What will the Catholic bishops do if, as seems quite likely, the President, Mrs McAleese, decides that she should again take Communion in a Protestant ceremony? Will this proud daughter of the church be summoned to Maynooth, rapped over the knuckles and told that if she persists in pursuing a path of ecumenical rebellion, steps will be taken to discipline her? Noel Browne and the bishops was one thing, but are we ready for a replay between the Belfast Bridge-Builder and Almost-Infallible of Maynooth?
For the moment the Hierarchy, through its official spokesman, has contented itself with re stating the church's teaching that it is not permissible for a Roman Catholic to receive Communion in a Protestant church. The bishops have indicated their "disquiet" at President McAleese's action and expressed the hope that "the issue will not arise again". Individual priests, however, have gone much further.
Archbishop Desmond Connell, demonstrating a less-than-perfect pastoral sensitivity to the faith and feelings of fellow Christians who are not members of his own flock, has said that for a Roman Catholic to take Communion in a Protestant church is "a sham".
In all probability, fervently as the bishops may wish it to go away, the issue will arise again. Mary McAleese is a devout Catholic and has in the past acted as adviser to the Hierarchy. She has on this occasion been guided by an informed conscience and may, one suspects, prove to be more than a match for most liturgical lawyers. Added to this, she knows that 80 per cent of the population approve of her action.
To draw back now would seriously damage the credibility of the President's election pledge to "build bridges". It is not simply that Mrs McAleese would be seen to have knuckled under to the bishops. A refusal to take Communion in a Protestant church in the future would add insult to the injury already inflicted on many Protestants by the remarks of Dr Connell and others.
In Ireland there are tens of thousands of believing Christians who happen to have a partner who is a member of another church. This Christmas, as we celebrate the birthday of the Child of Bethlehem, Protestant fathers are denied the joy of receiving Communion with children who have been raised as Catholics. Wives share the pain of their exclusion from a ceremony which should be at the heart of Christmas.
By demonstrating that she has "absolutely no problem" with receiving Communion in a Protestant church, the President has made it clear that the drawing of such liturgical distinctions is repugnant to her view of what it means to be an Irish Catholic. This isn't the first time the Catholic bishops have sought to impose their own orthodoxy on a president of this State.
Victor Griffin, the former dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, has described in his autobiography what happened when Erskine Childers was inaugurated as president in 1973. As a devout Protestant, Childers wanted the service of Holy Communion to be central to the ceremony.
Dean Griffin then asked members of the Catholic Hierarchy if they would be willing to read a prayer or a message during the service. It was explained to him that this would not be possible and although Cardinal William Conway and Arch bishop Dermot Ryan of Dublin would attend the inauguration as guests, they could not, because of the Eucharist, play any part in the service. Erskine Childers walked forward alone to take Communion. His Catholic wife could not join him.
Dean Griffin has also written of Erskine Childers's pain that he was not allowed, despite appeals to the Hierarchy, to receive Holy Communion when he was attending Mass in Catholic churches, as part of his duties as president.
I remember asking a Northern bishop, some years after President Childers died in 1974, whether he did not think this was an opportunity which had been missed to improve relations between the different churches in Ireland. An honourable and kind man, he told me he believed he would find it literally physically impossible to give the consecrated host to a Protestant who did not believe in transubstantiation.
I think I am still able to understand the absolute, principled conviction with which such beliefs are held and how difficult it is to question them. There was a time when the issue of whether it would be right for me to receive Holy Communion completely dominated my plans for Christmas and caused me great waves of guilt and anxiety. As a young woman living in London, I had ceased to believe in the Catholic faith in which I had been reared, though I was still moved - as I am today - by its rituals.
At Christmas I returned to my parents' home and went to Midnight Mass with them. It was extremely important to my parents that I should receive Holy Communion, an outward sign of grace which reassured them for another year that I was not entirely lost to the church whose teachings they revered.
I can remember, as vividly as if it happened yesterday, queuing behind my mother to get to the altar rails, all too conscious that I was not in a spiritual state to receive Communion. Would the priest know just by looking at me and refuse to place the host on my tongue? Would I be struck down by a thunderbolt flung by the God in whom I no longer believed on the long walk back to our pew?
Perhaps I was cowardly, hypocritical. It would have been braver, certainly, to have been honest with my parents and to have told them I could not join them for Midnight Mass because I no longer shared the beliefs which had shaped their lives. But that would have meant causing them real grief, a sense that they themselves had failed, and I could not believe that that was a charitable way to celebrate Christmas.
It is a small story compared with the challenge which faces President McAleese. Father James McEvoy, professor of philosophy at Maynooth, has warned her against pursuing "a private religious agenda through the influential office of the Presidency". By receiving Holy Communion in a Protestant church, she has already drawn her fellow citizens of all denominations closer in celebrating the birth of the Child of Bethlehem. That must be as important, surely, as arguing over whose Communion service represents the true expression of the apostolic faith.
Once again the great words of Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians come ringing down the years to us: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am be come as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal . . . Though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing."
Gentle reader, what more challenging message could there be for the bishops and the rest of us poor struggling mortals at the start of Christmas week?