Madam, - It is 25 years since Pope John Paul's visit to Ireland and the hopes he appeared to give us then have been dashed.
In 1979 I was a curate at St Peter's, Divis Flats, on Belfast's Falls Road. I brought four busloads of teenagers to the Papal Mass at Galway. At that Mass John Paul declared: "Young people of Ireland, I love you". As I looked around many of the teens, including some punks, were in tears.
But I'm afraid it was all empty emotion. A quarter of a century later Sunday Mass attendance is a fraction of what it was, the seminaries are either closed or almost empty, the convents are getting no young nuns and the religious orders and clergy are in disarray as a result of clerical sex abuse and Magdalen laundry scandals.
Since 1979 the two priest cheerleaders at Galway, Bishop Eamon Casey and Father Michael Cleary, have been disgraced. Bishop Casey is in ecclesiastical exile in the south of England for having had an affair with Annie Murphy and producing a son, Peter. Father Michael Cleary is in eternity having been exposed for having a 25-year relationship with Phyllis Hamilton and producing at least two children.
Poor John Paul himself, now 84, is stricken with Parkinson's Disease and is only a shadow of his former self.
The objective observer looking at the Catholic Church today can see nothing but decay, despair and utter helplessness. The Barque of Peter with its one billion passengers is floundering about in a turbulent ocean and is engine-less, rudder-less, captain-less, compass-less, crew-less, map-less and cargo-less.
As King David wrote in his beautiful psalms 5,000 years ago: "There is neither a priest nor a prophet to ply his trade in the land."
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin thinks the solution is to set up pastoral councils in dioceses and parishes. In this way he believes he will involve the laity and rejuvenate his dying church. But more committees presided over and dictated to by priests and bishops are not going to get the Catholic Church anywhere.
We don't just have a small emergency. We have a crisis of hurricane proportions. The solution will have to be as radical as the crisis is ominous.
The following is what I believe would save and renew the Catholic Church:
1. The election of popes, bishops and priests by the whole church.
2. The ordination of single and married women and men.
3. A compulsory retirement age of 65 for all church office-holders.
4. The sale of all the church's accrued wealth, with the proceeds divided among the world's poor.
5. The adoption of radical social justice teachings and practices and the condemnation of unjust establishments and regimes throughout the world.
6. The promotion of the primacy of conscience and total freedom of speech and expression.
7. The dismantling of the Church as a political entity and the disbanding of its diplomatic corps - the papal nuncios.
8. The abandonment of the Code of Canon Law in favour of the re-exaltation of the Bible - God's Word and the teachings of Jesus Christ.
9. Embracing a doctrine of the total separation of church and state.
10. The total replacement of religion and superstition by an authentic and challenging faith and spirituality.
The Church's Hierarchy must come to realise that these 10 strategies will give us back a true and real Church - a Church Jesus Christ would be proud of.
But do they really want that? I suspect they don't. I suspect they want to keep the man-made empire they have spent 2,000 years building up. I can surely hear the echo of Christ's heartbroken lament: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who slay the prophets and stone your apostles! How often have I tried to bring together your children as a bird gathers her young under her wings and you would not! From now on your Temple will be left empty for you" (Luke. 13: 34). - Yours, etc.,
(Bishop) PAT BUCKLEY,
The Oratory Society,
Larne,
Co Antrim.