Dr Walsh says reaction to apology was extraordinary

THE Bishop of Killaloe, Dr Willie Walsh, said yesterday be had no idea there would be such "an extraordinary reaction" to his apology for the effects on "our non Roman brethren" of the Catholic Church's Ne Temere mixed marriages decree.

Introduced in 1908, the decree demanded that all children of a denominationally mixed marriage be raised as Catholics.

What he said had been "just a simple remark" but the response had given him "great hope", he said. While a small number did not like it, and told him so "in no uncertain terms", the reaction generally was "very positive."

Speaking at the 34th Glenstal Ecumenical Conference yesterday, where he was chairing a session, Bishop Walsh said that since making the apology he had heard "an extraordinary number of stories."

Just this week he had received a letter from a woman in England who suggested that, as well as apologising to our non Roman brethren, he might also apologise to the many Catholics who also suffered as a result of the decree.

That was, he said, "an aspect I hadn't thought about."

In her address to the conference, which is on the theme of "Hope Against Hope", the Rev Gillian Kingston of the Methodist Church, and president of the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland, thanked Bishop Walsh for his remarks on the subject, which she described as "courageous" and "a sign of hope".

"There can be few in the minority community whose families have been untouched by the phenomenon of interchurch marriage," she said, and instanced examples from her own family, and the pain involved.

She referred to the ongoing nature of the problem, and those who remained "reluctant to facilitate interchurch marriage."

This was, "to put it at its most mild", she said "hurtful and counterproductive," as it seemed to her significant that a young couple should opt for a church marriage as opposed to going to a register office, or just living together.

In his opening address to the conference, Father Dermot Lane, president of the Mater Dei Institute of Education and parish priest of Balally, Co Dublin, spoke of an impatience being experienced by some with the churches' drive towards Christian unity.

"Anyone who believes in the historical revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ" could only be impatient with "the institutional reluctance of various Christian churches" to promote a more imaginative search for the unity of Christian faith, he said.

This impatience, he felt, "turns to suspicion" when Christian churches refuse to let go of what "are more often ideological rather than strict theological differences." It was "particularly" so when so much agreement had been reached by the churches over the last 30 years.

There was, he said, "a growing disillusionment" among many Christians "with the tightly controlled institutional expression of Christian faith."