Tony Flannery

ACP EXPRESSES DISAPPOINTMENT OVER POPE’S COMMENTS ON WOMEN DEACONS

Saturday 11 May 2019

Pope Francis’s comments on women deacons at the press conference on the plane back from Bulgaria, his kicking the can down a timeless road, is a major disappointment. We had come to expect reactions like this from previous popes, but we thought Francis was different, and consequently our disappointment is greater.

The equality of women is critical for the credibility and the future of the Church. 

Pope Francis and the Women Deacons.

After all the times I have defended Francis, and praised his efforts at doing something to reform the Church, I now find myself unable to say a word in his defense over his remarks on the report of the commission he set up three years ago to study if women were deacons in the early Church.
First of all, he has this report for some months; he should not have used a casual, informal chat with reporters on a plane as the occasion to give his response to it.

My Problem with the Liturgy of Holy Week.

The traditional Catholic teaching about Jesus is that he came on earth to save us. Our salvation was necessary because the sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve, had angered God, and in his anger he closed the gate of Heaven against humanity. Jesus, by his suffering and death, appeased the anger of God, and restored Heaven to us humans. The liturgy of Holy Week is full of this notion:
“He came among us as a man, to free mankind from darkness”.