On Saturday October 21st last I was one of the speakers at a conference in Birmingham organized by ACTA, the Catholic Church Reform Movement of England and Wales. It was a marvelous event, with a packed hall of over two hundred people in attendance, representing every diocese in the two countries. The main theme of the day was to reflect on the future of parishes in the context of the rapid decline in numbers of priests available for ministry.
A couple I met today asked me to explain how the Vatican sanctions effected me. Apart from not being allowed to minister publicly as a priest, I also told them how quickly I was shut out from doing anything on catholic property. I looked back at my speaking tour of the U.S. in the autumn of 2014. The locations were as follows;
Washington: Augustana Lutheran Church.
Baltimore: Faith Presbyterian Church.
Philadelphia: University of the Sciences.
These are the main findings of the report, (see previous posting), as compiled by the Centre which sponsored the work. To put it mildly, it is fairly dramatic; it delves into the underlying causes of clerical sexual abuse in a way that the various Irish reports seriously failed to do. (The only exception to this is Marie Keenan’s study.)
Its authors, Professor Des Cahill and Dr Peter Wilkinson, are both ordained priests who resigned from church ministry in the 1970s.
