Sir, - I read with sadness in your paper of the closure of my alma mater, St Peter's College, Wexford. I spent six very happy years there in the 1970s and feel a sense of loss at its closure.
In connection with the announcement, you reported comments by Dr Brendan Comiskey about the need to debate the whole question of priestly celibacy. In spite of falling numbers and the closure of seminaries, the institutional Church has sought to stifle debate on this issue and on the question of female ordination. Bishop Comiskey is right in saying that asking questions is an innate part of being human and this issue is no different. The deliberate censure of such debate is morally indefensible.
Above the sacristy door in the beautiful Pugin chapel of St Peter's College are inscribed the words, Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam. The college was named after the Apostle Peter whom Christ chose as the rock upon to build His Church. Peter was a married man and the first Pope. It strikes me as ironic that this college is now having to close due to the falling numbers of vocations, brought on, at least in part, by an insistence on a clergy that is exclusively male and celibate. Let us hope and pray that a realistic debate on the questions of celibacy and female ordination can take place before too many more of our seminaries are forced to close. - Yours, etc., Paddy Shannon,
Tollymore, Newcastle, Co Down.