Sir, - Irish Catholics will be considerably heartened by the eminently reasonable comments of Frs Walter Forde and Padraig McCarthy (The Irish Times, December 23rd and 24th). Bishops agonise over the harm caused to the Church by the scandal of sex abuse among clergy and religious, but they seem to be blind to the greater scandal of what is superficially presented as "the teaching of the Church". Statements and documents are quoted as "teaching", but Aristotle's dictum that "no teaching takes place until someone has been taught" seems to be forgotten. The impression given to the "simple faithful" is that truth can simply be "decreed", and that the mere fact of decreeing it makes it true. This is simply not so. Truth can only be discovered and shared, not decreed, and a good teacher would never ask: "Do you obey my teaching?" Obedience is the response to a command, but teaching aims at the discovery of the truth, and its acceptance through personal conviction.
Much of the clerical explanation of "Church teaching" in the media debate over the President's communion shows enormous and dangerous confusion. In one paragraph alone the words faith, belief, theology and canon law are spoken of as though they were interchangeable, on the same level. When I celebrate the Eucharist with a community of Catholics I hope that we are united in faith, but we are certainly not united in theology, nor in our understanding and acceptance of all Church law. It is forgotten that the Eucharist is not only a sign of unity achieved, but also a source and powerful means of unity on the way to being achieved. It is not a reward for good behaviour, but the daily food of sinners in the struggle to become saints.
Clerical references to "Church teaching" focus exclusively on words and documents, forgetting that Jesus taught in word and deed - and his deeds were often more powerful and more revealing than his words. History shows that the Church's teaching produced some atrocious documents (now conveniently forgotten), as well as some splendid writings expounding the Christian message. But Church leaders do not seem to realise what they preach by their actions, and actions speak louder than words. Their most effective teaching ought to be the silent sermon of their example.
There is a real scandal in the fact that our President should be attacked for following her maturely formed conscience (a most basic teaching of the Church), but not a word of reprimand was uttered (at least in public) in condemnation of the intemperate, illmannered and totally ungospel outbursts of Frs James McEvoy and Denis Faul. The "theology" reflected in their thinking is simply appalling, but of course neither of them is a professional theologian.
With regard to the President's communion, too many people blame the media for turning it into a scandal, but the media people do their job and clerics must accept the risk of having the spotlight turn on themselves. They need to remember sometimes that the best way to save face is to keep the lower half closed. Rash judgment is a sin, and it is a real scandal to hear clerics attributing unworthy motives to our President in expressing her Christian faith in a profound act of worship. Those who question her theology might reflect that she is more theologically literate than some clerics who have not read a book since ordination.
Some say that she gave a bad example in her disobedience to current canon law, which forbids this kind of inter-communion. But it needs to be remembered that if committed Christians had never disobeyed laws that outlived their original usefulness, the Church would never have outgrown the cultural conditioning of earlier centuries and it would still be defending torture, slavery, and just war, and condemning freedom of conscience and of religion as "madness" (Pius IX, 1864), or as "an erronerous and absurd opinion" (Gregory XVI, 1832). We take it for granted that our sacraments should now be celebrated in the vernacular languages rather than Latin. This was the first decision taken by the Second Vatican Council in 1963, but the council would never have even discussed the subject had it not been for the fact that French and German monks, theologians and liturgists had already begun to do this. It is a dangerous caricature of our Church to see it as a club whose members need permission from Rome to change their minds, or indeed to open their eyes, minds and hearts to new realities.
The real scandal is still our divided Christianity. What really separates us is not so much faith, belief, or in many cases even theology, but rather entrenched attitudes and traditions that have little to do with the gospel. A basic principle of ecumenism is that the closer we come to Jesus, the closer we come to each other. The fact that we keep our distance so much from each other suggests that we should examine our consciences on how close we are to God. This would be a more fruitful exercise than publicly examining our President's conscience. - Yours, etc.,
Mount St Mary's, Milltown, Dublin 14.