Views
In the past he has called for reconsideration of the church's teachings on a variety of controversial issues, including the ordination of women. As a result he was investigated by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In April 2012 he was silenced by the Congregation for publishing his views.
As of January, 2013 he was reported to have rejected the Vatican's orders to remain silent, stating, "I refuse to be terrified into submission." In a piece published in 2010 in Reality Magazine Flannery expressed doubt regarding transmission of priestly authority from Jesus to the priests of the Catholic Church, raising the possibility that the claim of authority was made by a group of early priests on their own behalf:
It is more likely that some time after Jesus, a select and privileged group within the community who had abrogated power and authority to themselves, interpreted the occasion of the Last Supper in a manner that suited their own agenda.
Recanting that assertion is one of the Catholic Church's demands.
Read more about this topic: Tony Flannery
Famous quotes containing the word views:
“Though your views are in straight antagonism to theirs, assume an identity of sentiment, assume that you are saying precisely that which all think, and in the flow of wit and love roll out your paradoxes in solid column, with not the infirmity of a doubt.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“But of all the views of this law [universal education] none is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The word “conservative” is used by the BBC as a portmanteau word of abuse for anyone whose views differ from the insufferable, smug, sanctimonious, naive, guilt-ridden, wet, pink orthodoxy of that sunset home of the third-rate minds of that third-rate decade, the nineteen-sixties.”
—Norman Tebbit (b. 1931)