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Ireland's Troublesome Priests

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23/09/2012

BBC Radio 4 - Ireland's Troublesome Priests

Ruth McDonald investigates the crisis in the Irish Catholic church.

Ruth McDonald investigates the crisis in the Irish Catholic church which has led over a thousand priests to rebel, demanding modernisation and a relaxation of strict church rules.

Early this summer, hundreds of Catholic priests gathered in Dublin, with the whiff of rebellion on their nostrils. They are demanding modernisation of their church, which they say, has lost touch with its people. But the people are also rebelling, not only going to Sunday mass in ever smaller numbers, but organising their own rebel groups to protest against a church which, they say is out of touch with the modern world

Ruth McDonald meets the dissident Priests, some of whom have been censured by Rome, demanding relaxation of rules relating to women, homosexuality, divorce and even their own celibacy, but the church is taking tough line telling them that strict church teaching is not open to interpretation, even by them. 

As the campaign gains pace with series of meeting across Ireland, Ruth asks what the future is for the faith in a country where Catholicism and the state were, at one time, one and the same, and asks how The Vatican will deal with Irelands Troublesome Priests.

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