A man, who lives in London, wrote the following for the ACTA website in England. ACTA is the Church Reform movement in England and Wales
A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE by FR. TONY FLANNERY
Some weeks before Christmas I decided to buy myself a Christmas present. Having listened to Tony Flannery’s talk to the ACTA conferance, even though I couldn’t attend, I knew I had to read his account of his dealings with the Vatican.
I went to my local bookshop and ordered a copy of A Question of Conscience. Weeks went by but no book arrived. Enquiries revealed that the book is out of print. I was devastated. Why?
Because, judging from his talk to to ACTA, I felt that Tony Flannery was in a unique position to give us the truth about the Vatican. I needed to read his book. Fortunately a friend had a spare copy which he sent to me.
Why is truth important? Quite simply because Jesus said so. I took down my Jerusalem bible which I had used as a student and found John chapter 8 verses 31 to 33 heavily underlined by my 19 year old hand.
“When he spoke thus, many of the Jews learned to believe in him. And now Jesus said to those among the Jews who believed in him, ‘If you continue faithful to my word, you are my disciples in earnest; so you will come to know the truth. And the truth will set you free”‘
‘Come to know the truth’, What does that mean? Don’t we already know the truth? No we don’t. Is’nt Truth eternal? Yes it is , in an eternal world but we are temporal beings in a temporal world. For us truth is a life long search which we uncover little by little.
In those moments when we feel we have been in the presence of Truth, we each react in our own, individual way. In my case I always feel that I have received an immense blessing which I want to share with others. In Paul’s case it knocked him clean off his horse. You will react in your own unique way.
Here we have a book which I would like to urge you to read which is out of print. Until we can get crowd funding going to finance a reprint, I’m not going to put this book in my bookcase with all the other books which have formed me.
I’m going to put it out on loan. All you have to do is tell me you would like to read it, give me an address and I will post it to you. I will pay the postage. You will undertake to try to read it in a week or two and post it on to the next person on the list, paying the postage yourself.
It could easily be read by 25 people in a year. I am convinced that every Catholic needs to read this book, whether you are a PIP, a person in the pew, or one of the many PUPs, a person who used to be in the pew.
ARE YOU UP FOR IT? LET’S GET TO WORK THEN.
Looking forward to hearing from you
Brian
