Imagine, too, that of the fifteen ladies on board, three of them are Catholic bishops who are presiding at the ordination to the priest-hood of eight of the other women, and are also conferring the diaconate on the remaining four gals.

Yes, folk. Not one man on the crew. It is woman’s day, a historic event in the annals of the male-dominated Catholic Church. It is mutiny on the Moy.

Would the cruise pass unnoticed or be shrugged off as a feminist mid-summer prank? Or would their barque cause a media storm at the height of the ‘silly season’ and provoke dire condemnations from the local members of the Catholic Hierarchy?

I would guess that the latter would be the case in regard to the bishops and at least half of the clergy, whose summer pulpits would become as hot as the current spell of Mediterranean weather in their fulminations against the women as schismatic hussies.

But for a majority of Catholics in the West, both male and female, there would be, I strong-ly suspect, be a spontaneous welcome for the newly ordained women priests.

There would be a festival atmosphere, a sense of new vitality in the Irish Church which has badly lost its way amid the recent revelations ad nauseam of child sex abuse by supposedly celibate male clerics.

Lest you think that this columnist has succumbed to a bout of summer madness, let me tell you that next Monday, July 31, three women bishops will ordain eight women to the priest-hood and four women to the diaconate on board a chartered boat in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

One of those women is Irish by birth. This is Dr Bridget Mary Meehan, who was born near Rathdowney in Co Laois, in 1948. Bridget Mary made her first Confession and Holy Communion in the Church of the Holy Trinity, Rathdowney, in the diocese of Ossory.

After emigrating to America in 1956, she entered the convent at aged 18 of the Christian Community nuns, which were founded after the Second Vatican Council as a new form of consecrated life, independent of the hierarchy and the Vatican.

Bridget Mary holds a doctorate in ministry from Virginia Theological Seminary, and is Dean of the doctoral ministry course of Global Ministries University. She has written 15 books including: ‘Discovering the Sacred Feminine in Celtic Mythology’ and ‘St Brigit (sic) of Kildare: Ablaze with God’s Womb-Compassion.’

Her father, Jack Meehan, from near Rathdowney, Co Laois, who played in the Ballyroan Brass Band before emigrating to America in 1956, tells me that his daughter’s ordination will be “one of the proudest days in my life. It will be a wonderful occasion. Ever since Bridget Mary was a child, she was always interested in the church”.

Bridget Mary is a regular visitor to Ireland, especially to Kildare where she has a special fascination for St Brigid, second only to St Patrick, in the iconography of the Celtic Church. Indeed, she told me that next week she will become the Catholic Church’s first validly ordained Irish woman priest since St Brigid in the fifth century.

A query arose in my mind as to whether St Brigid was really ordained to full ministry. This led me to read up on the period from published authorities, especially ‘Ireland’s Ancient Schools and Scholars,’ a tome first published in 1890 by the then Bishop of Clonfert and later Archbishop of Tuam, John Healy D.D.

Incidentally, my copy of the fifth edition of this book, 1908, bears the imprint Ex Libris of the famous Mayo priest, Fr John Harte C.C, along with his personal signature and his address at College House, Galway.

Healy wrote that Brigid, who was born in the year 450 A.D., was a professed nun, and that it was ‘foolish talk’ to suggest that Bridget had jurisdiction over St Conleth, whom she selected ‘to rule her churches and monasteries, but in accordance with her suggestions and advice.’

Doubts having emerged about the veracity of Bridget Mary’s claim that Brigid was a bishop. I contacted the Bishop of Clogher, Joseph Duffy, an expert on the period and author of a book on St Patrick.

‘We have very little reliable information about this early period with regard to the story of life of Brigid,’ he told me. ‘According to her biographer, Bridget was head of a large convent in Kildare and there is no doubt she exercised jurisdiction over men. But among her contemporaries was Bishop Conleth whom Brigid entrusted to carry out the sacraments including ordinations. St Brigid did not consider herself ordained.’

This seemed to settle the argument. Kildare locuta est!

However, when I e-mailed Bridget Mary for her comment, she disputed Bishop Duffy’s reading of Irish Church history, and insisted that there was evidence that women in the Celtic Church functioned as priests and bishops.

‘St Brigid was ordained a bishop by St Mel of Ardagh,’ she said. ‘And next week I will become the first Irish woman to be ordained a Catholic priest since St Brigid.’

Disagreeing with Bishop Duffy but welcoming a public debate with him on the Celtic Church, Dr Meehan insisted that St Brigid was ordained a bishop and presided over a double monastery. ‘In mixed-gender monasteries, men and women worked as equals,’ she continued. ‘However, the overall authority within a double monastery often resided with an abbess. St Brigid selected Conleth to help her administer Kildare, and they governed ‘their church by a mutual, happy alliance.’

Other evidence in the Celtic Church points to women priests specifically being admonished by Roman bishops who acknowledged the Celtic practice of women saying Mass, she added.

Until now, shame to say, I had not realised that the Celtic Church was so interesting,. And that the debate about St Brigid’s status would have such resonance for today’s Vatican of Pope Benedict XVI.

In a trans-Atlantic telephone interview Bridget May assured me that the three presiding bishops at the ordination ceremony will be women who were ordained secretly by male bishops. This was done in secret to avoid censure from the Vatican which is implacably opposed to the ordination of women.

Clearly, the ordinations will bring the women directly into conflict with the Vatican and the US Hierarchy, and will further fuel the debate within the Catholic Church worldwide about a relaxation of the ecclesiastical law that bars women from the priesthood.

News of the planned ordinations was received sceptically by Bishop Duffy, who told me: ‘What people decide to do is their business, but Catholic teaching against the ordination of women is clear on this and always has been.’

Not so, says Dr Meehan, who revealed that a last minute attempt had been made by an American bishop to dissuade her from taking a step that could endanger her immortal soul. The Bishop of Arlington has written warning her that you will separated from the Catholic Church if you proceed.

“I will not be bullied by bishops defending an unjust church law that keeps women subordi-nate in the church”, says Bridget Mary.

Over to you, women of the Moy.

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