Toowoombas Sacked Bishop Is Not Alone in Calling for Debate on Women, by Hugh O'Shaughnessy , The Guardian, May 10, 2011

Toowoomba's Sacked Bishop Is Not Alone in Calling for Debate on Women

By Hugh O'Shaughnessy
The Guardian
May 10, 2011

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/may/10/toowoomba-bishop-william-morris

Pope Benedict XVI dismissed the bishop of Toowoomba for calling for an open debate on the ordination of women. Photograph: Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters

Pope Benedict's decision this month to dismiss William "Bill" Martin Morris, bishop of the Australian diocese of Toowoomba, 190,000 square miles of bush inland from Brisbane, was a really, really sad one. Morris was accused of calling for an open debate on the ordination of women and the extension of married clergy to the whole church. In his Advent pastoral letter in 2006 he had indeed called for such debates and added that there should be similar discussion about Catholics accepting Anglican and Lutheran orders and those of the Uniting Church, a grouping of Australian Congregationalists, Presbyterians and Methodists.

It is an open secret that there is a crescendo of debate about such questions in the Catholic world. The precedents for such action are well known. There are thousands of married priests in Catholicism's eastern rites, all living – doubtless happily – with their spouses in complete harmony with Rome. Such has been the case for perhaps two millennia. And as far as female clergy are concerned, the consecration of various women to holy orders during the Stalinist dictatorship under which Czechoslovakia lived following the second world war, while never officially publicised, has never been declared invalid by the Vatican. And, leaving Czechoslovakians aside for a moment, wasn't Mary Magdalene some sort of heroine in the church's earliest days?

Nevertheless Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver was sent by Rome to investigate. Eventually Morris, 67, was dismissed without seeing Chaput's secret report, his appeal to be able to resign at 70 being rejected. He was not even allowed to see out the inquiry into the abuse of some children in one of his diocese's schools.

With immense dignity Morris has stood his ground amid the scandalised anger of Catholics in Australia and beyond. He says: "I have never seen the report … and without due process it has been impossible to resolve these matters, denying me natural justice without any possibility of appropriate defence and advocacy on my behalf. Pope Benedict confirmed this to me by stating: 'Canon Law does not make provision for a process regarding bishops, whom the Successor of Peter nominates and may remove from Office'". Morris, unsurprisingly, suggests that the bishops are the last people in the church to receive justice. "I really think the church is at its best when it's most transparent," he says, quietly.

Writing in Eureka Street, an online Australian Jesuit publication, Andrew Hamilton has commented:

"In received Catholic theology, the pope is directly accountable only to God when he acts to strengthen the faith and order of the universal church. But that is perfectly compatible with a process within which his final decision is made only after a review of the reports and recommendations made by his officers. The person whose future rests on the decision should have the right to see the report and evidence upon which it is based, and to argue his case."

He adds:

"We should spare a thought for the other Australian bishops. The forced resignation of Bishop Morris can only deepen the public perception that they are branch managers of a large international corporation. If they break ranks and say anything critical about what has happened in Toowoomba, they will be accused of encouraging and exacerbating division. If they say nothing, they will be seen to abandon one of their own out of timidity and compliance … It is not easy to be a bishop."

Happily Morris is not alone. Nor is the question closed. Markus Buechel, bishop of the Swiss diocese of St Gallen, has said there was huge pressure on the bishops to discuss women's ordination. "We can no longer evade it," he says.

Now that's good news.