Month: March 2013

ACP needs to address priests’ coalface issues

Jimmy McPhillips, an ACP member in Clogher diocese, critiques the ACP and its website, and regrets that so few of priests’ real concerns are raised: frustration, absence of real leadership, low morale, depression and all the burdens of pastoral ministry. He suggests that ACP members meeting at local level in dioceses and Religious communities might help keep the leadership in touch with these core issues.

What will become of Austria’s Father Schüller in the new papacy?

The New York Times profiles Father Helmut Schüller, the ‘mild but rebellious priest’ who was part of the 2011 ‘Appeal to Disobedience’ by 400 priests in Austria. This initiative began with a small group of priests, talking about the problems faced by their parishes, about the lack of successors to take their places, and about the fusing of congregations.

(A version of this article appeared in print on March 23, 2013, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: With New Pope, Spotlight Returns to a Mild but Rebellious Priest.)

Is the Church in Ireland silent on the extreme inequality in our land?

Pádraig McCarthy notes the extreme inequality now visible in Irish society, where 1,200 people died as a result of fuel poverty last winter, yet the nation’s 300 wealthiest individuals saw their wealth increase massively in 2012. He finds church leaders almost silent on the matter and asks if the ACP should take it up, in line with the our consitiution.

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