Tony Flannery

The Redemptorist Congregation has elected a new Superior General. He is a Brazilian, about whom I know little or nothing, so I won’t have any expectations, one was or another, about him.

The man who has completed two terms, a total of twelve years,  as Superior General, Michael Brehl, is the person who oversaw all the years of my dealing with the Vatican Congregation, the CDF. In all truth, the only thing I can say is that I do not lament his going.

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.