subconscious behaviour. It could well be applied to this edict on the part of the CDF. [/private]