Tony Flannery

Beyond Priests. The future of ministry in the Catholic Church

In Beyond Priests Paul Collins contends that the requirements of the clerical priesthood of the Catholic Church – that all priests must be male and celibate – is a gross distortion of scripture and the church’s early history that must be changed. While the roots of the modern priesthood go back to the fourth century and even more remotely to the presbyters or elders who advised local bishops in the early church, the contemporary model that a priest is ontologically changed into ‘another Christ’ is very much the product of seventeenth-century French reformers acting to apply the 1563 decree on the priesthood of the Council of Trent. 

I recently fulfilled an invitation I had received from the parish of The Holy Name Catholic Church in Newcastle (England). Me being invited to speak on Catholic property anywhere is something not to be missed. It was the second time I had this type of opportunity since my silencing — the other one being in the U.S. eleven years ago. The parish priest in this parish, in the heart of Newcastle, is Michael Campion, a Kilkenny man, and a wonderful person.

Bishop Willie Walsh, or ‘Willie’ as we normally referred to him – he was the most unclerical of bishops – has died at the age of ninety, having lived a life in all its fullness. After his ordination in 1962 he studied Canon Law, something which hardly suited his flexible nature.  The study of Church law can often have a substantial effect on a person, making them legalistic and somewhat rigid.