Sir, - After my thorough rebuttal of Father Vincent Twomey's assertions about the validity of my episcopal consecration (April 29th) I note that the next man into the Catholic Hierarchy's corner of the ring is its "communications officer", Father Martin Clarke (May 6th). I'm afraid the PR man has an even poorer grasp than the moral theologian and both men engage in tactics that no longer work in Ireland - less-than-factual side swipes and appeals to the "Holy See".
When Bishop Patrick Walsh of Down and Connor sent me his meaningless letter of suspension as a priest on June 14th, 1998, he knew that I had already been a bishop for a month! And so we had the scenario of Bishop Walsh closing the stable door after the papal bull had fled! Suspending someone after you claim they are automatically excommunicated is the same as imposing a driving ban on a man who has lost his arms and legs in an accident! It shows how pathetic Canon Law and clerical legalism really is. But we must keep the books right, mustn't we?
We have over 40 members of the Irish Episcopal Conference. They are all Doctors of Divinity. Here we have a major theological issue that requires serious debate. I am ready to defend my Holy Orders and pastoral ministry at a public enquiry before any one of these bishops or all of them together. But instead all we get is ill-informed half-arguments from a Maynooth professor who is not a member of the secular clergy and a media spokesman who has no expertise in this area. As the Scriptures say: "Where are the philosophers now? Where are the wise men of our age"?
Would someone in authority in the Church please answer the following questions:
1. If Bishop Cox's consecrator, ordained and consecrated at Palmar de Troya, was not validly ordained and consecrated, why did the Bishop of Ferns laicise him before allowing him to marry?
2. If Bishop Cox was not validly ordained and consecrated, why has Bishop Willie Walsh said that he is and why does the Archdiocese of Dublin ask him to be laicised?
3. If I was not validly consecrated, why did the Church ask me to go to confession to another Irish bishop and have him get Rome to secretly relieve me of episcopal orders so that my consecration would never become public knowledge in Ireland?
4. If I am not validly consecrated, why has the Church said that I am "automatically excommunicated"? One can only be excommunicated in that context by being validly consecrated a bishop without the so-called papal mandate.
These are the issues to be addressed - in a proper theological debate not typified by muck-slinging or black propaganda.
Conscious that Bishop Michael Cox, though absolutely valid, was somewhat of a "loose canon" (Sinead O'Connor, etc.) and conscious that the Church could get to Bishop Cox's consecrator (now a member of the Church's rightwing Neo Catechumenate organisation) I took the precaution on February 14th, 1999, of receiving "conditional consecration" from an American Catholic bishop.
These "conditional" orders come not from Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thue through Palmar de Troya but from Cardinal Antonio Barberini (1607-1671), nephew of Pope Urban VIII and Archbishop of Rheims; through Cardinal Scipione Rebiba (c1520-1582), Patriarch of Constantinople, and most importantly of all through Pope Benedict XIII (Pietro Francesco Maria Orsini 16491726).
I am no loose canon. I've wanted to be a priest since I was three years old. I've attended daily Mass since I was four years old. I am absolutely committed to my priestly ordination of 1976. I am a validly consecrated Catholic bishop and with all my heart and passion I will continue to minister to the growing number of Irish Catholics and Christians who are being alienated by a church that is strangled by legalism and blatantly lacking in compassion.
The Father Twomeys and the Father Clarkes of the Church do not dismay me in the least. But I feel a huge responsibility to speak the truth to the Irish people and the thoughtful readers of The Irish Times. - Yours, etc., Patrick Buckley,
Presiding Bishop, The Oratory Society, Larne, Co Antrim.