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Post by hibernicus on Sept 25, 2020 21:06:53 GMT
In the comments thread on this post, which denounces the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for asking Fr Tony Flannery to subscribe to Catholic doctrine, which Fr Flannery has refused to do, Fr Joseph O'Leary, who wants the EF Mass to be "dumped", complaining about the CDF excommunicating six eledrly nuns in the Little Rock diocese who think their foundress is a reincarnation of the Virgin Mary. He even speculates on the mental state of the CDF: EXTRACT Sean, to bring the hammer of excommunication down on an 82 year old woman who thinks her foundress reincarnates the BVM seems to demand psychoanalytical explanation. In leaping to the defence of the BVM so ferociously, do the CDF monsignors reveal some sort of mother complex? END OF EXTRACT www.associationofcatholicpriests.ie/2020/09/vatican-cardinal-defends-issuing-fidelity-oaths-to-irish-priest-tony-flannery/ To make things clear, these nuns own their convent and continue to live there - they will not be thrown out on the streets, and probably have followers who help support them. Leaving aside "the defence of the BVM", which is not so trivial as Fr O'Leary appears to think it, is he not aware of the dangers that can arise from false prophets (delusional or malicious) who lead people to believe that their own arbitrary nostrums emanate directly from Heaven and must be obeyed as if they came from God? The horrible story of the Palmarians is one of many examples of the evils and sufferings to which this can lead. I can think of certain dioceses who have NOT cracked down on dodgy prophets as they might have done, leaving vulnerable people to be manipulated and fleeced. I also wonder if Fr O'Leary has ever uttered a squeak of sympathy for traditional-minded religious who have been bullied by various superiors and supposed confreres for not wanting to go along with the latest fad?
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 19, 2020 21:57:48 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 19, 2020 22:12:05 GMT
Fr Brendan Hoban thinks the bishops were wrong to ask whether we might be allowed to go to Mass again (pretty please). Instead, he thinks, they should have prohibited all religious gatherings whatsoever and asked the faithful to grin and bear it in the sacred name of public health. What a pity Fr Hoban was not there to tell the early Christians that being thrown to the lions is bad for your health and they should get their priorities right. Fr Hoban is much more impressed by the inspired leadership of Emperors Martin, Varadkar and Ryan, and hastes to burn incense before them by reminding us all that they are not President Trump, just in case we hadn't noticed. The record which these gentlemen are establishing for dismantling some inconvenient Commandments of course goes unmentioned. Lest there be anything lacking, Fr Hoban concludes by assuming that a Catholic newspaper editor who complains that the lockdown is an infringement on religious liberty is a hypocrite who only wants to sell more newspapers. Does Fr Hoban always assume that anyone who disagrees with him must be dishonest, or has he replaced belief in papal infallibility with belief in his own infallibility? Certain parts of the Irish Church seem to have acquired the subservience to the temporal power associated with old-style state churches, without even getting the temporal benefits involved. www.associationofcatholicpriests.ie/2020/10/was-the-bishops-intervention-wise-asks-brendan-hoban-in-his-weekly-western-people-column/
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Oct 20, 2020 12:32:16 GMT
I just read Father Hoban's piece, which I found an unbelievable piece of sycophancy. I couldn't believe the line up who praised it.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Oct 20, 2020 21:26:51 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 20, 2020 22:32:53 GMT
Fr Joseph O'Leary, of all people, has quite a good reply to Fr Flannery's caricature of Christianity in the combox to the post linked below: EXTRACTS I’m disappointed at the tone of what he’s reported as saying in the Irish Times in March 2017: “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”. The Fathers of the Church and the medieval Scholastics never speak of God like this, and it sounds more like what New Atheists say, or just pub talk. Again ‘Science revealed that “creation was not just an event of ancient history, but is an ongoing reality.”’ This is directed against biblical fundamentalism, not Catholic theology, and savours of inverted fundamentalism. ‘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.”‘ Divine immanence in creation and divine omnipresence include all this. Setting it up as a critique of classical theology is superficial... ‘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.’ This is very tired stuff. The Bible gives a positive valorization of suffering and death as redeeming sacrifice (which we can all participate in). This is a response to human suffering, not an increase of it. It gives meaning to suffering, rather than putting the boot in. The picture of God sadistically scheming a horrible death for Jesus is a distortion closer to “Waiting for Godot” than to the Gospel. Rather God is seen as sending his Son to lay down his life on behalf of all, an act of love. God accompanies humans in their suffering, and as proof thereof he sent his only Son on our behalf. ‘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”’. Well the historicity of the saying in Mark, that the Son of Man came to give his life as a ransom for the many, is quite probable. In John the entire mission and identity of Jesus is that he is Saviour of the World, salvator mundi. There is no need to be hung up on mediaeval representations that theology has been demythologizating for three hundred years, and there is no need to throw out the Pauline and Johannine baby with the mediaeval bathwater either. END OF EXTRACT www.associationofcatholicpriests.ie/2020/10/tony-flannerys-new-book-from-the-outside-zoom-launch-wed-21st-oct-7-30pm/
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Oct 22, 2020 9:16:04 GMT
They seem to have pulled this commented, for whatever reason.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 26, 2020 18:40:52 GMT
Perhaps Fr O'Leary pulled it himself. It would be uncharitable to suggest the ACP might be opposed to censorship except when they're doing the censoring.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 26, 2020 18:43:33 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 11, 2020 19:52:48 GMT
Scene One - The faithful rejoice at being allowed to attend Mass for Christmas. Scene Two - The Association of Catholic Grinches (sorry, Priests) suggests that parishes should refrain from celebrating public masses for Christmas, and tell those retrogrades who want to attend Mass that they must make sacrifices for the general good. Comment is superfluous. www.associationofcatholicpriests.ie/2020/12/acp-statement-on-christmas-masses/
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 18, 2020 1:29:29 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 19, 2020 22:46:22 GMT
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Post by assisi on Dec 30, 2020 16:27:16 GMT
Yes, if you were an agnostic looking to be converted to Catholicism, you would read his articles and come away seeing a man more animated by County sport than religion. Looks like the ACP are liberals first, Catholics as an optional add on.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 22, 2021 0:14:32 GMT
One Dr John O'Loughlin Kennedy has just published a book called THE CURIA IS THE POPE, which the ACP promoted by linking their website to its Zoom launch. To be fair to the ACP, it also links to a review of the book by Fr Joseph O'Leary. Anyone looking back over this thread will see that Fr O'Leary has some very strange views, but he knows something about patristics, which Dr O'Loughlin Kennedy apparently does not. For example, Fr O'Leary points out that St Irenaeus in the second century is already emphasising the need for doctrinal orthodoxy and speaks of the Church of Rome as being a particular guarantor of the true faith. (St Irenaeus was Greek and served as Bishop of Lyons, so he can hardly have had a very strong pro-Roman bias.) Again, Dr O'Loughlin Kennedy claims that Constantine's endorsement of Christianity led to an influx of pagan priests into the Christian ministry and that this was responsible for the replacement of house churches with public liturgies and of spontaneous celebrations with the idea that the liturgy must be celebrated the same way every time and be the same everywhere. Fr O'Leary points out that he knows of no evidence for such an influx of pagan priests into the Church and he cannot think of a single influential bishop of the C4 who had been a pagan priest. (Indeed, common sense would suggest this is unlikely, given that pagan temples operated side by side with the Church for another 80 years or so.) Indeed, Dr O'Loughlin Kennedy seems to assume that Constantine was able to remould the Church in his own image without much difficulty. Anyone acquainted with the theological conflicts of the C4 and C5, some involving open conflict between emperors and leading bishops, will find this unlikely. Dr O'Leary does not speculate on the reasons for these blunders and others noted in the review, but I will suggest one. Dr O'Loughlin Kennedy seems to have fallen victim to one of the besetting problems of the historical-critical method, namely starting from the unquestioned assumption that the early Church must have been some form of liberal Protestantism and that the liturgical form taken not only in the Roman and Greek churches but by the Syriac and Coptic breakaways of the C5 must have been later developments. Once such an assumption is made, it is self-sealing except by something very striking (such as the recent discovery of a version of the "Refugium tuum/We fly to thy protection" prayer by students of Egyptian papyrology in a stratum dated well before "high" Mariology was supposed to have originated). As Newman put it, whatever the early Church was it was not Protestant, and to be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant. www.associationofcatholicpriests.ie/2021/01/book-review-the-curia-is-the-pope-by-dr-john-oloughlin-kennedy/
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 10, 2021 17:29:00 GMT
Fr Brendan Hoban, longterm stalwart of the ACP, praises the suppression of the TLM on the grounds that it's being used as a vehicle for dissent. On that basis Fr Hoban should advocate suppression of the ACP, but I won't hold my breath. In other news, the pot calls for the suppression of the kettle because of its unacceptable blackness, Larry the Cat found rolling around Downing Street paralytic with laughter, and Satan issues an official statement rebuking sin. www.associationofcatholicpriests.ie/2021/08/brendan-hoban-latin-mass-became-a-vehicle-for-dissent/
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