I see an opportunity to reform role of Catholic bishops

DESIGNED as territories of spiritual and temporal control, Ireland’s diocesan structures date from the Synod of Kells in 1152. The bishop was a spiritual ‘capo’ and a lord who ruled.

For security in an insecure world, Irish dioceses had access to water, by river or the sea. Now in turbulent times again, the Catholic hierarchy is undergoing its most thorough makeover since penal times.

The diocesan structure dispersed trained personnel to the remotest parishes. The confessional and the pulpit policed public debate and private morals. Prelates, like McHale of Tuam, Croke of Cashel and McQuaid of Dublin, were powers in the land. The antiphon ‘Ecce sacerdos magnus, qui in diebus suis, placuit Deo’, meaning, “behold the great priest, who in his days, pleased God”, was the magnificent liturgical salute to a bishop on great occasions. We had no royalty and a rag-tag aristocracy that enjoyed little affection and less respect, so these successors to the apostles were the princely representatives of a spiritual realm that rivalled the British Empire. Episcopal dignity cascaded down upon a kneeling nation.