Sir, - I am sure Anne Monaghan (September 19th) will find much support in the words of our President for her opinion that the recent "ordination" of a woman performed by Pat Buckley "was a momentous event".
President McAleese (then provice chancellor of the Queen's University of Belfast), in a lecture entitled "Coping with a Christ who does not want women priests almost as much as He wants Ulster to remain British", said: "Does it contribute to the dignity of women that we are excluded from the priesthood, from the diaconate? Does it contribute to our dignity that, in order to promote our own cause which is after all the cause of humanity and of the gospel, to ask if we can participate in this church fully and whether this church will share our gifts fully, we are forced outside of the paradigm into unofficial mechanisms, unofficial ways of lobbying which sound to their ears, strident?" (Delivered at a BASIC seminar, "Women - Sharing Fully in the Ministry of Christ", held in the Jesuit Conference Centre, Milltown Park, Dublin, in March 1995.)
While Anne Monaghan is probably right in stating that "there is widespread public approval of and support for the ordination of women", I do not think the spectacle of a woman, a mother "a thousand times more spiritual" than Pat Buckley and also, according to him, "a million times more worthy to be a priest" pictured prostrate (The Irish Times, September 15th) and kneeling (The Examiner, September 15th) before a celibate male acting solely on his own authority, advances "human rights" or indeed women's dignity or rights in any institution.
No woman has ever been subjected in the Catholic Church to a ritual of grovelling to obtain ordination. I think Frances Meigh's "ordination" was a sign of the "unofficial mechanisms, unofficial ways of lobbying" predicted by our President having gone terribly wrong.
During the symbolic gesture of kneeling at my own ordination before my licitly and validly consecrated bishop, who together with the office of sanctifying, received also the offices of teaching and of ruling which he can exercise only in hierarchical communion with the Pope and the College of Bishops, I was asked by him: "Do you promise respect and obedience to me and my successors?" Long before I freely replied, I knew from my study of church history that the church I was saying "yes" to for life was not a democracy nor could I ever arbitrarily change its traditions. I would imagine Pat Buckley was asked the same question on the day of his ordination and "ordered" like me by his bishop to "know what you are doing, imitate the mystery you celebrate; model your life on the mystery of the Lord's cross."
I wonder did Frances Meigh make a promise of obedience to Pat Buckley? What did he "order" this good woman to do as one of his "priests" and from where or whom did he obtain his authority and power over this woman? No diocesan bishop in the Catholic Church has been given power and authority to "order" any woman what to do - only to "order" males.
When Anne Monaghan quotes from The Silent Schism, she at least gives its author, Owen O'Sullivan, credit for what is his opinion. The Theologian Fr Sean Fagan quoted exactly from pages 107-108 of this book 11 condemnations of women by popes, saints, mystics and theologians in support of his claim of a persistent anti-woman complex in the Catholic Church across the centuries (The Irish Times, January 9th, 1998). However, both Cardinal Cahal B. Daly and Professor Michael Nolan, by their usual inimitable erudite scholarship, refuted the allegations of Owen O'Sullivan received second-hand through Fr Sean Fagan (The Irish Times, January 15th and February 6th, 1998).
O'Sullivan himself is probably a good example of how "muddled" thinking starts schism in the church. When trying to inform us why Pope John Paul II was elected Pope, he finds himself quite adrift in his metaphors: "Perhaps what happened when the cardinals gathered in conclave in 1978 was that they were worried, frightened men who muddled their way towards changing horses in midstream by opting for a strong figure who would give them the reassurance they sought, a firm hand on the tiller of the barque of Peter" (p29). So that's what started the silent schism - perhaps!
Anyone with even a modicum of familiarity with the writings and works of Catholic women researchers, scripture scholars, liturgists and theologians such as Mary Collins, O.S.B., Mary Catherine Hilkert, O.P., Mary Milliagan, R.S.H.M., Madonna Kolbenschlag, H.M., and Joan Chittister, O.S.B., can only view with sadness what happened to a sincere but misguided woman in Omeath on September 14th. - Yours, etc., Rev Peter O'Callaghan,
Inch, Killeagh, Co Cork.