Saturday, September 12, 1998

Rebel Irish bishop to ordain woman priest

By HENRY MacDONALD

London Observer Service

The priest who will be ordained in St. Andrew's Church near Omeath, County Louth, in the Republic of Ireland, on Monday (Sept. 14) is unusual in several respects. The candidate is divorced and has three children, but what will really shake centuries of Roman Catholic tradition is that Frances Meigh is a woman.

The frail, soft-spoken 67-year-old English nun will be ordained by Bishop Pat Buckley -- a thorn in the Vatican's side for more than 10 years -- in a former Protestant church he has requisitioned. His defiance represents one the most serious challenges to Vatican authority this century.

"I am certainly not a feminist," Meigh said in an interview. She explained her reason for defying the Vatican: "I feel the case for women in the priesthood would be better served if women talked to their bishops and quietly tried to persuade them to change this rule rather than waving flags and protesting outside churches.

"I believe that it's the soul that is being ordained, not the body. Therefore gender is irrelevant."

Buckley, who has set up the headquarters of his new Society of St. Andrew in Larne, County Antrim, was anointed a bishop himself this year by a fellow rebel in the Irish Catholic Church. In further defiance of the Vatican, he will include six married men with families among 12 male priests he plans to ordain in 1999.

His ordination as a bishop is not recognized in canon law, but bishops do have the right to create other bishops.

London-born Meigh has been a nun for less than 10 years. She abandoned the secular life after her marriage ended on her return from charity work in India 15 years ago. She was married for 25 years and has three children. One of her daughters, Melanie, is to attend the ordination ceremony.

A former portrait painter who converted to Catholicism at 21, she wanted to live the life of a religious hermit on her return to England. She settled in North Yorkshire and gained permission from the Catholic bishop of Middlesbrough, John Crowley, to live in a renovated part of St. Patrick's Church in Whitby.

"I wanted to be a hermit so I could pray and be closer to God," she said. "I then realized that the highest form of prayer, the closest one can get to God, is through saying the Holy Mass. It was then that I decided I wanted to be a priest."

Meigh learned about Buckley's ministry in June when she read about the controversy surrounding him in the British Catholic journal The Tablet. Now she is ready to take charge as parish priest at St. Andrew's -- a church Buckley reopened and consecrated on the Cooley peninsula bordering Northern Ireland.

What should her parishioners call her? "I suppose they can't call me Father, so it will have to be Mother Frances," she says.

Meigh is not without detractors in England, including the hierarchy of her own diocese of Middlesbrough, whose spokesman, the Rev. Derek Turnham, has warned her that by going ahead with ordination she will be joining a private church outside the mainstream communion.

A spokesman for the Catholic Church in Ireland criticized Buckley's decision to ordain a woman. "He does not have a mandate to minister as a bishop. He has no authority to ordain a person."

But Buckley claims that, under theological law, he is a bishop and the Society of St. Andrew has as much right to exist within the Church as groups such as the Society of Jesus or Opus Dei.

Buckley is confident the Church will eventually welcome him back into the fold and points out the falling number of young men joining the priesthood in Ireland -- once renowned for exporting priests to other parts of the world.

Buckley thinks his Society of St. Andrew might provide an answer to the Church's problems. "The time will come when Archbishop Brady, the leader of Ireland's Catholics, will ask me to lend him some priests."

Meigh hopes to take up her priestly duties next week. A couple has already asked her to officiate at their wedding next February.