IRELAND
Irish Times
Patsy McGarry
Many priests at the well-attended annual general meeting of the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) in Athlone on Wednesday expressed dissatisfaction with the response of the bishops to a meeting last May with a delegation from the association. The bishops were accused of “trying to fob us off”.
Fr Kevin Hegarty of Killala diocese said a letter sent to the ACP last month was “a marvellous illumination of the Seamus Heaney line ‘whatever you say, say nothing’.”
Mill Hill priest Fr Kevin Reynolds, now of Elphin diocese, said “the bishops do not and will not recognise the ACP as an existing reality. They don’t want their exclusive clerical club changed by an association representing 1,000 priests. They least they could do is respect us, acknowledge we exist and that we have something to say.”
Fr Tim Murphy of the Dublin archdiocese warned against a scattergun approach in dealing with the bishops and suggested that “we should go bald-headed for a synod of the Irish church.”
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