JAP JOE’S BIO
Joseph Stephen O’Leary is an Irish Roman Catholic theologian. Born in Cork, 1949, he studied literature and theology at Maynooth College (BA 1969; DD 1976). He also studied at the Gregorian University, Rome (1972-3) and in Paris (1977–79). Ordained for the Diocese of Cork and Ross in 1973, he was a chaplain at University College Cork (1980–81). He taught theology at the University of Notre Dame (1981–82) and Duquesne University (1982–83) before moving to Japan in August, 1983. He worked as a researcher at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, Nanzan University, Nagoya (1985–86), where he later held the Roche Chair for Interreligious Research (2015–16). He taught in the Faculty of Letters at Sophia University, Tokyo, from 1988 to 2015.
Dear Jap Joe,
It is obvious from your little letter to the ACP that you do not like this blog or its author.
Since finding that out I cannot sleep at night.
Having your approval of me is the most important thing in my life – even more important that having God’s approval.
Receiving your disapproval of me felt worse than being, apparently, automatically excommunicated, on the occasion of being raised to the Fullness of the Priesthood on May 19th 1998.
I have never fully understood “automatic excommunication”. Is it a kind of canonical masturbation?
Not that you would know anything about such matters Jap Joe.
A QUESTION JAP JOE
You were ordained a priest in 1973 – three years before I was ordained.
But you seem to have spent all you life travelling the world looking into philosophical conundrums.
You were ordained to be a shepherd and a pastor after the mind and style of the Chief Shepherd and Pastor Jesus Christ.
Now I have searched the New Testament and I can’t find the words:
“Go out to the whole world and philosophise to all men and women”.
“Go and baptise all men in the name of the Heidegger, the Dumoulin and the Budda“.
O Joe!
You went out to do good and you did well 😀
Decades as a parish dodger and desk priest
Decades of travelling the globe in academic irrelevance and luxury.
All making you feel you can judge me.
I’m lots of things Jap Joe, but unlike you I have the smell of the sheep about me.
AND AS FOR IRISH EPISCOPAL AND ACP REPRIMANDS?
Jap Joe, in my upstairs toilet the door opposite where I preside is a blank surface.
It’s waiting for a Bull of Excommunication in LATIN to be pinned to it.
An Irish Episcopal or ACP Reprimand would be pinned at a lower level.
I have come up with a great use for your letter to the ACP but I need you to resend it after you’ve printed it on softer paper.
God Bless Jap Joe.
Your brother priest
+ Patrick Buckley
Episcopus apud Larnensis
BISHOP PAT BUCKLEY 