For centuries, Irish Catholics heard priests deliver sermons about sin, hell, repentance, grace and heaven.
Times have changed and an 80-year-old priest in County Kerry didn’t get the memo.
“How will people know that God wants to forgive them if we don’t tell them?”, said Father Sean Sheehy, preaching as a substitute priest at St. Mary’s Church, Listowel. “How will people who are lost, be found, if we — as God’s people — don’t call them and say, ‘Look, God loves you. He has come to call sinners. But he wants you to have life, and to have it to the full’? …That’s what he wants. He wants you to live life to the fullest.”
The problem was that Sheehy’s October 30 sermon stressed ancient Catholic doctrines on behaviors many modern Catholics refuse to call “sins.”
This caused a media storm, including this Irish Times headline: “Fr Sheen Sheehy’s Listowel sermon was an uncomfortable reminder of who we really were.” Also, Kerry Bishop Ray Browne apologized, after 20-plus parishioners walked out of the rite, and barred Sheehy from saying Mass until the parish priest returns to the altar.
During his sermon, Sheehy fiercely condemned core doctrines of the Sexual Revolution, while defending Catholic teachings on marriage and sex.
“What is so sad today is you rarely hear about sin but it’s rampant. It’s rampant,” he said. “We see it, for example, in the legislation of our governments. We see it in the promotion of abortion. We see it in the example of this lunatic approach of transgenderism. We see it, for example, in the promotion of sex between two men and two women.
“That is sinful, that is mortal sin and people don’t seem to realize it. … And we need to listen to God about it — because if we don’t, then there is no hope for those people.”
In his public statement about the furor, Bishop Browne said it’s crucial for Catholics to have “total respect for one another” and it was wrong for Sheehy to address these issues during a weekend Mass.
“I apologize to all who were offended,” he said. “The views expressed do not represent the Christian position.”
