Redemptorist priest Fr Tony Flannery has questions traditional Catholic Church teach

jimd2

He talks a fair bit of sense.........

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/catholic-doctrines-no-longer-make-sense-says-fr-tony-flannery-1.3030855

Redemptorist priest Fr Tony Flannery has questioned traditional Catholic Church teachings on God, Mary and the Trinity, which he said, “no longer make sense to the modern mind, and are being quietly rejected even by people who still attend church”.

Some of these doctrines, he said, “are not scripture based” and come from “a time when there was a very different understanding of the world and of humanity”.

Fr Flannery, a founder-member of the Association of Catholic Priests, said science has greatly influenced “the way we look at ourselves and the universe, and church doctrine has not adapted to this”.

In 2012, the Vatican banned Fr Flannery from public ministry for expressing his more liberal views on priesthood, women priests, homosexuality and contraception.
Whole range of problems

On his website he wrote “the traditional understanding of God in Catholic teaching is of a male individual, resident in the heavenly realm in the skies, a dwelling we are told we will attain to if we live well and keep the commandments”.

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There were “a whole range of problems with this understanding of God and his relationship with us, not least being the notion of God as male”.

Science revealed that “creation was not just an event of ancient history, but is an ongoing reality”, he said.

So “it makes more sense to many to view God as the spirit/energy/consciousness/presence in the whole of creation; a being that is in, and with all, aspects of creation including all humanity”, he said.

Church doctrine taught that “the sin of our first parents broke the connection between humans and God, that God was angry with humanity, and that the gates of heaven were closed against them”.

It taught that God decreed that Jesus “would have to die a horrible death in order to appease his anger and open the gates of heaven again”. It painted “a picture of a horrible God, vindictive and tyrannical.

“We now know that humans inhabited this earth for many thousands of years before Jesus. Are we to believe that all those people were shut off from any relationship with God and denied heaven, and that they had to wait in some limbo state for Jesus to come and rescue them?” he asked.
‘Big mistake’

There was “no indication in the Gospels that this was Jesus’s understanding of his mission”. Jesus saw his task as creating “a way of living and relating that would create a world of peace and love, not just in a heavenly existence, but here and now in this world”.

On the Trinity, Fr Flannery said “we are told to believe in a three person God dwelling in heaven – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – predominantly, if not exclusively, male. Along with being a futile exercise, trying to explain God and, worse still, making it a doctrine of the church, was a big mistake.”

He felt however that “maybe the most problematic area of all Catholic doctrine is the teaching on Mary”. He wondered “how many of us really believe in the nativity stories and the virgin birth, and that Mary remained a virgin all her life and had no other children?”

People, he said, were “rejecting these doctrines as childish fantasies, and walking away from it all”.

Mancomb Seepgood

I used to have a good bit of time for Tony Flannery - I don't think he was well treated by his church, but he seems to be setting up a strawman version of Catholic theology here (mainstream Christian theology,actually).As well as that,if he doesn't accept a core doctrine of mainstream Christianity such as the Trinity, does he really have any business being a priest in a church which holds to the traditional creeds of Christianity?

I mean,he has every right to believe what he wants, but the honest thing to do in this case would surely be to step aside as a priest.

keano_afc

He's a very confused person, seems to get his doctrine from the back of a cereal box.

Mrs OBumble

keano_afc wrote: »

He's a very confused person, seems to get his doctrine from the back of a cereal box.

What brand?

Seriously, what bit do you think is confused?

homer911

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

Seriously, what bit do you think is confused?

I'll row in with this..
"a dwelling we are told we will attain to if we live well and keep the commandments"

This is Old Testament teaching at best

.........

Why does he not join a religion that fits his actual beliefs instead of complaining that a Christian church with a billion members, won't change Christian doctrine to suit him ? and on the rest he seems very confused on what is actual Catholic doctrine and what isn't. I'm surprised they've let him remain a Priest as long as they have. His anti-tritian notions in particular wouldn't be tolerated in any other Christian church, and no minister in any other Church would last as long preaching deliberately contradictory doctrine to their own Church. He seems to think Christianity is some sort of media popularity contest. Thing is thanks to the internet, practicing Catholics can now check genuine Catholic sources for what is actually Catholic doctrine and what isn't, and why, which leaves these old wanna be Fr. 'Trendy' celebrity types and other anti-Catholics hanging in the wind . .

hinault

Redemptorist Order are the problem here.

Whoever was Flannery's spiritual formation director is at fault. The spiritual formation director's role is to assess and approve the spiritual suitability of each seminarian before ordination. It is the spiritual directors says so as to whether a seminarian is suitable for ordination. In Flannery's case, the director got it badly wrong.

Who else did this spiritual director get it wrong for?

Flannery should be given the option to either publicly recant his heretical views, or be subject to laicisation and dismissal from the clergy.

.........

People can change their views over the years, there's no problem with that, but he should also be honest enough to choose a religion that resembles what he believes, rather than remain in one that doesn't while misrepresenting them, and claiming they should conform to his beliefs.

Manach

Well, it would be unlikely that certain media organisations would give space to clerics who would support Catholic doctrine. There are many more of them that do, and reading a autobiography of Cardinal Sarah, shows the years of study involved to at gain a understanding of Church history. To which Fr. Flannery seems to dismiss as irrelevant as not gelding with the current world's view.

infogiver

He seems to have changed his mind over the years but still wants to remain within the comfort and security of his order and by association, RCC.

Ash.J.Williams

keano_afc wrote: »

He's a very confused person, seems to get his doctrine from the back of a cereal box.

Good a place as any

Delirium

MOD NOTE

Let's try keep to the topic instead of demeaning other peoples faith.

Thanks for your attention.

Thinkingaboutit

The plainest, most reading of his words suggests that this suspended priest is not a Christian, not Catholic. He cannot give assent to the Creed and basics of Christianity like Christ's sacrifice on the Cross (re-enacted unbloodily at every Mass) and the Holy Trinity. Benedict did well to suspend this troubled and confused man who believes he can scandalise the faithful at will as a priest. If he says the New Mass it will a pose, and utterly invalid for he outwardly (not just inwardly like any modern Redemptorist) denies what makes a man or woman Christian. It would fail under matter, minister, form (very likely) and intention. Now I will say to mods that if he attacks Catholicism, and the very tenets of the Christian Faith, a person can question his standing. He wonders why the Faith weakens.

He need only look at himself and the ACP. Any seminary training a priest to say the Mass as upheld by St Pius V at the Council of Trent have more candidates than they can take. If St Nicholas du Chardonnet have been left with the Conciliar Archdiocese of Paris, I highly doubt it would be standing room only. Attacking dogmas of the Faith will not convert anyone, except retain the aging fans of this 'rebel priest.' Reading his website (I won't link) shows a man of extraordinary pride, narcissism and egotism, a sort of showy, pretended humility that Jesus warned of with the Pharisees.

A choice exists between the failed heterodoxy of Flannery and the ACP, rebelling against imagined versions of bishops long dead, and the 'experiment of tradition.'