The recent Vatican document,repeating its view that reformed churches were not churches "in the proper sense", might have been wiser had it reflected "chiefly upon the shortcomings of the Roman Catholic Church and the obstacles placed thereby to mutual understanding and respect," the Church of Ireland primate, Archbishop Alan Harper, has said.
"It behoves us all first to address the beams in our own eye before presuming to remove the mote from the eye of another," he said.
He described as "simplistic" the mantra "that one may never sacrifice truth for unity" as "disunity guarantees that aspects of the whole truth are concealed or discounted".
Disunity guaranteed "that access to a fuller knowledge of the truth is consciously inhibited," he said. He was coming to believe that "division is a greater sin even than heresy!"
He also spoke of "the present madness" in the Anglican Communion" and "the impediment or boulder of Bibliolatry," which he described as "the mother of dogmatic fundamentalism. Love for the scriptures is tainted when scripture and not God becomes the object of worship".
He was preaching at an open-air service in Clonmacnoise yesterday, held to mark the feast of St Mary Magdalene, "a woman redeemed, so the gospels have it, from seven different kinds of demonic possession," according to Archbishop Harper.
He continued that "the physical and perceptual impediment to disclosure, the boulder, was removed for Mary Magdalene by God. The impediments, the boulders of our day, take different and conceivably more formidable forms".
Referring to one such "boulder", division among Christians, he recalled that recently he had preached at the installation of the first of the ecumenical canons to be admitted to the chapter of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin.
"Dr Kenneth Newell of the Presbyterian Church and Prof Enda McDonagh of the Roman Catholic Church represent traditions from which we have been separated for four centuries. How hard it is to heal the wounds of the past and how slow. How swiftly we become blind to and dismiss those with whom we disagree and from whom we determine to separate.
"Blind to the insights and revelation granted to others, belittling or dismissing their perspectives, we consciously limit the horizon of our own vision and experience," he said.
Archbishop Harper continued that "the recent statement by the (Vatican's) Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, reminds me starkly of the imperfections others discern in the tradition to which the Church of Ireland belongs. It does not - which might have been, in all humility, wiser - reflect chiefly upon the shortcomings of Roman Catholic Church and the obstacles placed thereby to mutual understanding and respect."
He continued "In the quest to enter more and more deeply into the knowledge and love of God and to live the life of resurrection, it behoves us all first to address the beams in our own eye before presuming to remove the mote from the eye of another."
Referring to the current crisis in Anglicanism over the ordination of homosexual clergy he said "I have heard no one in this crisis deny the fundamental tenets of the faith as Anglicans have received them. Yet I have heard believing Christians attack other Christians for not believing precisely as they themselves believe. Equally, I have heard believing Christians attack other Christians for not attaching the weight they themselves attach to this biblical text compared with that."
This was "a boulder of our own creation and I do not know who will help us to roll it away."
