A LEADING Irish theologian, Augustinian priest Fr Gabriel Daly,
protested at a conference in Dublin yesterday “against the unjust and
sometimes cruel tactics resorted to by the papacy and its curia against
good men and women who are genuinely concerned with making Christ
present to the world”.
He continued: “We can differ in our
theologies within the church, but surely we can agree that this
treatment of our brothers and sisters is utterly unjust and
indefensible.”
He said: “If we do not stand up to what Rome is
doing, they will continue to bully those who, quite legitimately, do not
think as they do. I also wish to give pastoral support to fellow
Catholics who have been alienated from Rome by its outlook and
behaviour.”
Fr Daly was speaking at a special conference on Vatican Two 50 Year On at Newman House.
He instanced the Vatican’s treatment of fellow theologian, Marist priest Fr Seán Fagan.
“He
is now an old man, like myself. He is ill and in pain. He is being
treated disgracefully [by Rome]. I can think of no other language but
that.”
Another speaker, Mater Dei Institute president Msgr Dermot
Lane, felt there was “more than a little evidence that some still
approach Vatican II as if it had the answers to the questions of the
21st century, [a] working out of a kind of naive literalism to the
council of a kind of Vatican II fundamentalism. These kinds of
approaches betray the spirit and the letter of the council.”
He
continued: “The world today is a different world – radically secular,
global and plural – and this is the new context in which Christian
identity must be worked out in the 21st century. Instead of
reacting against secularisation, pluralism and globalisation, the church
must recognise that this is the context in which revelation takes
place, in which grace is manifested, and in which the spirit of God is
active in the world and in the church.”
It was “an open
secret that there is serious disagreement within the Catholic Church
concerning the historical and theological significance of the council
and its reception over the last 50 years”.
Vatican II had involved
“a gradual dawning of a new encounter between the church and the modern
world, a slow and at times reluctant embrace of the modern world”.
Prior to Vatican II “it would have been unthinkable for the Catholic
Church to be talking about reaching out to the world”, which it had
regarded “with deep suspicion and resentment”.