Sir, – I am pleased to see my colleague, the Rev Brian Kennaway (September 26th), drawing a distinction between the exercise of freedom of conscience and the undertaking "loyally to implement" practices which may be established or prohibited by the current position of the General Assembly on various matters.
Given the current teaching of the General Assembly on marriage, I know of no ministers who are intending to do anything other than refrain from conducting same-sex marriage services, at least for the time being, even when their own conscience might lead them to do otherwise.
But a high regard for the collective interpretive role of the General Assembly requires more – especially in the present circumstances. It requires that we finally create room for the long-overdue conversations on human sexuality and same-sex partnerships which the Presbyterian Church in Ireland has so far failed to have among ourselves (including, of course, our gay and lesbian members and elders) in any significant way. This is a point I have made at the General Assembly on an almost annual basis.
I hope my own commitment to such conversation speaks for itself. However, it saddens me that a tradition with such lively confessional roots, so determined to find ways to speak compellingly, if imperfectly, of the gospel in all the messiness of life, should now be so fearful of our own greatest strength. It is in part that fear which explains the failure of dissent to which Mr Kennaway refers. – Yours, etc,
Rev Dr KATHERINE
P MEYER,
Dublin 4.
Sir, – There is something deeply perplexing about the current state of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, as is illustrated by the letter of the Rev Brian Kennaway. That the Word of God is infallible is a truth no Christian in her right mind would doubt; the problems emerge when that Word graciously persists in dialogue with fallible human beings.
Interpretations differ, as the history of the Christian churches from their inception all too readily illustrates. For example, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland was the first church in Ireland to ordain women to ministry (1976); and the eligibility of women for ministry is now a rule of the church. Yet an unknown but goodly number of ministers currently serving in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland sought and were granted ordination, all the while invoking a “conscience clause” based on their interpretation of Scripture, which, they believe, excludes women from ministry.
Have commissions been set up to investigate their failure “loyally to implement” the General Assembly’s agreed practice on the ordination of women? Has the “problem” of their “honesty” been raised? I leave readers to provide their own answers to these rhetorical questions. The Presbyterian Church in Ireland seems to have forgotten its roots in the Irish dissenting tradition. Surely the members of a church who, like the Catholics, were forced in the past to bend the knee in conformity to the dominant church of the day, can weave unity from diversity? Or is conscientious dissent permitted only by and to the brotherhood of the Right? – Yours, etc,
Prof RUTH WHELAN,
Dublin 12.