Tony Flannery

A reminder that Tony Flannery will be the speaker at our meeting at 7.30pm on Monday 12th of October 2015 in the Jesuit Conference Centre, Milltown, Ranelagh, Dublin 4.

He will be sharing his views about the Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW) Conference in Philadelphia (18-20 September 2015) at which he was a speaker.

Please note that Tony Flannery has launched an urgent appeal looking for a group of priests, still active in ministry, who would be willing to put their names to a statement calling for open discussion on the equality of women, including all aspects of ministry.

Pope John Paul, followed by Pope Benedict, put the issue of womens’ ordination off the agenda, formally declaring that it cannot even be discussed. During Pope Benedict’s time an effort was made to make this into an infallible teaching.
I have no doubt that the issue of women’s place in the Catholic Church is going to be an increasingly defining question for the Church, and potentially the greatest obstacle to the Church fulfilling its mission of promoting the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I have been full of admiration for Pope Francis during his U.S. trip.  I thought his addresses to Congress, the United Nations and the U.S. bishops were excellent.  But on the way home in the plane, during the press briefing, he addressed the issue of womens ordination.  This is how it was reported by Joshua McElwee of the NCR:

“”Pope Francis has again forcefully rejected the possibility of female priests in the Catholic church, saying simply that his predecessor Pope John Paul II decided “that cannot be done.”