Tony Flannery

Following on from my blog posting of March 29th entitled “How much Church Doctrine do we really Believe”, a blog that in the way of social media got circulated, I recently got an email from Alfred Kracher in the U.S.
I think Alfred’s email expresses what I was trying to convey in a much clearer way than I could, so with his permission I reproduce it here:

Recently the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church re-published your blog “How much of Church Doctrine do we really believe?”

A development that has emerged from my ‘birthday’ Mass in January, and a number of things that I have written, and said in various media interviews, about Church doctrine and language, is that, with the co-operation of Noirin Ni Riain, I have been working with a small group of people, about fifteen in all, over the last couple of months. This is a varied group, women and men, younger and older, with a variety of different positions as regards religious institutions.

I know nothing at all, apart from whatever we learn from the official introduction, about the new Papal Nuncio. I am on record many times in my belief that his predecessor Charles Brown was something of a disaster for the Irish Church. His choices for new bishops left a lot to be desired, and continued the policy of depriving the Irish Church of effective leadership. His failure to meet and talk seriously to anyone with a critical view of the state of the church in Ireland was utterly inadequate in a time of obvious crisis in our church.