Mass boycott risks splitting community unity

Fr James Good admires Jennifer Sleeman’s stand on women, but sees no purpose in a Mass boycott, he tells Dan Buckley.

FATHER James Good, one of Ireland’s most eminent — and most outspoken — theologians knows what it is like to be a lone voice against Catholic Church orthodoxy. Like Jennifer Sleeman, he has not been slow to take the Church to task on many moral issues, but he sees no purpose in a boycott of mass.

Fr Good admires the pluckiness of Mrs Sleeman’s stand for the status of women in the Church and he agrees with her central conclusion — that the Church must change or diminish.