Tony Flannery

It is quite a while since I have written anything in my blog. But now we have turned a new year, and even though I will be seventy three in two weeks time, there is still a sense, even if only a small one, of a new beginning.

The last few months of twenty nineteen contained two potentially significant happenings in my life.

First, the house I have been living in for the past eight years, since my “withdrawal from ministry” (to use the official Redemptorist phrase for what took place in my life in 2012) was sold, and now I am based back in my monastery.

What an interesting turn of events in Pahrump, Nevada:

 

Diamond D’s brothel began construction on an expansion of their building to increase their ever-growing business.

In response, the local Baptist Church started a campaign to block the business from expanding — with morning, afternoon, and evening prayer sessions at their church

Work on Diamond D’s progressed right up until the week before the grand re-opening when lightning struck the whorehouse and burned it to the ground!

I was at the conference in Trinity College, entitled ‘Women the Vatican couldn’t Silence’, with Sr. Joan Chittister and Mary McAleese.

It was a really interesting two hours or more. I suppose I am fairly familiar with the views of Mary McAleese on matters of Church and Faith, having heard her many times, so I was more interested in what Joan Chittister would say. I know Joan, though not that well, and I have read a lot of her writing, and also the brilliant biography of her written by Tom Roberts.