A heresy charge against the Dean of Clonmacnoise rocked the Church of Ireland, reports Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent
The two church men had shared a friendship that went back 30 years. But when the Dean of Clonmacnoise, Andrew Furlong, was summoned to the home of the Bishop of Meath and Kildare, Richard Clarke, on December 5th, 2001, there was no time for small talk.
"The surprising, sinister and shocking outcome of my meeting with my bishop was to learn that, as of that very day, I would not have his authority to do my work as a priest," recalls Furlong. He was being given three months' leave of absence, "time to reflect".
This was the culmination of months of growing disquiet within the Church of Ireland about the radical views Furlong was expressing through his parish website and other media. He was making it clear that while he believed in God, he did not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ.
Furlong, writing in his newly published account of the affair, Tried for Heresy - A 21st Century Journey of Faith, says Bishop Clarke told him that "if he remained unsatisfied with my understanding of Christianity, concerns about my future ministry in the Church of Ireland would be addressed by him". This "sounded very ominous to me and I felt extremely threatened".
The bishop also suggested it would not be helpful if he entered into dialogue or debate in the media on the matter. As Furlong left the house, "I found I had Julius Caesar's anguished words, unspoken, on my tongue: 'Et tu Brute'. I felt as if I had been assaulted. I felt let down, isolated and alienated. It was as if I had been stabbed by a friend."
A report in the media announced in mid-December that he had been placed on leave of absence and the matter attracted widespread attention at home and abroad. "The Dean of Clonmacnoise was presented as the Irish priest who did not believe in the message of Christmas as the coming of the Son of God into the world."
The majority of parishioners in the Trim and Athboy Group of Parishes where he was rector "were convinced that my position was untenable in the parish. Some parishioners were clearly very angry and considered that if I had any integrity at all, I would do the decent thing and resign.
"I knew some people were shocked and embarrassed by the attention the parish was being given. I was conscious that others felt that what I was saying in the media was a breath of fresh air; they too longed for the modernisation of their faith."
But Furlong's refusal to change his thinking or to resign as requested in March 2002, led to the extraordinary spectacle of him being charged with heresy by Bishop Clarke. It was to be the first trial on such a charge before an ecclesiastical court of the Church of Ireland since the 19th century.
It was a highly embarrassing situation for all concerned that, at the beginning of the third millennium, one of our more prominent and tolerant churches was going down a road more popularly associated with inquisitions and witch hunts.
It was also a sad and wounding saga which cost its two main protagonists dear. Furlong lost his job when he settled the case at the start of the trial. And before this episode, Bishop Clarke was strongly favoured to succeed Most Rev Walton Empey as Archbishop of Dublin in August 2002. It is widely believed his handling of the Furlong affair turned sufficient Dublin clergy against him to ensure he could not get the job. Yet it is not clear what else Bishop Clarke could have done in the circumstances, once Furlong opted to push the moment to crisis. It is not easy to see how any bishop could preside passively over a situation in which one of his clergy insisted repeatedly on publicly proclaiming his disbelief in the basic tenet of Christianity.
Furlong did just that partly, it seems, as a way of exorcising doubts that had played on his mind since before his ordination 30 years earlier and as a way of communicating his nuanced insights about Christianity. Furlong believed his bishop (who he perceived as "one of the Church of Ireland's more liberal thinkers") and his parishioners could take it. They could not.
From Dalkey in Co Dublin, Furlong says he was interested in religion for as long as he can remember. He went to Trinity College in 1965 where he studied philosophy, of which department his father was professor. He also played hockey for Ireland while there. In his last year at Trinity he began thinking about the ministry. He studied theology at Cambridge and continued ordination training at Westcott House there later.
It was at Cambridge, between 1969 and 1972, he began to, as he writes it, "cease to believe, in a literal sense, in Jesus as the Saviour of the world. I would no longer see him as both human and divine, in the sense required if it were to be claimed that God had entered our environment and become a human being. Should I have proceeded on the route to ordination?"
He continues, "at the time it seemed to me, in the context of what I was taught, that this more metaphorical and symbolic understanding of Christianity was the way forward for the Church. It kept the commitment to love and caring, while presenting it in a way that was fully in tune with modern knowledge."
He was ordained in December 1972. As a practising minister in Belfast and later in Dublin he spoke of his theological views to some clergy, including the late Archbishop Henry McAdoo of Dublin, who encouraged him to continue reading and thinking. At no time did any of the senior clergy to whom he spoke suggest he leave the ministry, he says.
In 1983 he went to Zimbabwe, where he spent 11 happy years, while "still conscious of my 'hidden isolation' and sense of alienation brought about by my theological views". He married in 1991. They left Zimbabwe for Leeds in 1994, but the marriage did not work out.
While in Leeds he visited Ireland many times and decided to apply to the Trim and Athboy group of parishes. He had known Bishop Clarke and his wife Linda from his student days. They had served as curates in neighbouring Dublin parishes some years before.
In March 1997 Furlong was instituted rector of Trim and Athboy and Dean of Clonmacnoise. He recalled of Bishop Clarke that "while he would not have always been up to date with the developments in my thinking, he was not unaware that I held liberal views on Christianity". They had many discussions about belief over the following five years. He recalls the bishop once saying during a discussion that "while he had difficulties believing in God, he could more easily believe in the Incarnation, while I seemed to have less difficulty believing in God, but did not believe in the Incarnation".
Recognising Ireland had moved on considerably from what it was like when he left in 1983, he decided in 1999 to present a paper to the Diocesan Clergy Society "about my radical beliefs". He recalled "my paper came, to my surprise, as a great shock" to those present. A decision was taken not to minute the address nor were minutes taken of a discussion on it at a subsequent meeting of the group. Senior clergy questioned his staying on in the ministry and some had told Bishop Clarke that they could not in conscience take Communion celebrated by him.
On a sabbatical at Hawarden in Wales during 2000 he wrote a paper on "the implications of radical and liberal theology for the future of Anglicanism". He submitted it to the Church of Ireland journal Search. It was not published.
In March 2001 he submitted an article titled "A faith fundamentally flawed" to The Irish Times. Then he waited, but nothing appeared. "I felt disappointed, but in other ways I felt relieved. I anticipated a storm, and wondered how to weather it."
Furlong then published the article on his parish website. In November 2001, the then editor of the Irish Catholic newspaper, David Quinn, wrote that he had never come across such liberal views.
It was just three weeksbefore Christmas 2001 that Furlong was summoned to that fateful meeting with Bishop Clarke. Ten days later, Furlong issued a lengthy press release explaining his own position. Then, on January 8th 2002, he wrote the "Rite and Reason" column for this newspaper. It was titled "Why the church must be willing to alter the path it follows". He met Bishop Clarke again on March 5th, 2002 as agreed the previous December. There was no meeting of minds.
On Friday, March 8th 2002, he received a letter from Bishop Clarke (see above) requesting his resignation and saying that, should it not be forthcoming, the matter would be brought before the Court of the General Synod. Furlong refused to resign.
"I wanted the whole question, in a post-modern age, of the appropriateness of the concept of orthodoxy discussed" in the Church's highest court, he says.
The court sat at Church of Ireland House in Dublin on April 8th 2002, with seven judges presiding. They included Bishops Harold Miller and John Neill, Archbishop Robin Eames, and four lay people, Justice Catherine McGuinness, Judge Gerard Buchanan, Kenneth Mills and Ronald Robins. Joe Revington SC represented Furlong, while Richard Nesbitt SC represented Bishop Clarke.
A petition for an adjournment by Revington was granted to May 10th, 2002. But, following discussion with counsel and friends, on May 7th, 2002 Furlong agreed settlement terms with the diocese, the details of which he is precluded from discussing for legal reasons.
"I held my chin up as I went out of the door of my solicitor's office. I had to continue to be brave. What, however, would I do next? A part of me felt dead but I was walking, so some part of me must be still alive," he writes. "I was a free and independent human being with my own vision of life. I would find another way to seek to live it out."
Today he is living where he grew up, in Dalkey, Co Dublin, while taking a peace studies course at Trinity College.
Tried for Heresy - A 21st Century Journey of Faith by Andrew Furlong is published by O Books, price £9.99 in UK