Monthly Archives: July 2011

07/31/11

Following God’s Calling, Not Man’s

Historically, a number of brave women have established themselves as a catalyst for change, dedicating their lives to a cause that becomes so compelling that they’re willing to risk everything they know to achieve their goal.

One such woman is Lexington resident and peace activist Janice Sevre-Duszynska. As a member of the Roman Catholic Women Priests, she and others like her relentlessly challenge the church’s dogma including their right to be ordained as priests. Her story and those of many other determined women have been featured in Pink Smoke Over the Vatican, a documentary that played at the Esquire Theatre earlier this month.

Although Sevre-Duszynska remains committed to her quest for reform, the bigger question remains: Will members of a church steeped in tradition and conservative values ever recognize women as priests?

The calling to join the priesthood emerged around the time of her first communion, Sevre-Duszynska says. Growing up in a predominantly Polish-Catholic neighborhood in Milwaukee, she says at age 10 she was ask to help tidy the sanctuary (the part of the church where the altar is located). While cleaning, she says she lived her dream by pretending to celebrate mass as a priest.

Her ambitions almost drove her to step into the sanctuary as an ‘altar girl’ during a mass, a rite reserved only for young boys, but she stopped short fearing she would get her superior in trouble. Reading the gospels at a young age, Sevre-Duszynska realized Jesus also loved women and saw them as equals, not inferior members of the church. She pays homage to her mother for passing on the sense of liberation theology that caused her to question Catholic dogma and the role of women. After mass, Sevre-Duszynska’s mother would question the homily pointing out male priest’s disconnect to women lives as well as the real world.

“My mother was dropping this little seed in me, saying not only do they not have the lived experience of raising a family, they don’t know what is a woman’s lived experience,” she says. “My mother taught me what’s really important is my relationship to God and my relationship to others.”

Her desire lay dormant for many years until a series of events reshaped her life. In the 1980s, she and her family moved from Milwaukee to Lexington, Ky. A few years later, one of her two sons was killed in an automobile accident, and subsequently her marriage of nearly 25 years ended in divorce. Experiencing such devastating loss motivated her in more spiritual directions. In 1998, Sevre-Duszynska made national news when she interrupted an ordination ceremony at the Cathedral of Christ the King in Lexington.

“I walked up there and said, ‘I am called upon by the holy spirit to present myself for ordination — my name is Janice, I ask this for myself and all women,’ and I prostrated myself on the alter like a male candidates for priest,” she says. “So, I’m down on the ground and Bishop Williams says, ‘Get back to your seat you’re disrupting the service.’ Well, I always say it wasn’t disrupting it was interrupting.”

In 2000, Sevre-Duszynska garnered media attention yet again during a U.S. bishop’s conference in Washington, D.C., where she made a public announcement during the gathering calling for the ordination of women priests. After organizers silenced her microphone, she refused to leave the meeting until police escorted her out of the hotel.

Two years later, Sevre-Duszynska was arrested and charged with trespass after she refused to leave a diaconate ordination in Atlanta where she and several others protested sexism in the church. In 2001, she hung a banner in Rome during a bishop meeting that called for the ordination of women priests in eight languages.

“I was known as the sign lady and the banner lady and I headed up the ministry of irritation,” she says.

Her journey began to see fruition in 2006, when she was ordained a deacon of the church by the order of Roman Catholic Women Priests in Pittsburgh. She continued her preparation by studying theology at Lexington Theological Seminary working toward her doctorate, adding to her master’s degree in theater from the University of Kentucky.

In 2008, Sevre-Duszynska was ordained a “womanpriest” by the order at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Lexington. With more than 150 people in attendance, she celebrated the joyous event with family, friends, fellow peace activists and supporters of the women’s ordination movement including three male priests in good standing.

The Rev. Roy Bourgeois delivered the homily, an act that would have lasting repercussions. After sending invitations to a number of male priests, Bourgeois called to tell her he would be proud to attend and deliver the homily.

“I said, ‘I know you know what you’re doing — but do you know what you’re doing?’ ” she says.

The two met as peace activists in their shared quest to close the U.S. Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga. — an organization accused of training paramilitary assassins for militant groups in South America. During a 2001 protest, Sevre-Duszynska crossed into the base, resulting in a sentence of three months in federal prison.

The School of the Americas, recently renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) is believed to be responsible for several deaths in El Salvador including those of Catholic priest and activist Oscar Romero, six Jesuit priests and four Catholic nuns, two of whom were members of the Maryknoll order. As a Catholic priest in the order of the Maryknolls, a division of the Catholic Church that helps poor and repressed people overseas, Bourgeois was friends with the two women.

“For the next year, I was full-time building a movement calling for the closing of School of the Americas and the training of all of these soldiers coming from El Salvador and all of these other countries, all paid for by our tax money,” Bourgeois says. “I was zigzagging all over the country talking about this injustice in El Salvador and the injustice in the school of the Americas and then I discovered an injustice much closer to home in my church.”

With a sincere ring in his voice, Bourgeois recalls how he wrestled with his conscience over his own beliefs. While away on missions, he met a number of women like Janice who received a calling from God to be priests. Until then, he never really questioned church tradition, but tells how he was unable to reconcile one question that continued to haunt him.

“As Catholics, we do profess that God created men and women of equal dignity — and as Catholic priests, we always say the call to be a priest comes from God,” he says. “So I began to ask a very important and basic question, ‘Who are we as man to reject God’s call of women? How can we as men say that our call from God is authentic but God’s call of women is not?’ ”

After returning home from Sevre-Duszynska’s ordination ceremony, Bourgeois received a call from Maryknoll headquarters requesting a meeting with the superior general and general council in order to explain his actions. Two months later, he received ‘the letter’ from the Vatican stating he had 30 days to recant his belief and public statements for the ordination of women or be excommunicated from the church.

During his visit to headquarters, Bourgeois says he posed the question to the Maryknoll council and other priests in the church; their response, he says, was silence. After crafting a lengthy and passionate letter to the Vatican, Bourgeois says he received the no response or even acknowledgment of its receipt.

By ultimately following his conscience, Bourgeois says he refused and continues to refuse to remain silent about the issue and gives talks around the country in support of ordaining women priests. As a result, two months ago — a little more than two years since he attended Sevre-Duszynska’s ordination — Bourgeois received another summons to Maryknoll headquarters in New York. Superiors ordered him to recant his statement within 15 days or receive expulsion from the Maryknolls, his family and community for more than 39 years.

Bourgeois says he visits the mailbox every day expecting the final letter. He likes to joke that his chances of winning the Georgia State Lottery are better than his chances of being allowed to remain in the order.

But a small glimmer of hope arrived recently in a copy of a letter sent to the Vatican. Bourgeois says it was signed by more than 100 priests in good standing supporting his position to honor his conscience. Bourgeois believes hope lies in sheer numbers, with more and more people in the church coming forward in support. Many of them have supported female ordination for some time but are afraid to come forward because of harsh repercussions. He particularly questions the church’s stand on excommunication for supporters of women priests in relation to some other scandals that rocked the church.

“How many priests has the Vatican kicked out or excommunicated for their crimes against children?” he says. “There’s none — not a single one. They have not excommunicated them or the bishops who have covered up the crimes. That continues to be a big issue in the Catholic Church.”

To date, the Roman Catholic Women Priests movement boasts 120 female priests with branches in in Eastern and Western Europe, Eastern and Western Canada and the United States, says womanpriest Bridget Mary Meehan. In addition, Meehan says she recently ordained the first woman in South America expanding the order to yet another continent. She explains the grassroots movement continues to play by church rules, a measure necessary to gain credibility.

She says of the seven womenpriests originally ordained on the Danube in 2002, two were later ordained secretly by a male bishop in good standing. As part of apostolic succession in the Catholic religion, the church only recognizes priests ordained by chosen bishops in good standing; an act that was completed under the veil of secrecy, but carried out nonetheless, Meehan says.

“That means they recognize apostolic succession and a male bishop would need to ordain us,” Meehan says. “We got that, and that’s the part that they hate. They take the movement seriously and they’ve done everything they could to punish us because they see it as a direct threat to the all-male, patriarchal dominant model. It’s a threat to the male authority power structure of the church.”

The movement includes more reforms than simply ordaining women, Meehan adds. The grassroots movement looks to reinvent the church into a more egalitarian, circular model where all members participate and feel empowered.

The group believes the Catholic Church in its current state bears little resemblance to the vision of Jesus. She tells of how in all four gospels, Jesus appears after his resurrection to Mary Magdelene, who is still widely believed to be the apostle to the apostles. When traditionalists question her right to be a priest, she counters with historic evidence of women priests in the church more than 1,200 years ago.

“Women priests are reclaiming our ancient tradition of women in ordained ministry,” Meehan says. “People who are guardians of the tradition and traditionalist Catholics should celebrate that women are taking their rightful place following the example of Jesus, who had male and female disciples — all they have to do is read the gospels.”

Pink Smoke Over the Vatican, the award-winning documentary directed by Jules Hart, follows the lives of several women, including Sevre-Duszynska, and their quest for ordination.

With all the adversity these women face in the Catholic Church, the question arises why don’t women like Meehan and Sevre-Duszynska simply embrace another faith that ordains women as church leaders — why fight the fight?

For Sevre-Duszynska, she simply professes Catholicism to be her religion since birth and her religion of choice. Other churches have approached her, but she still feels connected to her roots. She says while reform needs to occur within the church, she can’t help but love the institution based on the gospels and filled with patron saints that has always been a part of her life.

“Why should I leave the richness and all of my experiences in the church that I worked to and was called upon to speak out and challenge it?” she asks. “I feel like a daughter of the church, why would I want to leave it?”

Complete Article HERE!

07/31/11

The Power of Religion To Influence Corporate Responsibility

The recent experience of the near calamitous meltdown of the financial system was a clear indication of what can happen when unbridled greed and inadequate regulation are given free rein. The controversies swirling around News Corp are another ugly example of what happens when an ethical values system isn’t in place in the boardroom and powerful, intimidating personalities are given permission to create a culture that prizes “scooping” their competitors over serving the public good.

The question is: what can these debacles teach us about the role of ethics and morality in the marketplace and, perhaps more importantly, are we ready to learn?

As the director of the Faith Consistent Investment ministry of my congregation, I have been engaged in shareholder advocacy and corporate social responsibility since the early 70s. Recognizing the enormous influence global corporations have to impact the “common good”, my colleagues and I press CEOs and management to scrutinize their business practices on a myriad of issues from policies on lending and executive compensation, to water use in drought-prone areas and to human rights abuses in the supply chain wherever they source products or services. In the early 90′s I began to notice that corporate management referred quite often to the unique culture of their particular company and the values and practices that flowed from that culture. It became clear to me that there was a concerted effort on the part of responsible management to codify these values within the context of an identity statement that was part of the organizational DNA that would govern both its internal and external behavior.

An ethical values system has proven to be an important ingredient in the delivery of quality services and products, and the key to building customer loyalty, employee satisfaction and long term viability. But where do these values systems come from?

Historically, it can be demonstrated that the impact of faith on the social responsibility of any given corporation can be traced directly to the religion and character of the owner or CEO and how he/she integrated their value system into the corporation’s identity and operations. It was generally assumed that the decisions and actions of the business leader directing the corporation were significantly influenced by the religious principles at the foundation of their personal lives.

Religion’s impact is also seen through debate in the legislative and rule making processes whereby societies regulate businesses. As corporations are granted a license to operate they are expected to comply with the principles and constraints that are included. Basic values such as honesty, transparency, responsibility, fairness and integrity that are common to most faith traditions are included in this social contract.

A number of things that have changed over the last 75 years have profoundly impacted the intersection of religion and corporations. Let me briefly identify four of these changes and the consequences that flow from them.

Evolving Business Models: The Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) is the predominant business model today. LLCs whether public or privately held are managed and owned by a diverse group of professionals and shareholders, each with their own religious beliefs. These new models are less likely to be strongly shaped by the values and beliefs that business leaders or employees bring to them.
Influence of Corporations on all aspects of life: The legislative and political landscape, our culture and priorities are all profoundly shaped by the influence of corporations. This is true within the business and economic sectors, but also in the development initiatives that are taking place in some of the remotest villages and communities across the world. These are spaces where religious institutions, as spiritual guides and teachers of their followers, compete directly for public influence.
Access to information: The democratization of information through the development of the Internet and other modes of communication and travel have uncovered accounts of corporate abuses from all corners of the world. This has awakened an acute awareness of the relatedness that exists between people and communities because of the products and services that they rely on.
Active ownership of shareholders: Church communities and values-driven individuals who hold shares in corporations or are stakeholders in corporations have become increasingly more organized and active in the responsible exercise of their ownership and their stakeholder positions. This has resulted in direct and productive engagement by religious institutions with the management of major global corporations on a host of issues.
But for too many of us, corporate behavior is an abstraction and disconnected from our daily lives and so, the Banking and News Corp headlines are just that: headlines that produce momentary outrage but no meaningful change in corporate behavior. We must demand that corporations behave ethically and in service of the common good and bring values back to the boardroom.

http://tinyurl.com/3h9utyc

07/31/11

Michael O’Flaherty to Head Northern Irish Human Rights Commission

Michael O’Flaherty, who is still formally a Catholic priest and who was heavily involved in the creation of a radical gay rights document, is to take over as the head of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission.

O’Flaherty, who has not been attached to any diocese for some years but has never been formally laicised, was a leading figure in the drafting of the Yogyakarta Principles, which advocates, among other things, legalising gay adoption.

He is to take over from Professor Monica McWilliams in September.

O’Flaherty, who currently serves as Ireland’s UN Human Rights Committee (HRC) member, is also a Professor of Applied Human Rights at the University of Nottingham. In 2008 The Irish Catholic newspaper reported that the Irish government’s Department of Foreign Affairs had undertaken “extensive lobbying” on his behalf to ensure that he was re-elected as a representative on the HRC.

The newspaper said that Professor O’Flaherty “campaigns on a radical gay rights agenda” and that he was a Galway priest, but had “not ministered in the Galway diocese for a number of years.” Subsequent to the Irish government’s lobbying, he was re-elected to the UN Committee on Human Rights.

Professor O’Flaherty, who is an academic at the University of Nottingham, will take up the post on September 19 and will be paid €87,500. Mr Paterson has also appointed an entirely new set of commissioners, with none of the existing commissioners being re-appointed.

They will be replaced by victims’ advocate Alan McBride, Singapore-born former Equality Commission member Paul Yam, former senior social worker Marion Reynolds, retired PSNI chief inspector Milton Kerr, NIPSA general secretary John Corey, former civil servant Christine Collins and Grania Young, director of the Chartered Institute of Housing in Northern Ireland.

Professor McWilliams said she was “delighted” by the choice of her successor and added “His outstanding reputation is a great reassurance for the future work of this commission.”

The Yogyakarta Principles, drafted in 2006, is a document that sets out sweeping and detailed recommendations about advancing homosexual and transsexual rights.

Among its many recommendations are the introduction of gay adoption, the right of prisoners to have “gender-reassignment treatments”, the use of schools to ensure that children are educated to have “understanding of and respect for … diverse sexual orientations and gender identities,” positive discrimination to favour gay individuals and the suggestion that freedom of expression may have to be limited to protect gay rights

Currently, the Principles have no legal status. However, according to C-Fam, a Catholic human rights body that monitors the UN and the EU, the lobbying effort of these three groups is an attempt to elevate them to the status of “soft law.” This would enable bodies charged with reviewing countries’ compliance with international treaties be referenced in more formal contexts, such as by the UN committees, which monitor the implementation of international treaties.

In turn this would allow homosexual rights’ groups to argue that domestic legislation on such issues should give way to new, evolving soft-law international norms, despite the absence of reference to such “norms” in actual hard-law treaties ratified by sovereign nations.

http://tinyurl.com/437q9tn

07/31/11

Miami’s Catholic leaders accused of running underground gay sex mafia

In disturbing news: One of Florida’s most powerful Catholic leaders is being accused of running the Miami Archdiocese like a gay sexual mafia boss.

Gawker reports that a group of Catholics from South Florida calling their organization Christifidelis had launched a major investigation into the activities of Archbishop Emeritus John C. Favalora. In a report from Christifidelis called “Miami Vice,” the group found that Favalora was part owner of a company that manufactured an aphrodisiac drink and took trips to Key West with “gay associates.”

He also reportedly had sexual relationships with several underlings, including at least two monsignors, a rector, and a former student. The report indicated that many other priests in South Florida are gay and have live-in boyfriends. Some engaged in pedophilia.

Favalora resigned eight months before his 75th birthday, when archbishops routinely retire. Soon after, new archbishop Thomas Wenski was supposedly brought in to “clean up Favalora’s mess,” a source told Gawker. Many of the 35 priests named in the report had either retired or been reassigned.

The full story can be read in graphic detail at Gawker.

07/29/11

Monsignor, other clerics to stand trial together

Monsignor William Lynn, former head of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s Office for Clergy, and three other current or former priests were ordered Friday to stand trial together for conspiracy to endanger the welfare of children.

Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Lillian Ransom denied defense motions to throw out the conspiracy charges against Lynn and the other defendants in the high profile case involving sexual assaults on two boys in the 1990s.

Revs. Charles Engelhardt, 64, and Edward Avery, 68, and Bernard Shero, 47, a former 6th grade teacher at St. Jerome’s School in Northeast Philadelphia, were charged earlier this year the rape and sexually assault of a 10-year-old boy in 2000.

Another priest, the Rev James Brennan, 47, is charged with raping and sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy in 1996.

Ransom also ruled that all the defendants would be tried together.

Attorneys for Lynn objected to the judges decision to allow child endangerment charges against the monsignor, saying the law did not apply to his actions. Lynn’s charges stem from assigning the priests to the parishes. His lawyers argued that to endanger a child the accused has to have been supervising the child. Lynn did not supervise any of the children, they said.

Ransom did throw out one conspiracy count against Shero, saying that the lay schoolteacher was not in conspiracy with the priests. Shero is charged with the rape and assault of a boy identified as “Billy,” who said he was sodomized by Shero at St. Jerome’s.

As head of the clergy office, Monsignor Lynn oversaw all priest personnel issues, which included advising Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and his successor, Cardinal Justin Rigali, on the assignment of priests; interviewing persons who reported sexual abuse by a priests; and overseeing the treatment of clergy known to have abused children.

07/28/11

Judge halts release of cardinal’s secret testimony

A judge on Monday halted the release of 1,200 pages of grand jury testimony of a Roman Catholic cardinal relating to his handling of priest sex-abuse complaints in Philadelphia.

Prosecutors filed Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua’s secret testimony from 2003 to support conspiracy charges filed this year against a high-ranking church official, they said in court papers filed Friday.

Monsignor William Lynn, 60, is charged with conspiracy and child endangerment for allegedly transferring priest-predators without warning. Lynn served as secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004, mostly under Bevilacqua.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Sunday that Bevilacqua, the former archbishop, had testified that accused priests “would not be able to function” at new parishes if people were warned of their backgrounds.

Grand jurors found the leader of the Philadelphia archdiocese “excused and enabled” the attacks, and was “not forthright” and “untruthful” during 10 grand jury appearances over eight months, the newspaper reported.

He was not charged because the statute of limitations had run out.

Common Pleas Judge Lillian Ransom put a hold on the further release of the grand jury testimony and other documents filed Friday.

She did not immediately return a call for comment on her action Monday.

Neither side asked to have the documents sealed, and the court docket did not list any such seal.

Lynn is the only U.S. church official ever charged in the sex-abuse scandal for his administrative actions.

Four others — two priests, an ex-priest and a former teacher — are charged in the same criminal case in Philadelphia with raping boys.

The prosecution filings Friday came in response to Lynn’s motion to have the charges dismissed.

The motion will be argued at a key hearing Friday.

Defense lawyers assert that he had no children in his care and cannot therefore be charged with endangering them.

In their 65-page response, obtained by The Associated Press, prosecutors argue the charge can apply to anyone with a duty to protect the general “welfare” of children, and not just those with direct supervision of them.

The archdiocese was charged with protecting children at its schools and parishes, prosecutors
wrote.

They said Lynn and other church officials did not necessarily seek to harm children, but “knowingly put them in harm’s way.”

Lynn’s lawyers declined comment Monday, citing an ongoing gag order in the case.

http://tinyurl.com/3kpjyzf

07/26/11

The Fearful Fathers

Angry, isolated, paranoid and ageing, many of Ireland’s ‘ordinary’ Catholic priests feel failed and abandoned by the church hierarchy.

But where were the ‘good priests’ when they were needed?

THE VOICEMAIL was succinct. “Why don’t you, Mister Hoban, f**k off back to Rome with your nuncio . . . Piss off back to Rome, you f**ked-up celibates.”

There were more.

“Keep away from my children, you bunch of perverts,” for example.

Fr Brendan Hoban transcribed these voicemails dutifully, along with other parish messages.

He reveals the wording after some reluctance.

His hesitancy is rooted in the same terror that has sent most priests deep into their parish bunkers this week, the terror of appearing to place the anguish of their own tattered, lonely souls above the suffering of the victims of clerical abuse.

So last week, when the Cloyne report was crashing into the public consciousness, Hoban, the 63-year-old parish priest of Ballina, Co Mayo, would have returned to the empty parochial house, heard the messages and told no one.

Then he would have repaired to his icy livingroom, where the sleeping bag on the armchair and the little plug-in radiator bear testament to the mean summer temperature of the ugly, soulless house he calls home.

Meanwhile, Enda Kenny was launching an unprecedented, historic attack on the Vatican in Dáil Éireann, accusing it of downplaying or “managing” the rape and torture of children “to uphold instead the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and ‘reputation’ ”.

Ireland, he declared, was not Rome but “a republic of laws . . . where the delinquency and arrogance of a particular version, of a particular kind of ‘morality’, will no longer be tolerated or ignored”.

Brendan Hoban wonders what all the fuss is about.

Enda Kenny was saying nothing that Irish priests haven’t been saying for years, he claims, about what the bishops should be doing.

“In effect, he is challenging Rome as distinct from the Irish church. We have no problem living in a democratic republic and I think we have shown ourselves, in the main, as people who have made a contribution to that republic . . . We have been waiting a long, long time for the bishops to say: ‘Let us run our own affairs, rather than tying our hands behind our backs . . .’ ”

But the Taoiseach’s statement does raise a concern, he adds.

“It’s that the Republic could become a cold place for Irish Catholics, as a result of an unnecessary confrontation between church and state. We fear that people would take from Enda Kenny’s statement that this is a dressing-down of priests and bishops, when it’s a dressing-down of Cloyne and Rome, and could be regarded as fodder for other agendas that might be coming up.”

Indeed, the Taoiseach was careful to address the anguish of the “good priests” in his statement: “This Roman clericalism must be devastating for good priests, some of them old, others struggling to keep their humanity, even their sanity, as they work so hard to be the keepers of the church’s light and goodness within their parishes, communities and the human heart.”

For them, their powerlessness has long been confirmed in the heedless appointment of bishops lacking the competence, intellect or independence of spirit to address the spiritual needs of a rapidly evolving republic; bishops such as Cloyne’s John Magee.

“He never worked in a parish, so had no experience of how to run a parish, never mind a diocese. I’m not blaming him for that – it’s back to who appointed him,” says Fr Billy O’Donovan, of Conna, in the Cloyne diocese.

It was Rome that handed the power to John Magee to appoint a head of child protection.

Magee chose Msgr Denis O’Callaghan, then in his late 70s.

Says another priest: “Denis O’Callaghan is an absent-minded professor – and they put him in charge of child protection?”

O’Callaghan is “a man with a great heart”, says Fr Hoban, “but completely disorganised”.

THERE IS CLEARLY a deep anger among ordinary priests.

This is reflected in the 550-plus membership of the fledgling Association of Catholic Priests.

But where were those angry, articulate voices when the damage was being done, when Rome was directing this republic’s affairs and their brothers in Christ were violating the young and vulnerable?

They were where they always were, says Hoban, “trying to do 1,001 things and trying to do them the best they can.”

So does that explain their silence?

There are two “difficulties”, Hoban says.

The first is the mistaken belief that a diocese is run by the bishop and the priests together.

“The fact is we are totally excluded from any say . . . Priests are effectively disenfranchised.”

The other difficulty is loyalty.

Priests live isolated lives.

“The dynamic of our ministry is that friends are very few and far between, but there is extraordinarily strong loyalty among the clergy,” Hoban says.

As well as that, “we were not people who would challenge the status quo. Those who would were weeded out in the seminary.”

Then there is the perennial problem of being “at the bishop’s mercy” in relation to transfers and advancement.

And thus the silence.

Does it all sound a bit self-serving?

“Yes, it’s fair to say that it was self-serving. That lack of moral courage.”

To illustrate this, he describes how a bishop and liturgists have been traversing the Irish dioceses, giving seminars to priests on the controversial new missal translations.

Despite the huge unease there was little or no reaction from audiences.

Then the bishop came to Knock, where he overran his speaking time, leaving no time for the pre-lunch question-and-answer session.

After lunch he launched straight into speaking mode again, whereupon one brave soul stood up and stated that a discussion was needed.

It sounds like the scene where Oliver Twist asks for more food.

Slowly, amazingly, the courageous priest was followed by several more.

“The liturgists were amazed because they presumed there was no opposition, as they hadn’t seen it before,” says Hoban.

Or maybe they hadn’t been reading the papers. It demonstrates what a cold place the church can be for a dissident, says Hoban.

“And we have reaped the whirlwind . . . If a good guy said anything , he said it to the bishop or the parish priest and felt that he’d done what was required. Guys find themselves in situations where their instinct says this doesn’t concern me. Because the message always was: go into your parish; diocesan policy is not your concern.”

In short, blinded by loyalty and conformism, priests trusted too much.

Now, pole-axed by fear, they are overcompensating.

Some have described their fellow clergy as “evil priests” in newspapers; one urges people to boycott the church collections.

The priests’ fear is no longer of the bishops; it’s of the head-spinning no-man’s-land where they now find themselves.

Ageing and isolated, they are operating in hostile territory where their Rome-appointed shepherds are themselves in a state of confused terror – “running around like 27 headless chickens”, according to Fr Tony Flannery – and where the Irish church’s straight-talking totem, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, has effectively alienated them all.

The isolation and exclusion, compounded by this alienation from their bishops, explains much of the sense of abandonment and fear felt by many priests.

“The feeling is that in their lifetime there will be no end to this,” says Hoban. “For 10 years they’re blue in the face going to courses, seminars, studying guidelines . . . You could call it a high state of paranoia. Then, after all that, something happens in Cloyne and the bottom falls out of it.”

But the paranoia has also infected the priests’ day-to-day pastoral work.

“A woman comes to the door who may have psychiatric problems . . . What do I do? Take a chance by letting her into my front room? There is no doubt that priests have withdrawn, that they’ve become ultracareful and ultrasensitive on how they might be compromised.”

This is the raw terror of men who find themselves accused and deserted.

It’s another reason why so few are prepared to go public about anything.

“There is a phobia among them,” says Hoban. “It’s to do with the fear of accusations, especially ones that go back 30 years. It could be about exposure of an indiscretion from when he was a young priest. Or he could have a nervous disposition and have a phobia of false accusations being made.”

Privately, priests believe that some of those historic accusations are deeply suspect or
“shady”, as one put it.

“But you’re considered guilty from the word go,” say Fr Billy O’Donovan. “You almost have to prove your innocence.”

Accused priests have been publicly stood down, excised instantly from the diocesan directory, left with little or no income, ordered to vacate the parish house in days.

It depends entirely on individual bishops.

“There can’t be a priest in this country who doesn’t think the HSE and the civil authorities shouldn’t be informed as a matter of course ,” says Fr B, a priest who was falsely accused, “but there is also a matter of natural justice.”

Others cite the case of Canon Niall Ahern, who in 2006 was falsely accused of an offence alleged to have occurred some 35 years earlier.

He was back in ministry within months, but not before he had been publicly stood down by his bishop, stigmatised and humiliated in numerous ways.

Even when he was restored to ministry he endured headlines such as “Slur Fr returns to pulpit”.

THE COMPLEXITY of the issue is highlighted by Fr Billy O’Donovan.

He was asked by the diocese to be the official support for the Cloyne priest who was the subject of Bishop Magee’s notorious contradictory letters, one to Rome and a completely different one for diocesan files.

O’Donovan and the accused priest had been friends and their families had been friends.

“But the complexity is that the complainant would also be known to my family,” O’Donovan says.

“The awkwardness would be that the complainant’s family would assume that I’d be on the priest’s side.”

Having vehemently protested his innocence to anyone who would listen, that priest ultimately pleaded guilty in court to indecency charges.

O’Donovan doesn’t comment on the effect of this on him personally, merely saying that he remains in the role of support person.

Another priest speaks to us on condition of anonymity. Fr B, ageing and in poor health, yearns for what he calls “an adult conversation” with senior church figures about his ordeal.

“I’m not looking for money or an apology. I want us to own what happened.”

But, as O’Donovan puts it, the problem is that “of course false allegations have been made, but far too many have been proved”.

Nonetheless, this issue crystallises the abyss that now divides many bishops from their priests. There is no trust of any kind.

“We have the feeling that a facade is being created, such as in the Eucharistic Congress and the new texts, a pretence that all the troubles are now being dealt with and that, from here on, the church will flourish,” says Hoban.

“We are not encouraging people to join us. We know it’s not going to solve any problems. In this diocese there will be eight priests left from an original 34 in 20 years’ time. There is no planning . . . The whole thing is imploding with no recognition of this.”

Many trace the current problems to the abandonment of the Vatican II vision of a church of the laity, with parish councils at the core.

“Mostly it hasn’t happened . . . So when abuse cases arose they were dealt with by clergy, not by mothers and fathers,” says Hoban.

Now the last of the so-called Vatican II priests are disappearing, and the few young men who are replacing them are universally perceived as fiercely traditional and conservative.

Over and over, my conversations with priests return to the calibre of church leaders.

This is why O’Donovan, even during Cloyne’s traumatic week, believes that there is a “far more important week ahead”, meaning the appointment of a new bishop.

“Names being mentioned or guessed at are all right wing, conservative and with a Rome background,” he says.

“We’ve been there before . . . My biggest fear – and it is a real fear – is that someone would be appointed that priests and people will find unacceptable, and that many, priests and people, will walk in that event. We’ve taken enough. We want someone who will talk to us and listen to us.”

Would Irish priests support a breakaway from Rome?

“No,” says Hoban. “What you’re talking about here is the nature of the church. We are deeply unhappy with the competency of the leadership and the drift of Rome. The consultation and transparency we talk about, well, it’s not going to happen in our lifetime. But, to live with yourself, you have to keep saying the things you’re saying. The Association of Catholic Priests is the last fling of the dice.”

Behind all this is the reality of a laity that is voting with its feet.

“That’s the other unspoken thing,” Hoban says. “Our ability to speak to their needs is problematic. We don’t have the ability or the connection to speak out of their world. And that’s the result of celibacy, formation and the loneliness of the ministry.”

Why do they stay? “I’m 63,” Hoban says. “What else do I know? If I was 40 I’d look at things differently. There is a sense now that you’re in it and you’re loyal to it and that you owe something to the people you’ve worked with.”

But he is under no illusion. “Age and oddity go hand in hand. And, as someone said, there’s no one odder than an odd priest. It’s also been said that there is no one deader than a dead priest. People get on with it . . . We’re just functionaries.

“Tomorrow, the reality is that I will do a funeral for a family who have lost a father. That is probably the biggest thing that has happened to them in their lives, and they will remember every detail of this day. And you will do your part to the best of your ability. And at the end of it you’ll be able to look back and say: ‘It matters; I made a difference.’ That’s what the good guys are at.”

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