Donabate Supports Fr Tony…

Association of Catholic Priests
March 16, 2013

http://www.associationofcatholicpriests.ie/2013/03/letter-of-support-for-donabate-parish-council/

St. Patrick’s Parish

Parochial House

Donabate

County Dublin.

Telphone: 01-8436011

Parish Office: 01-8434574

Email: stpatricksrcdonabate@gmail.com

www.donabateparish.ie

11 March 2013.

Dear Father Tony,

We are the members of the Pastoral Council of the parish of Donabate, Portrane and Balheary, Co Dublin, and we write concerning the position in which you find yourself following interventions of the CDF in recent times. We have read your statements in response to these interventions with sadness, disappointment, and bewilderment.

We are sad that a priest who, in the spirit of your Congregation’s Founder, has given almost four decades’ exemplary and tireless service to the Gospel and our Church should have had his ministry terminated in this way.

We are disappointed that the CDF conceives its responsibilities to the Gospel and our Catholic faith as properly discharged through the medium of correspondence of the content and manner of their communications with you. The invocation of law and sanctions, and the peremptory tone of the Congregation’s demands, evoke the ways of a secular boardroom or other such governing entity, and we can only say that we should have expected better from those in authority in an institution whose Founder was Jesus Christ.

Finally, we confess to bewilderment regarding the CDF’s rejection of your response to its requests. One does not need to be trained in Theology to see that you are deeply committed to magisterial teaching on the core tenets of our Catholic Faith, and that the questions which in your view remain open are for a long time now those that trouble the minds of a great many conscientious and good-living people in our Church.We would like to assure you of a place in our prayers. We hope that a way will be found to bring light and peace in this unhappy situation. Above all, we hope that you are soon restored to the ministry to which you are so clearly devoted.

Yours sincerely,

Padraig Haran, (Chairperson)

Joe Connolly, (P.P.)

Deirdre Meyler

Angela O’Sullivan

Pat Hannon, (P.C.)

Mary Bond

Ken Spratt

Pat Reilly, (C.C.)

Deborah McArdle

Alain Rochecouste