A few days ago, after posting my reflections about bullying bishops, I got a rather nasty private email. The author, to phrase it here more politely, told me that if I despise the church and hate our bishops and the Pope so much I should simply leave the Catholic Church, move on, and shut up.

I don’t despise the Catholic Church. I don’t hate our bishops or the Pope. Some of my best friends are bishops, archbishops, and even a couple cardinals. 🙂

In all the heated Catholic rhetoric these days, it is easy to miss the main point.

We have a major Catholic leadership problem. It is reaching crisis proportions, as I write. This is bigger and more far-reaching than the sixteenth century Reformation.

In today’s news, we read about an increasingly angry Vatican……..

As reported in the The Irish Catholic and the The National Catholic Reporter, just some weeks after a Vatican report about the Irish Catholic Church lamented what it described as “fairly widespread” dissent from church teaching, it has been revealed that the Vatican has “silenced” a widely respected Redemptorist: Father Tony Flannery.

The Vatican silencing of Flannery has raised a strong protest among the members of the 800-strong Association of Catholic Priests, which has accused the Vatican of issuing a fatwa against liberal clerics.

According to Michael Kelly, the deputy editor of The Irish Catholic, Father Flannery, a popular author and retreat director, has voiced support in the past for opening up debates about the ordination of women, a change to the church’s ban on artificial birth control, and an end to mandatory celibacy. He also provoked dismay among senior Irish bishops when he publicly backed Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny’s 2011 attack on the Vatican, in the wake of the report into the mishandling of clerical abuse in the Cloyne diocese. Kenny accused the Vatican of “dysfunction,” “disconnection,” “elitism” and “narcissism.” Flannery described the speech as “wonderful.”

By acting against Fr. Tony Flannery now, Cardinal William Levada’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has provoked the ire of the priests’ association. Flannery is a founder of the association, which now represents some 20 percent of Ireland’s clergy.

Since its founding less than two years ago, the group has campaigned for reforms in the church and is due to hold a national assembly in early May to harness momentum. Key priorities for the group include “a re-evaluation of Catholic sexual teaching” and “a redesigning of ministry in the Church, in order to incorporate the gifts, wisdom and expertise of the entire faith community, male and female.”

Father Flannery is the latest Irish priest to face Vatican censure. In mid-April, it was revealed that moral theologian Fr. Seán Fagan had been silenced by the Vatican two years ago. His Marist order even took the bizarre step of buying up unsold copies of his 2008 book What Happened to Sin?.

The Irish Capuchin, Owen O’Sullivan, also fell foul of the CDF in late 2010 after he published an article suggesting that homosexuality is “simply a facet of the human condition.”

The well-known ecologist Fr. Seán McDonagh, a member of the Irish priests’ association’s leadership team, has accused the Vatcan of “outrageous” behavior in silencing of these Irish priests. He accused the Vatican of “throwing a fatwa” at the priests and said that some of Rome’s recent actions were like a return to the Inquisition.

The Irish association of priests has rallied behind Father Flannery, insisting, “This intervention is unfair, unwarranted and unwise”………….

We urgently need to engage ourselves in a CATHOLIC REFORM OF THE REFORMERS OF THE REFORM.

If you care about the Catholic Church, as I do, you cannot stand silently along the sidelines. What we see, hear, and read about is serious stuff. Please join the reform movement.

There are today a number of Catholic reform groups. I appreciate and support what they are doing.

My favorite reform group is one of the oldest. Perhaps it is in fact the oldest: ARCC – The Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church. It appears to be experiencing an energetic organizational rebirth. Rightly so, because the people in ARCC realize that we are the church and that, as Catholics, we have dignity and rights as Catholics. Our dignity and our rights are guaranteed in Catholic Church law, i.e. what is called “canon law.”

Next week a longer reflection about our Catholic rights: For all those who understand what’s happening in today’s church. We don’t have a Catholic problem. We have a deadly serious, aggressive, and festering Catholic leadership problem.

According to survey results published a couple days ago, three out of four Irish who identified themselves as Catholics find the church’s teaching on sexuality “irrelevant.”

The survey — conducted by the research association Amarach — also showed that almost 90 percent of those surveyed believe that divorced or separated Catholics in a stable second relationship ought to be able to receive Communion at Mass.

According to the results, 35 percent of those surveyed attend Mass at least once a week; 51 percent attend at least once a month. Five percent of Irish who identify themselves as Catholics never attend Mass.

The Association of Catholic Priests, which represents about 20 percent of Ireland’s priests, is campaigning for changes in the church. Its members maintain that they are mainstream church and not dissidents; their founder, Redemptorist Father Tony Flannery, has been asked by the Vatican to quit writing for his order’s monthly magazine.

The survey appeared to reveal a wide disparity between what the church teaches and what the self-identified Catholics believe.

Eighty-seven percent disagreed with church teaching on an unmarried priesthood and said they believed that priests ought to be allowed to get married, while 77 percent said the church should admit women to the priesthood.

When asked “to what extent do you agree with the Catholic Church’s teaching that any sexual expression of love between a gay couple is immoral,” 61 percent said they disagreed while 18 percent of those surveyed believed homosexual acts to be immoral.

Two out of three surveyed want a greater role in choosing their bishop.

The survey results were released April 12. One week earlier, during his Holy Thursday Mass, Pope Benedict XVI cautioned against dissent from church teaching, saying it was not a legitimate path to reform.

Father Sean McDonagh, a member of the leadership team of the Association of Catholic Priests, told Catholic News Service that the survey “confirms that those who are advocating for change in the church are not a tiny minority, but are, in fact, at the heart of the church.”

The belief gap is real. And not just in Ireland

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Pope Benedict XVI once again denounced the ordination of women and the abolition of priestly celibacy in the Roman Catholic Church during a stern Holy Thursday address.