Madam, - "Imagine a stranger walks into your house one day while the door is open and announces that he is a member of your family. You are shocked." Thus Rev David O'Hanlon (July lst) describes how he would feel at the prospect of a non-Catholic walking into his church while he is celebrating Mass and expecting to be allowed to receive Communion. He suggests that if this happened in his own house (while he was preparing a family meal) he would call the Guards.
Why, naturally. But a church is God's house, not his. The eucharistic meal is prepared by God, not by him. He is the waiter, not the host. How dare the waiter be "shocked" that his master keeps an open table and an extended family. - Yours, etc.,
DECLAN KELLY, Whitechurch Road, Rathfarnham, Dublin 14.
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Madam, - As a member of the Church of Ireland who has always found Father David O'Hanlon's comments interesting, while despairing of his disturbingly intentional efforts to make the message of Christianity and Catholicism sound as unpleasant and unattractive as possible, I confess that I was disappointed and (presumably to his relief)offended by the analytical absurdity of his most recent contribution.
He attempts to draw an analogy between what he sees as the burglarious actions of the Protestant who seeks to receive Communion in a Catholic church and those of a stranger who comes to one's house when one is attempting to feed one's family, and demands to be fed, insisting (incorrectly) that he is a member of that family.
The problem with the analogy, and indeed with most of Father O'Hanlon's comments on the subject, lies in his failure to appreciate the significance of the fact that he himself can play neither host nor head of the family when it comes to Communion. Rather, his church, like mine, claims that the host at Communion is in fact divine - a belief that would suggest that the "family" in this case is larger and more open to expansion than Father O'Hanlon can or would dare to imagine.
It is not his meal time that is being interrupted - it is our meal time that is being shared. - Yours, etc.,
Dr NEVILLE COX, Ashford, Co Wicklow.