Category Archives: New York Diocese
Local priest on leave; abuse claims investigated
From the link: http://wnyt.com/article/stories/S2583334.shtml?cat=300
Local priest on leave; abuse claims investigated
Posted at: 04/16/2012 10:37 AM | Updated at: 04/16/2012 10:54 AM
By: WNYT Staff
CAIRO – The Albany Roman Catholic Diocese has placed Father Jeremiah Nunan on administrative leave from ministry, after allegations that he sexually abused a minor.
Father Nunan was also on leave six years ago, when he faced similar accusations, before he was restored to ministry.
Seventy-four-year-old Jeremiah Nunan is pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Cairo and Our Lady of Knock Mission in East Durham.
The diocese placed him on administrative leave, after a civil lawsuit claimed that Nunan sexually abused a child between 1996 and 2003, and then between 2007 and last year when that person was an adult.
Reverend Nunan is temporarily barred from officiating at any sacraments, or presenting himself as a priest. Parishioners found out last weekend at mass.
Father Nunan was also on leave in 2006, after being accused of sexually abusing a teenaged boy in the late 1960’s and early seventies.
When NewsChannel 13 reported those accusations six years ago, many parishioners voiced their support of the priest.
The diocese says an investigation by the Independent Mediation Assistance Program could not substantiate the abuse claim, and Nunan returned to his duties.
Reverend Nunan has served at Saint Henry’s in Averill Park, Saint Mary’s in Little Falls, Assumption Parish in Latham, and Saint Mary’s in Hudson.
Fellow priests support Galway Redemptorist silenced over stance on sex abuse scandal
From the link: http://www.galwaynews.ie/25254-fellow-priests-support-galway-redemptorist-silenced-over-stance-sex-abuse-scandal
Fellow priests support Galway Redemptorist silenced over stance on sex abuse scandal
April 12, 2012 – 7:00am
Fellow members of the Association of Catholic Priests have voiced their solidarity with the Galway priest who has been silenced by the Vatican over his backing for the Taoiseach’s condemnation of the Church’s response to clerical sex abuse in Ireland.
Fr Tony Flannery, who is based in the Redemptorist Monastery in Esker, was silenced following his public support of Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s attack on the Vatican’s handling child sex abuse allegations. An Taoiseach, speaking in the Dáil earlier this year, called on the Catholic Church to apologise.
Fr Flannery who was also one of the founders of the Association of Catholic Priests, visited Rome two months ago to argue his case after he was censured by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, which ordered that he stop writing in the Redemptorist Order’s own magazine, Reality or on the Association’s website.
The Association has issued a statement saying how disturbed they are at their member being silenced.
“We believe that such an approach, in its individual focus on Fr Flannery and inevitably by implication on the members of the Association, is an extremely ill-advised intervention in the present pastoral context in Ireland. We affirm in the strongest possible terms our confidence in and solidarity with Fr Flannery and we wish to make clear our profound view that this intervention is unfair, unwarranted and unwise.
NY Catholic quits board over cardinal’s gay stance
from the link: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2012/04/07/nyc_catholic_quits_board_over_gay_rights_stance/?rss_id=Boston.com+–+Latest+news
NY Catholic quits board over cardinal’s gay stance
By Verena Dobnik Associated Press / April 7, 2012
NEW YORK—The head of New York City’s Roman Catholic archdiocese faces a challenge to his stance on gay rights: the resignation of a church official who says he’s “had enough” of the cardinal’s attitude.
Joseph Amodeo told The Associated Press on Saturday that he quit the junior board of Catholic Charities after the cardinal, Timothy Dolan, failed to respond to a “call for help” for homeless young people who are not heterosexual.
The conflict began when the head of an organization that helps homeless gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender homeless young people wrote to ask Dolan to help the cause.
Dolan responded by saying he was adhering to church teachings. That prompted Amodeo to quit.
Dolan leads one of the largest dioceses in the country. He also is president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
A day before Easter, the head of New York’s Roman Catholic archdiocese faced a challenge to his stance on gay rights: the resignation of a church charity board member who says he’s “had enough” of the cardinal’s attitude.
Joseph Amodeo told The Associated Press on Saturday that he quit the junior board of the city’s Catholic Charities after Cardinal Timothy Dolan failed to respond to a “call for help” for homeless youths who are not heterosexual.
“As someone who believes in the message of love enshrined in the teachings of Christ, I find it disheartening that a man of God would refuse to extend a pastoral arm” to such youths, Amodeo said in his letter to the charitable organization last Tuesday.
Phone and email requests from the AP for comment from the archdiocese were not immediately answered on Saturday.
The conflict started with a letter to Dolan from Carl Siciliano, founder of the nonprofit Ali Forney Center that offers emergency services to homeless gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender young people. He said the cardinal’s “loud and strident voice against the acceptance of LGBT people” creates “a climate where parents turn on their own children.”
“As youths find the courage and integrity to be honest about who they are at younger ages, hundreds of thousands are being turned out of their homes and forced to survive alone on the streets by parents who cannot accept having a gay child,” Siciliano wrote in his letter, sent last week.
Siciliano, who is Catholic, said parents who are strongly religious are much more likely to reject children who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. Of the nation’s homeless youths, as many as 40 percent are LGBT, studies show.
Siciliano received a response from the cardinal in a letter dated March 28.
“For you to make the allegations and insinuations you do in your letter based on my adherence to the clear teachings of the Church is not only unfair and unjust, but inflammatory,” Dolan wrote. “Neither I nor anyone in the Church would ever tolerate hatred of or prejudice towards any of the Lord’s children.”
The response prompted Amodeo to quit the board, said the 24-year-old gay Catholic who still teaches religious education to elementary school children as part of a New York archdiocese program. He’ll be doing that on Easter in a parish near Manhattan’s Union Square.
Amodeo was a member of the executive committee of the junior board of the New York branch of Catholic Charities, one of the largest global networks of charities, started in New Orleans in 1727 as an orphanage.
“Every Sunday, I teach second-graders to `love thy neighbor,’ but then, when we as a church have a teachable moment, we fail,” Amodeo told the AP in a telephone interview.
He said the cardinal “failed to respond to a call for pastoral assistance, to answer the question, `What can we do together as a church and as a people for youths who are homeless?”
Dolan leads the nation’s largest archdiocese — which has 2.6 million Catholics — and is president of the Washington-based U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Last summer during New York’s same-sex marriage debate, the prelate warned that the proposed legislation — which later passed — was an “ominous threat” to society.
Fr Kevin Hegarty: Time to free church from clammy grip of clericalism
Apr 10
Posted by victimsofrapebythercc
from the link: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0410/1224314568128.html
Time to free church from clammy grip of clericalism
KEVIN HEGARTY
RITE AND REASON: Liberal Catholics have arrived at their views of church teaching on contraception, married and women priests, and homosexuality as a result of honest and honourable reflection
THE PAINTER Tony O’Malley had a custom of creating an artwork every Good Friday. When news broke during Holy Week of the Vatican censure of Fr Tony Flannery and the Redemptorist magazine Reality, I wished I could paint a picture to express my sadness.
Pope Benedict’s address at a Holy Thursday Mass in Rome copperfastened my gloom. Responding to a call to disobedience by Austrian priests and laity on celibacy and women priests he asserted that they had challenged “definite decisions of the church’s magisterium”.
Church leaders often talk of the right of free speech, most recently the Pope himself on his visit to Cuba. The recent Vatican moves are designed to create a climate of fear among liberal clerics. To echo a comment some years ago of the English writer AN Wilson, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith has “ways of making you not talk”.
I know Tony Flannery quite well. He has given 40 years of sincere service as a priest, mainly as a preacher of missions throughout Ireland. He is an engaging and empathetic speaker and an innovative liturgist. His columns in Reality, based on his commitment to the ideals of the Second Vatican Council and his vast knowledge of the Irish church, were often thought-provoking.
He is one of the founders of the Association of Catholic Priests, set up in September 2010, and one of its leadership team. The association has provided a forum for debate and an independent voice for Irish priests.
Among its achievements was its intervention in the case of Fr Kevin Reynolds, who was grievously libelled in the Prime Time Investigates programme last May.
I expect that Fr Reynolds would agree that without this help he would still be languishing in a limbo from which he might never have emerged.
Perhaps it is not surprising that the Vatican has moved to censure Fr Flannery. The Second Vatican Council promised an open and dialogical church, willing to engage with the secular world. Since the 1980s there has been in Rome a retreat from its reforms.
Pope Benedict has a jaundiced view of the council’s spirit. Last year he sent a team of apostolic visitors to examine the Irish church in the wake of the sexual abuse scandals. In the summary of their report issued recently, the visitors have a cut at liberal Catholics. They noted that a significant number of Irish Catholics held views at variance with “the teaching of the magisterium”.
They should be accorded full marks for their powers of observation. The many liberal Catholics in Ireland hope for a church that is open to married and women priests, a rethink on the issue of contraception as exhorted by Humanae Vitae, and a reversal of the harsh insensitivity of the teaching on homosexuality.
We have come to these positions as a result of honest and honourable reflection. We are not seeking change for the sake of change. We believe that such reforms would aid the emergence of a church that is more humane, relevant and inspiring, a church released from the clammy grip of clericalism.
Nor are these sincerely held views at variance with the fundamental doctrines of the church as the visitors claimed in their report. These doctrines relate, for example, to the humanity and divinity of Christ, the resurrection and the sacraments.
I am not aware of any priest in Ireland who publicly dissents from these beliefs.
There is a tendency of conservative church commentators to argue that liberal clerics are an ageing, disgruntled minority who have turned their misinterpretations of the Second Vatican Council into a kind of holy writ.
To them we are castaways on a remote island, brazenly holding aloft the tattered banners of the 1960s. They won’t like this but I have to disillusion them.
Anecdotal evidence, coupled with the results of a number of professional surveys, indicate that the majority of Irish Catholics support radical change in the church’s ministry and moral teaching.
To paraphrase Gerry Adams in a different context, we are not going away. The Vatican has been a “cold house” for liberal Catholics in recent years. The least we expect is respect for our freedom of speech and conscience.
A reform of the church which excludes these rights is a form of repression. It seems that Pope Benedict thinks “a creative minority” of Catholic conservatives will transform the church in Europe. To me that sounds like a polite euphemism for an assembly of Rick Santorum lookalikes.
Fr Kevin Hegarty is a priest in the parish of Kilmore-Erris in Co Mayo, and a columnist with the Mayo News.
Posted in Association of Catholic Priests, Bill Donohue, Cardinal Dolan, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Catholic League, Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, Christianity, Christians, Father Kevin Reynolds, James Salt, Joseph Ratzinger, Manchester Diocese, Manchester Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church, Manchester NH Diocese, National Survivors Advocates Coalition, New York Diocese, Pope Benedict, Pope Benedict XVI, Pope John Paul II, Prime Time Investigates, Ratzinger, Religion, Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church teachings on homosexuality, SNAP Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, St Thomas Moore Parish Durham NH, Vatican, William A Donohue
Leave a comment
Tags: Association of Catholic Priests, Austrian priests, catholic church, celibacy, censure, censure by pope benedict, censure of Fr Flannery, clericalism, Cloyne Report, Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, conservative church commentators, County Mayo Ireland, Diocese of Cloyne, English writer AN Wilson, Father Kevin Hegarty, Father Kevin Reynolds, Father Reynolds, Fr Kevin Hegarty, Fr Tony Flannery, fundamental doctrines of the roman catholic church, Gerry Adams, Good Friday, Holy Week, holy writ, Humanae Vitae, Irish, Irish Catholics, Irish Catholics support radical change in the church’s ministry and moral teaching, Irish church, Irish Deputy Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore, Irish Justice Minister Alan Shatter, Irish priests, Irish Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, issue of contraception as exhorted by Humanae Vitae, Kilmore-Erris Parish, magisterium, pope benedict, pope benedict XVI, Prime Time Ivestigates, Redemptorist magazine Reality, religion, Rick Santorum, Rick Santorum lookalikes, roman catholic church, roman catholic church sacraments, roman catholic church teaching on contraception, roman catholic church teaching on homosexuality, Second Vatican Council, the humanity and divinity of Christ, the resurrection, The Roman Catholic Church, The Vatican, Tony O’Malley, vatican, vatican censure, women priests