Sir, – I note with dismay Patsy McGarry’s report (Home News, April 6th) about the Vatican’s attempt to suppress dissent in the Catholic Church in Ireland by silencing Fr Tony Flannery and placing restrictions on the magazine for which he writes, Reality, and its editor. Did the powers-that-be in the Vatican not read what Pope Benedict XVI said during his recent visit to Cuba (World News, March 29th)? He criticised Marxists on the grounds that “they close themselves in ‘their truth’, and try to impose it on others”. But this is precisely what the Vatican is now guilty of in its actions against Fr Flannery and Reality magazine. The Pope was also quoted as saying in Cuba that “the truth is a desire of the human person, the search for which always supposes the exercise of authentic freedom”.
I agree, but is the Vatican itself prepared to respect an individual’s freedom to seek the truth through unfettered debate and intellectual inquiry? It is clearly now almost impossible to have such debate and inquiry within the institutional structure of the Catholic Church. – Yours, etc,