Dear Editor, Fr Gabriel Daly OSA (Letters, 12/12/13) writes about elusion on the grounds of narrow minded and arbitrary rules of Catholics who look for conformity to the rules and regulations imposed by one party in the Church.
Then having declared that Cardinal Levada had no right to accuse Fr Flannery of heresy, Fr Daly continues “Christians are bound to the values and tenets of the Gospel and to classical creeds of the Church. Differences in matters that do not belong to the essence of the Faith can legitimately vary”. How true! Also, “Traditionalists, seeking to punish those who hold views that they regard as heretical in spite of the fact that these views do not belong to the essence of the Faith.”
My memory may be faulty, I seem to remember reading that Fr Fannery was supposed to hold that the present priesthood does not derive from the Last Supper – a later creation, not from the Church of Jesus Christ. The ordination of priests, like Apostolic Succession, the Eucharist, are the essence of the Faith, and surely not just rules and regulations. Perhaps The Irish Catholic might reprint this article. I am open to correction but fortunately I have at least the words of Cardinal Levada (IC 07/11/13).
Fr Flannery likes to say, it’s because I am for married priests. This is not the case. “He wrote two articles in Reality magazine,” says Cardinal Levada, in which he questioned and undermined the teaching of the Church on the Eucharist, the priesthood…What we try to do is to say: if you hold these positions, you are formally in heresy. For Martin Luther or the Protestant reformers, they were key issues and they denied these doctrines of the Church. So we hope that the person will see that this is not in accord with the doctrines of the Church and to say that. Write a note and have it published in the same place, so that people will know you are not heretic.
The Eucharist and the priesthood, how can this not belong to the essence of the Faith; how can such a question be dismissed as rules and regulations?
Yours etc.,
Aileen McCarthy,
Dun Laoghaire,
Co. Dublin.
