To be honest, Your Grace, I'm not altogether sure should I congratulate you or commiserate with you. Either way, I wish you well on your elevation to the rank of Bishop of Clogher within the Church in Ireland. In most walks of life and in most professions, promotion is something of which to be proud; something you wished for or worked towards for the best part of your career.

In the Church, for now at least, it's not quite the same. It's an organisation and an institution that has had been ravaged by bad press and humiliated beyond belief. And all of it, every single painful minute of it, was entirely of its own making.

Far be it for any of us to give you advice on how to do your job, bishop, but since you're new in the post, it might be the only chance any of us get to have a word in the ear of one of the Church bosses, as it were.

And it's all about ears and listening, bishop, really. You see, child sex abuse scandals alone haven't brought the Church to its knees, no more than the vile abusers who used the collar to perpetrate and then lie about the most appalling crimes against children.

It's a myriad of reasons, not least among them the glaring failure to do humility. Because like it or not, bishop, many of your senior colleagues in the Church, including those in the Vatican, just don't do the whole humility thing.

Words, as you know, bishop, can be very powerful weapons. They can cause grievous offence, just as quickly as they can make you laugh.

That's why I found some of your comments at your ordination, well, peculiar to say the least. You told the 1,100-strong invited congregation, in the context of all that has gone in the Catholic Church in Ireland in recent years, that 'we have been brought to our knees but maybe that is no bad thing'.

At first, your words sort of lifted my heart. At last, I thought to myself, at least one bishop is grasping the notion of humility.

And then, I read back exactly what you said, this time more carefully: 'Maybe that is no bad thing'.

The facts are these, Your Grace: The Church itself and the appalling actions by some of its representatives brought it to its knees, not anybody else. Secondly, there never was or ought to be any debate on whether or not it is a good or a bad thing the Church was brought to its knees. Put simply, bishop, there is no 'maybe' about it.

There comes a time, you said, 'when the surgeon's knife has done what it can, is put away and a regime of rehabilitation for the patient is put in place.'

Well, that's all well and good for most people. But I'm not sure it's as easy as that for those who have suffered at the hands of rapists purporting to be representatives of Christ on earth.

You see, bishop, it might suit the Church in many ways to put away the scalpel and just move on. Chances are, the rehabilitation couldn't possibly be as painful as the surgery.

IT'S A BIT like Brian Cowen getting perplexed as to why the nation is persistently looking for names and answers and apologies; persistently refusing to forgive and forget all that has happened while he and his cohorts presided over the economic ruin of a country.

In any walk of life, bishop, it's hard to forgive and move on when the wrong-doers have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to utter even a half-hearted apology.

The Church to which you belong is far greater and more important that any of its individual members. It will be around long after the rehabilitation process has ended, however long it takes. And there's a good chance that your term as bishop will coincide with that rehabilitation.

So as you set out on your new journey as Bishop of Clogher, do God, yourself and all of us a favour, and lead by example. When it comes to acknowledging the past and recognising the truth, forget using words like 'maybe' or 'perhaps'. Half-hearted or qualified apologies or recognitions of the truth can sometimes do more harm than good.

You were right when you told the congregation last Sunday that Jesus made no room in the Church for privilege or earthly pomp. Put simply, Jesus' Church is all about humility. The Catholic Church here should try it for a while. You'd be surprised how quickly the surgeon's knife would be put back in the drawer and everyone, together, gets back on the road to recovery. Yours truly, Aidan O'Connor

- AIDAN O'CONNOR