A PROMINENT Church of Ireland figure said last night that “a bishop should not cling on to office on the basis of some opinion poll, some ‘ X-Factor ’ vote, some popularity contest among his clergy and their parishioners”.Canon Patrick Comerford, director of spiritual formation at the Church of Ireland Theological Institute in Dublin, said “a bishop must be a focus of unity.”
He continued: “Mistakes based on poor moral judgment, on low moral standards must be a cause of resignation.
“If a bishop does not expect high – not necessarily the highest, but certainly very high – moral standards from his priests, then he is not just negligent of his office, but he can no longer be the focus of unity that is at the heart of the primary ministry of a bishop.”
Speaking at a sung Eucharist in the institute chapel, he said he had “the highest respect for Archbishop Diarmuid Martin . . . because he is willing to provide moral leadership, and to provide it even when he has to take tough decisions.”
The truth was, he said, “that the overwhelming majority of priests in Roman Catholic Church are good priests. And in their lonely solitude at night they must be drowning in seas of sorrows and in their tears as they realise how day after day, each day, they are bearing the blame that ought to be shouldered by a few, but who have been protected, in the past and sometimes even in the present, by some bishops and even by some in the Vatican”.
He warned that “the crisis facing the Roman Catholic Church” was not a threat to one tradition but one that would rock the confidence people had in all the traditions of the church.
It was “not an opportunity for the Church of Ireland. This is a time for us to weep”.
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