After a very pleasant and enjoyable series of talks in various parts of the country, my ‘caravan’ is now coming to the capital.
I am talking in the Stillorgan Park Hotel on Wednesday next, April 2nd, at 8.OOpm
So far the response has been very good. I speak for about forty five minutes. First of all I acknowledge that the Church is in difficulty at present, and that seems to be fairly universally accepted.
On the one hand, we read reports of the Pope’s compassionate, non-judgmental response to questions about gay priests and gay marriage. On the other hand, we read that Fr Flannery had been silenced and banned from saying Mass, albeit by the machinations that the Pope himself seeks to reform.
A few weeks ago I addressed a gathering of the CWO, the Catholic Womens Ordination movement in London. I think it could accurately be said that, as far as the official Church is concerned, these people are the untouchables of today. We are not supposed to engage in conversation with them, since even talking about the topic that their movement promotes is forbidden.
The group I met with on that Saturday afternoon were about as far removed from being a dangerous body of people as you could imagine.
