Now, let me get this straight, our freshly minted Cardinal, Desmond Connell, Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of All Ireland, has attacked the Church of Ireland because it allows Roman Catholics to take its communion at its Divine Services. But since it is Church of Ireland practice to allow all those who are in communion with the Risen Christ, through baptism and faith, regardless of their religion, to receive communion in their services, His Eminence is actually asking for the Prods to conform with Catholic teaching. That is, they should stop being Prods. From now on, we may presume, it's the job of Prods to enforce Catholic teaching on this matter, and indeed whatever other little matter His Eminence might think proper.
This is quite a novel departure in the practice of Catholicism. We are well used to the Catholic Church telling its own members how to behave, what they may do and what they may not. The Catholic Church is a prescriptive, hierarchical organisation, not a Swiss canton, so we have come to expect rules and regulations being administered to the faithful. And we were for a long time well used to the Catholic Church telling the State what to do - which it dutifully did.
Drab State
So - it's hard to believe this now, but this was the case - male homosexual deeds were criminalised, as was the sale of condoms, and a vast censorship apparatus not merely banned any magazine which showed naked female bodies, but managed to get advertisements for condoms and abortion services deleted from imported magazines. At the height of the AIDS crisis, the Virgin Megastore was actually prosecuted for selling condoms, and fined a vast amount of money. This was not a Republic, but a drab denominational state: Dowdy Eirabia.
But at least even in the crozier-belting days of John Charles, no-one called for the Church of Ireland to enforce Catholic laws. Prods knew their place as second-class citizens all right, whose moral rights were simply ignored by the Catholic Church and the State, and they stayed mum about it because it was politic to do so; after all, was not an entire railway line closed down because it was used by Protestants? So the Prods went off to their services in their own quiet, discreet way.
But nobody, even in the darkest days when Papal power was at its most purple, said: Worship as the larger church does. Behave according to the rules of Rome. Suspend your own beliefs, and operate according to ours. So it is quite one thing for His Cardinalship to call upon Catholics not to take communion in Protestant churches; it is quite another for him to expect the Church of Ireland to impose his rules and follow his wishes, or to criticise it for not doing so.
Opportunities
Yet this business of getting other people to live by your rules presents some interesting opportunities if spread more widely in Irish life. Not merely could the GAA revive the ban on players playing foreign sports, but it could insist on the IRFU and the FAI doing the same. The Irish Sub-Aqua Club could declare that the Irish Lawn Tennis Association start abiding by its rules, with the Irish Tennis Open being played with full Scuba apparatus in Blacksod Bay. AA Roadwatch could call the Poor Clares out of enclosure, and have them mending broken-down cars on the roadside. Bord na Mona could have the management of Microsoft handcutting turf in November, while the Department of Women's Equality and Law Reform could open the All-Nood Vaselined Nymphet Massage Parlour A Go-Go in the Irish Times newsroom.
What other aspect of Protestantness, apart from the catholicity with which it distributes communion, will His Grace demand that the Church of Ireland repress next? Divine Service? Evensong? Harvest Festival? Sunday School? Boys' Brigade? I suggest that, in a pre-emptive act of humility, Archbishop Walton Empey might visit the Episcopal Palace in Drumcondra on all fours, bouncing his unworthy Protestant bonce on the papistical palatial floor, and cascading ashes of humility over himself as he screeches, "Oh woe is me, a mere heretical viper, a loathsome schismatic serpent, a miserable nematode worm, not worthy to clean your divine toenails, oh Divinely Appointed Guardian of The One And Only Revealed Truth!"
Vanishing
As if it makes any difference. Cardinal Connell is like a duck in a bath in which the plug has been removed. He can squawk about this and that, but the Church over which he feels he has so much command is in reality vanishing beneath his webbed feet, and no matter how feverishly he paddles, the waters of the faithful are inexorably subsiding. Far from halting the egress, his agitated authoritarianism will hasten the flow outwards: how many of the faithful will lightly forgive a church for the egregious folly of telling a fellow Christian church how to behave? The days of religious practice according to episcopal edict are over. Count the few young people emerging from a Catholic church on any Sunday. Ask them: are they sexually continent? Do they believe in the authority of the Catholic Church over their private lives? Would they obey an instruction from His Grace not to take communion in a Protestant Church? But stay: I wish to mix metaphors. Can you hear a tune? You can? You recognise it, of course. It is the band on the Titanic, playing "Abide With Me" as Cardinal Connell arranges the deckchairs on theologically correct lines according to instructions from the Vatican.