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Twelve years ago I was suspended from Catholic ministry. It gave me a new freedom

Rite & Reason: To make dogmatic statements about the mystery of God was, and continues to be, a great mistake

Redemptorist priest Fr Tony Flannery was suspended from public ministry by the Vatican in 2012. 'Religious faith deals with the world of mystery; the existence and nature of God; the meaning and purpose of life, death and its aftermath.' Photograph: Alan Betson

Fr Tony Flannery
Sun Mar 24 2024 - 11:15

“Unless religion changes and adapts to the evolving world, it cannot do what it has the capacity to do: enkindle a zest for life.”

That is a quote from Franciscan theologian Sr Ilia Delio, an acknowledged expert on French Jesuit priest and philosopher Teilhard de Chardin. The sentence resonates greatly with me, and sums up a lot of my thinking about the state of the church in Ireland, and indeed of the Catholic Church generally.

It is clear that in Ireland the Catholic Church is in a state of rapid, and possibly terminal decline, though my hope is that there is still the possibility of new life but maybe with different structures.

Twelve years ago, I was suspended from ministry by church authorities, and while I spoke at many gatherings during the earlier days of that suspension period, it is now several years since I addressed a public gathering.

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Next Wednesday, I will address a public gathering in Galway for the first time in six years. This came about following an invitation I received to speak at an event in the city. That invitation was cancelled at fairly short notice when the authorities became aware that my suspension covered not just church buildings but all church-owned property. Since I felt that I might just have something worth saying, I decided to organise the event myself, this time in decidedly non-church property: a hotel in Galway city.

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Over these recent years, outside church structures and systems, I have experienced a freedom in my reading and study, which has convinced me of a number of things that are contributing greatly to the decline of our church. This has coincided with what I believe will be Pope Francis’s greatest legacy, creating a climate for free discussion, study and speaking within the church.

Religious faith deals with the world of mystery; the existence and nature of God; the meaning and purpose of life, death and its aftermath. To make dogmatic statements about, and in some cases to even go so far as to define, mysteries that are beyond full comprehension was and continues to be a great mistake.

I have always been taken by a quote from the Jesuit Fr Anthony de Mello; “Anything we say about God is more unlike God than like God.” If some of the humility displayed by de Mello was shown by the early Fathers of the Church it would have prevented a great deal of damage brought about by the imposition of dogmatic certainties down through the centuries.

In the third and fourth centuries, the Christian leaders and scholars, basing themselves on a literal interpretation of the story of creation in the early chapters of the Book of Genesis, defined dogmas that described God, his relationship with humanity, the sin of our first parents and its enormous consequences for all posterity.

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They told us about Jesus, who he was, why he came on Earth, and that God decreed that Jesus must die a very painful death in order to atone for sin and open the gates of Heaven to humanity.

We were taught that because of the sin of our first parents, all humans were born in a sinful state, and could only come back into good grace with God by being baptised. All in all, it was a doleful tale, and painted a picture of an angry and judgmental God. It was all just about as contrary to the God that Jesus talked about as one could possibly imagine.

The real problem with this was that by declaring dogmas that must be held by all the faithful, they effectively stymied any possible development of thought and understanding in the church.

Since the council of Nicea in 325 AD, a great deal has been learned about creation as an ongoing event, about the complexity of the universe and of human life, and about the intimate relationship we humans have with all of creation. Also, we now recognise that the Bible is not a historical account as we understand it today, but more a statement of a belief system, using stories, allegories, symbols.

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These new understandings were never allowed to influence church thinking, and so the world has, in a sense, passed us by.

This is the area that I will address in my talk.

It is a difficult topic about which I certainly don’t have the last word, and I will probably leave people with more questions than answers. Now in my late 70s, I am more comfortable with questions than with certainties, and some recent statements by Pope Francis suggest that he certainly doesn’t respond well to people who believe they have all the answers.

Fr Tony Flannery is a Redemptorist priest. His talk is at 7.30pm on Wednesday, March 27th, at the Clayton Hotel in Galway city. The talk won’t be long, and will leave plenty of time for reaction and discussion. There is no entrance fee, but donations on the night will be appreciated solely to cover the cost of renting the hotel room

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