Monsignor Robert McGuckin has been installed as the new Bishop of Toowoomba, more than a year after former Bishop William Morris was removed by the Holy See for disunity and doctrinal heterodoxy.
A congregation of around 1,500 joined ordaining prelate, Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge, Paramatta Bishop Anthony Fisher, Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Giuseppe Lazzarotto and Australia’s Ambassador-designate to The Holy See, John McCarthy QC.
The newly installed Bishop McGuckin’s predecessor played a significant role in the ceremony.
“I wanted Bishop Morris involved,” Bishop McGuckin told the Toowoomba Chronicle. “He’s a wonderful man. I particularly wanted him involved in the handing over of the crozier and walking me to the cathedra,” Bishop McGuckin told the paper.
Bishop McGuckin is the sixth bishop to be appointed to the diocese. In the wake of Bishop Morris’ removal in May 2011, Pope Benedict appointed Auxiliary Bishop Brian Finnigan as Apostolic Administrator of the diocese.
The Vatican asked Bishop William Morris to resign six times before he was finally removed, according to documents obtained by The Record at the time, in 2011.
Vatican concerns related to the use of general absolution in the diocese, as well as Bishop Morris’ stated willingness to ordain women.
In a 2006 pastoral letter, Bishop William Morris said he would be open to ordaining women and married men if the Church’s teaching changed.
Pope John Paul II made an infallible declaration that holy orders could only be conferred on baptised males, in the 1994 Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis.
“In order that all doubt may be removed,” the late Pope wrote, “a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority
whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”
The validity of the late Pope’s teaching and of the notion of papal infallibility itself, are disputed by some theologians.