Kieran Conry resignation highlights faultlines in Catholic church
The denunciation of supposed heretics has been a feature of the Catholic civil wars in North America and appears to be spreading
Andrew Brown
The Guardian, Monday 29 September 2014 12.41 EDT
The resignation of the Roman Catholic bishop of Arundel and Brighton at the weekend has highlighted traditional faultlines in a church contending with how to handle divorce, birth control and other matters of personal and sexual morality.
Kieran Conry left a message to be read from all the pulpits of his diocese in which he confessed to having been unfaithful to his promises as a Catholic priest, after the Mail on Sunday published an extract from a love letter he had written to a woman whose husband is divorcing her. Conry told the newspaper that this relationship was not sexual, but that he was resigning over another relationship six years ago. He provided no further explanation.
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Traditionalists were jubilant at his resignation. The rightwing blogger Damian Thompson paid tribute to Conrys human qualities he didnt give us any bullshit and let slip the odd bit of gossip but accused him of bullying a traditionalist parish that was using the Latin mass, something on which Thompson is a great deal keener than the present pope.
Conry had also been denounced for tolerating groups that question the official Catholic teaching on birth control, the remarriage of divorcees and the rights of gay people.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/29/kieran-conry-resignation-faultlines-catholic-church