Madam, - Archbishop Seán Brady's article in your edition of May 6th provided a helpfully theological rationale for current Roman Catholic practice regarding eucharistic hospitality. Many ecumenists, from a range of traditions, will doubtless agree with him that a sincere search for unity and truth is not helped by allegedly ecumenical acts that either ignore real differences, or are confined to a clique of like-minded believers gathered from across confessional boundaries.
It is, therefore, important that those of us who retain a critically sympathetic view of the concelebrated Easter eucharist in Drogheda make clear that such sympathy is neither grounded in a desire merely to be awkward, nor simply the result of a poor grasp of some key issues.
To some of us, there appears to be space within the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church for the development of a less restrictive discipline than that which obtains at present. The existence of such space inevitably relativises the claims of present discipline; the denial that this space exists causes frustration and pain to conscientious ecumenists - Roman Catholic and non-Roman Catholic alike - who sense that there is legitimate room for manoeuvre within the tradition.
At the Second Vatican Council, the eucharist was described as the sacrament "by which the unity of the Church is both signified and brought about" (Unitatis Redintegratio, 2). This description, in terms of "both. . .and", is important because it qualifies the emphasis that is frequently placed on the eucharist as the expression of a fully-achieved unity.
Significantly, the Council did not issue a blanket ban on common worship (communicatio in sacris) as a means of restoring Christian unity; only the indiscriminate use of such worship was considered unacceptable. Indeed, the words of the council concerning common worship bear repeating 42 years after the event: "The fact that it should signify unity generally rules out common worship. Yet the gaining of a needed grace sometimes commends it."
It would be a terrible shame (to put it mildly) if the principal consequence of the Easter Mass in Drogheda simply involved Irish authorities notifying the Holy See of a breach in current discipline. Perhaps there is a need for grace in this situation that ought to be acknowledged. If current discipline effectively ignores - and sometimes appears to deny - an impulse that Vatican II acknowledged, it is vital that such notification interprets the Drogheda event carefully and refrains from shooting the messenger.
More than the breaking of rules may be at stake. - Yours, etc,
Dr ANDREW PIERCE, Ecumenical Studies Programme, Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College, Dublin 2.
Madam, - To sum up the Drogheda Easter Mass debate, would it be fair to conclude that Christians approved of it, but Catholics and Protestants did not? - Yours, etc,
JUDY DENISON, Abbey House, Killaloe, Co Clare.