It has recently been announced by our Redemptorist superiors that Reality Magazine will cease publication at the end of the year, after over seventy years as a monthly magazine of the Redemptorists. It is no surprise. All aspects of print media are finding life difficult, and this is especially so for religious magazines.
But for me there is a certain sadness in this announcement. I was a regular columnist for the magazine for many years.
Credit, and it is the accurate word, must also go to those articulate women who have trenchantly argued the case for equality for their gender in the church down the years as well as speaking forcefully on behalf of marginalised groups such as LGBTI+ people; women such as former president Mary McAleese, Ursula Halligan of We Are Church Ireland and long-time advocate for women’s ordination Soline Humbert, among others.
Nor should the contribution of the Association of Catholic Priests over the past 10 years be underestimated, particularly of co-founders Fr Brendan Hoban and Fr Tony Flannery, who is himself now 10 years out of public ministry in the church because he called for the changes subsequently repeated in the National Synthesis document.
In an article in the current issue of La-Croix, Robert Mickens, the Vatican correspondent, gave three examples of top Church figures, two cardinals and an archbishop, making public statements calling for radical change in Catholic Church teachings and practice, and even in doctrine.
The first was Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich. Cardinal Marx is one of the select group of advisors, and also a close friend, of Pope Francis.The 68-year-old cardinal made a big splash this past week when he said clerical celibacy should be optional.
