From the perspective of membership of the Church of Ireland, it would be all too easy to comment on the recent document One Bread One Body in a tone of sad despair and with a rueful question looming behind every word: "Has the ecumenical movement done anything of value for the Body of Christ in these islands?"

It would be easy . . . and utterly faithless. For we have no choice but to move on in the quest for the unity which is not only Christ's will, but his command to us. And, on a human "horizontal" level, we certainly owe nothing less to those thousands of people in this country who live out loving Christian lives within interchurch marriages and who deserve only our encouragement and respect.

And so, to turn to the aspects of One Bread One Body which may bring comfort, there was first of all the continuing use of the documents of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC).

ARCIC's statements on the meaning of the Eucharist were used repeatedly in the new document, and not simply to emphasise a degree of convergence between Anglicans and Roman Catholics but also to illuminate various points of Eucharistic doctrine.

One obvious example would be on the certainty of Christ's Real Presence in the sacrament. Quoting directly from one of the "Elucidations" of the ARCIC statement on the Eucharist we are reminded (in section 50) that Roman Catholics and Anglicans would agree that what we would both call "bread" before the eucharistic prayer, we would together describe, when the prayer has concluded, as "truly the body of Christ, the Bread of Life".

It is tragic that the significance of that glorious convergence is not carried logically forwards. Instead, a far earlier document of Vatican II is quoted to suggest that the Roman Catholic Church cannot yet affirm that Anglicans have retained "the authentic and full reality of the Eucharistic mystery".

But I for one draw real comfort from the fact that ARCIC documents are at least still "on the table", still there as a witness to the convergence that does exist, whether or not that is being as readily admitted as it should be in this new document.

Secondly, it is good to see that there are now exceptions to be made in the rule that no members of other churches may ever receive the sacrament at a Roman Catholic Eucharist. Whether or not it is clutching at ecumenical straws is hard to know, but it appears that a door is at least being cautiously unlocked, even at official level.

It is of course sad that another door is being firmly slammed shut and bolted - the possibility that Roman Catholics should on occasion accept an invitation to receive Communion, as a welcome guest at a Eucharist of a different tradition. I say this as one who is not in favour of a headlong plunge into a careless inter-Communion, which does indeed ignore differences of doctrinal emphasis and of ecclesiology.

I would wish for a careful, considered discussion on the place of Eucharistic hospitality, which invites, as a guest, a visitor from another Christian tradition to join with the host congregation in receiving what Jesus Christ gives to us all in the Eucharist.

The Eucharist is a mystery, as the document reminds us, but it is a mystery of Christ's love and his giving. It cannot be a mystery of our defining. Nor can the Eucharist be the property of any one ecclesial community.

Again, there may be hope in the suggestion that Anglican Orders are now in the category of "special difficulty" rather than there being an implacable certainty that our Orders are invalid.

I appreciate this was said in good faith and with good intent in the document. I do, however, find myself responding with a sense more of whimsy than of hurt that, as one who has no doubt whatsoever but that he is a Bishop of the Catholic Church (albeit of the Anglican rather than of the Roman tradition), I am somewhat bewildered as to how long I am to remain in this suspended state of "special difficulty".

The serious point behind this is that we cannot be content just to say that the difficulties we face will be a particular spur to renewed efforts at ecumenism. The answer is that those difficulties will be a spur to nothing other than complacency for as long as disunity is not truly and genuinely seen as an insult to the love of Christ, a scandal to the faithful, and a barrier to the proclamation of the Gospel to an unbelieving and sceptical world.

It is also a salient reminder that the search for unity cannot be a call, however tactfully worded, for the assimilation of one church into another. If this shift in mind-set is the result, however indirectly, of the publication of One Bread One Body, all is not lost and much may have been gained.

It is good that the Catholic bishops have set themselves to court neither favour nor popularity in speaking what they perceive as the truth. There must indeed be no "dumbing down" of differences between our traditions.

It can indeed be dangerous, as the bishops point out, to ask the question "What would Jesus do?" as a rhetorical ploy to allow a casual drift into relativism and laissez-faire. But in speaking, as the document does, of the "hard sayings" of Jesus in relation to the Bread of Life, may I suggest that we all need to give greater attention to another verse in that chapter of John's Gospel which for me has always illuminated the entire passage, as Jesus says to his hearers, "Anyone who comes to me I will never drive away . . ."

Dr Richard Clarke is Church of Ire- land Bishop of Meath and Kildare