Tony Flannery

FR. JAMES KEENAN

In the recent discussions raised by San Diego Cardinal Robert McElroy on “radical inclusion,” for LGBTQ people and others in the Catholic Church, one obstacle posed is the consistent teaching of the church in sexual ethics. As a moral theologian, I believe it is worth knowing how and why those teachings were formed in the first place. History helps us to see that underlying that “consistency” are a number of matters that convey an overriding negative estimation of human sexuality.

Because of something I am currently involved in, I have had occasion to go back over all the documentation relating to my dismissal from priestly ministry eleven years ago, which I hadn’t done in a good number of years. It made again for interesting reading, especially coming at it from the perspective of that length of time. What really stood out for me now was the use made by my superior general of what is known in religious life terms as a ‘formal precept of obedience’.

Peter Keenan is an interesting, and very learned, writer on the Bible. He has recently published the second of a trilogy on the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus, enititled The Death of Jesus the Jew.

It is being launched in the Unitarian Church in Cork next Saturday at 3.00pm. I will be speaking at it, and so will the very distinguished writer, Diarmuid O Murchu.

There are two main themes in Peter’s book.