A class of a makie-uppy bishop

The Holy See is not yet trembling at the doings of the amiable Bishop Buckley, as he does his own thing with knobs on
By Mary Kenny
'HAVE KNOWN Pat Buckley, the self-styled "Bishop Buckley of the Society of St Andrew" for some years, and I have several times described him in print as an amiable screwball, without any objections on his part. Amiable screwball. Well-meaning fathead. Maverick priest and compulsive notice-box. Having been a thorn in the flesh of the Catholic Church in Ireland for many years — addicted to doing his own thing and despite the odd reprimand. usually getting away with it — it didn't surprise me when he had himself made some class of a makie-uppy bishop. ("Makie-uppy" is a Dublin word for "fictitious".) I didn't wholly disapprove, either. At least he was being consistant, in his own screwball way. This was doing your own thing with knobs on.
There are two kinds of rebels: those who wish to enjoy all the glamour of rebellion, while retaining the privileges of the established order; you know the sort of folk who protest against bourgeois capitalism, but insist, all the same, on getting their weekly Giro cheque that only bourgeois capitalism provides with such regularity and reliability. Then there is the more courageous kind of rebel, who tells bourgeois capitalism to go hang, and refuses its comforts, solace and welfare.
I had thought Pat Buckley to be the first kind of rebel priest — all talk against the oppression of the hierarchy, but still wearing the collar, still wanting to be accepted by the Magisterium of the Church. Now it turns out that he is the second kind of rebel. who walks out and sets up his sect, (or joins with another whacky branch of self-styled Catholics). Fair play to him. Some of what Pat Buckley does is done out of compassion: he marries divorced people because he really believes mainstream Catholicism is cruel not to allow the divorced to remarry. And now, even as a makie-uppy Bishop, he has decided to "ordain" a nun into the priesthood, or at least into his priesthood. Fair play to him, again, within the parameters of his own beliefs. And since he adores attention from the outside world, he must be in virtual heaven to hear of his doings announced with such solemnity by the broadcast media in Ireland and Britain and to see himself accepted as a bona fide Bishop by The Daily Telegraph.
The nun whom he is ordaining, Sister Frances Meigh, is herself an unusual person. She has been married, is a mother of grown-up children, and at the age of 67 is a recognised hermit. And as she desires to be ordained as a priest, Pat Buckley — who else? — has agreed to do the job. At one level, I agree with this experiment. If women want to be ordained priests. I have always said, what's to stop them going off and starting their own denomination of Christianity as John Wesley did, with Methodism and see if it catches on. See how successful such a church would be in the business of evangelisation. See if it attracts a large following of holy people.
I believe the matter of the ordination of women should be subjected to the market test. If the Churches which have ordained women — such as the Church of England and the Church of Ireland — are more successful evangelisers, as a result, then we should certainly ask ourselves if the Holy Spirit isn't trying to tell us something. If a new wave of holy women suddenly bring more people to Christ, then maybe this is something in the whole idea. But if — as is the case with the Anglican and Protestant churches generally — congregations actually fall in the wake of women's ordination, then are we seriously to imagine we are being given the signal to proceed with such methods of evangelisation?
The market test is not the be-all and the end-all, of course. Many things of which the market endorses are quite evidently wrong. But evan gelisation is literally at the core of Christianity. It is a specific command of the Gospels. "Go ye, teach all nations." A screwball "Bishop" and his ordained hermit are entitled to do their own thing in a free society, but is this evangelisation? When it is. I may review my judgement on Pat Buckley.
Pat is a funny guy, in many senses of the word. He had a strange upbringing: the eldest of 17 children, he told me he spent much of his early life taking care of his siblings, and doing errands for his mother which involved waiting for Dublin buses in the company of shopping mammies. "By the time I was eleven I was an expert in such subjects as women's bra sizes, from listening to Dublin women talk."
Then there was the time when, as a local councillor, in Lame, Co Antrim, he formed a political love-pact with a group of the local Ulster Loyalists. Last time I saw him, in January 1997, he had grown disillusioned with the Loyalists. Evidently, they took less nonsense from him than the long-suffering Catholic hierarchy whom he has led such a dance.
If you make a better mouse-trap, the world will beat a path to your door. If Pat Buckley has started a better Christian church, no doubt the congregations will swell. But I think not, somehow. The Holy See, and its one billion faithful, is not yet trembling at its foundations.