Drogheda Life on Dominican departure

The link below is from Drogheda Life .

Whether or not the Dominicans close churches, the reference to the six-aside-rule in the constitution is spurious. In fact the constitutions clearly allow for communities of less than six. There are de facto Dominican communities of less than six scattered all over the world. Indeed, it may well be the ideal to have six in a community. What will they be doing?

And suddenly age 65 has become some sort of mantra just at a time when the Irish State has raised retirement age to 66. The provincial of the Irish Dominicans was born in 1948. Pope Francis is 78 and the Archbishop of Dublin was born in 1945.

Asked why the priory could not be kept open with less than six priests Fr John Harris said it was in the 700 year old constitution of the Dominican order that there must be six and that could not be changed.
“We want to work together to find a solution” he said, “but the reality of the situation is that there are 51 priests under the age of 65 with 19 communities to run, that means that we cannot keep all our communities together. We have to work within those parameters.”

Fr Harris admitted that they didn’t handle the announcement well but said it was his hope “... that we can work together in future.”

At the meeting in Drogheda the people told  Fr Harris that they did not trust him.


http://droghedalife.com/791/90956/a/tempers-flare-at-dominican-parishioners-protest-and-meeting