Slugger O'Toole

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susan has commented 13 times (0 in the last month).

1. Comment on Vatican moves against turbulent Irish priest…
   on 14 April 2012 at 2:07 am

   Interesting poll, RyanAdams, thank you for the link.

   90% of Irish Catholics believe priests should be able to marry, 77% think women should be able to be ordained as priests.

   Higher numbers than even I would have predicted!

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2. Comment on To Benedict, we Irish liberals are not going away you know…
   on 12 April 2012 at 9:20 pm

   Cheers, fitzjameshorse, I was not presuming to know your religious preferences one way or another, apologies if I misspoke. If there ever is a Catholic Spring, I doubt it will be exclusively Catholic – it may not even be Catholic at all.

   Interesting insights into the ACP.

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3. Comment on Vatican moves against turbulent Irish priest…
   on 12 April 2012 at 9:04 pm

   HeinzGuderian, if these broad stroke swipes are meant to be cutting, you are going to have to step it up a bit. Aim for a bit of nuance – you might hit something. )

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4. Comment on To Benedict, we Irish liberals are not going away you know…
   on 12 April 2012 at 6:22 pm

   Wonderful posts, Nevin and fitzjameshore1745; a breath of the new Catholic Spring, if you will. )

   There are millions of us who will never feel at home in either the “You’re Catholic, therefore you cannot think” school of thought or the “You think, therefore you can’t be Catholic camp. I do not know if Father Hegarty will be the tipping point; I only know that a tipping point there will be.

   As the Chilean poet, politician and Catholic Pablo Neruda once said, “You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.”

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5. Comment on To Benedict, we Irish liberals are not going away you know…
   on 12 April 2012 at 2:22 pm

   There is a certain Waldorf and Statler in the Balcony predictability in the hammering you get from some of Slugger’s atheists and conservative Catholics when attempting to discuss the ambiguities involved for most of us in actually being Cathoic in 2012.

   Which doesn’t mean many of the points conservative Catholics and atheists may have to make are not valid, but when their starting point is that anyone discussing reason and ambiguity in modern Catholic existence is either a.) a sentimental nut job or b.) not Catholic, there isn’t much common ground to build on.

   Nonetheless, I very much appreciate these threads and the more thoughtful comments on them.

   As I was saying on the “Vatican moves against turbulent Irish priest” thread, there are fascinating articles this morning on both The Irish Central website and the Daily Beast on what just might be the beginning murmurings of a “Catholic Spring.”

   http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Catholic-Spring-uprising-prediction-for-Ireland-over-dissenting-priest-Father-Flannery-147131755.html

   http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/11/vatican-silences-father-flannery.html

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6. Comment on Vatican moves against turbulent Irish priest…
   on 12 April 2012 at 1:47 pm

   I love Douglas Adams, HeinzGuderian.

   But for you to claim religion does not include Bach’s Mass in B Minor, only Galileo’s forced recantation is as woolly-headed as if I tried to claim that atheism and agnosticism included only the excesses of Stalin and Mao’s dictatorships, and not some of the most life-saving, life-enhancing breakthroughs in literature, science, medicine, and technology.

   Atheism, agnosticism and religion have all made immeasurable contributions to the advance of civilisation — art, literature, music, medicine, science and technology – and all have also been the cause of oppression, repression and cruelty. Well, actually I am not sure how much oppression, repression and cruelty you can pin on agnosticism, but atheism certainly has been enforced with as much iron-fisted tyranny as the worst theocracies.

   It is not a black and white world, deal with it.

   Fascinating articles this morning on both The Irish Central website and the Daily Beast on what just might be the beginning murmurings of a “Catholic Spring.”

   http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Catholic-Spring-uprising-prediction-for-Ireland-over-dissenting-priest-Father-Flannery-147131755.html

   http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/11/vatican-silences-father-flannery.html

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7. Comment on Vatican moves against turbulent Irish priest…
   on 9 April 2012 at 2:38 pm

   Roma Locuta Est, Causa Finita Est, is the overwhelming consensus here at Slugger. As it is, of course, inside the Vatican.

   And yet I wonder.

   The last few years Father Byrne has held a mountainside Vigil followed by an Easter Mass at dawn on Mount Leister. 3,000 attended two years ago, 4,000 last year, 5,000 this year, by reports I’ve heard. Seamus Heaney’s “fire on the mountain” brought to life for the “common” Carlownian if you wills.

   My own pastor is a learned, charismatic, and deeply compassionate man who will never be promoted because back in the seventies he adopted and raised two children, a son and a daughter, and now has adoring grandchildren. The Easter mass I attended, his third, was double rows of Standing Room only and packed in the choir loft as well.

   I’m inured to seeing simple human compassion and common sense dismissed as “moral relativism” by celibate males cloistered far from the economic and psychological demands of family life.

   “Don’t attempt to remake the church in your image,” I hear, and yet Jesus was a non-violent, all-forgiving, homeless Jew, a victim of the death penalty. How does that square with the enormous hats, Prada shoes and declarations that Jesus didn’t invite women to the Last Supper? Jesus appeared to the women at the tomb, who never faltered or left his side. As anyone lucky enough to be raised by an Irish mother can well believe.

   Ditto, the dismissive canards about “fairy tales.” Most spiritual and religious people are not morons – they have their moments when they wonder whether all religions are not a crutch to help us bear the unbearable and attempt to comprehend what will forever be incomprehensible.

   And yet there are other moments, those moments of strength and solace or connection, and, even here and there, a miracle. The Catholic acceptance of mystery, and free will, of a God and a mother of God who suffered greatly and saw what they most loved destroyed, and then reborn.

   That’s religion for you. For every Bach Mass in B Minor, for every comfort brought to the dying and the indigent, there is also strife, superstition, exclusion. I don’t have all the answers. And even as a child most of us could squint between the lines and see the Vatican does not either.

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8. Comment on Vatican moves against turbulent Irish priest…
   on 7 April 2012 at 8:32 pm

   “only going to end one way…”

   Maybe. But maybe not.

   To quote a rich cultural tradition we both respect, “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.” Or indeed, its collapse.

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9. Comment on Vatican moves against turbulent Irish priest…
   on 7 April 2012 at 8:14 pm

   Nice to see the only cleric I follow on Twitter, Carlow’s Father Paddy Byrne, tweeting his support for Father Flannery and his order today.

   Father Byrne also tweeted on Good Friday, yesterday, “Christ on the cross neither judges nor excludes.” If that is heresy count me in.

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10. Comment on Vatican moves against turbulent Irish priest…
    on 7 April 2012 at 8:04 pm

    Oops, meant to mention he was first named Prefect in 1981 – 24 years before he was named pontiff.

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