Many people consider Father Paul Collins a hero. Ever since the publication of his first book, Mixed Blessings , in 1986, Father Collins has been on a collision course with clerical authority. But it was his 1997 work, Papal Power, that really raised the hackles of the Vatican. The subsequent machinations led him to declare this week that the thought police in the Catholic Church are hunting intellectuals, not heretics, and using more subtle weapons than the rack and stake. The vision of Catholicism that most Australian Catholics have absorbed is simply being destroyed by people who want to set up elitist enclaves.
Sectarianism is incompatible with genuine catholicity.
These are said to include a denial that the Catholic Church is the church founded by Jesus Christ and incorrect views of papal infallibility. He also says the CDF is targeting Catholic intellectuals and silencing important debate on issues such as women's ordination, infallibility, and relations with other Christian churches and other religions. Father Collins had insisted on an open hearing of the charges against him, but investigations of this kind are conducted in secret. In December, the superior-general of his order, the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, was summoned to a meeting with CDF officials in Rome to explain why so little had been done to pull him into line. When Father Collins recently learnt of this development he decided to resign, in part to spare his order from getting caught in the crossfire between him and the Vatican.