Madam, - Garry O'Sullivan, editor of The Irish Catholic(March 7th) sounds a warning against the blithe acceptance of the notion that removing compulsory celibacy for priests and admitting women to the priesthood would give the Irish Catholic Church new relevance.
I feel he is correct both on this point and in his view that clerical culture has halted the development of a vital church community involved in more than the current one-dimensional practice of "getting mass". I would not, however, share his view that married and women priests are the wrong solution to the real problem.
How the one-dimensional, male-only, ordained church caused so many to suffer! As the former Bishop of Sydney, Geoffrey Robinson, wrote recently, a married hierarchy would probably have reacted a lot differently to the Church's "child sex abuse scandal", eschewing the "institution-first" theme adopted at the time. .
Mr O'Sullivan is to be commended for his accurate portrayal of current church weaknesses but his recipe for correcting them should not be at the expense of those women and married men who are willing to serve but deemed unsuitable in the eyes of the institutional, clerical church. - Yours, etc,
PASCAL O'DEA, Bagenalstown, Co Carlow.