It is appropriate that we should welcome Cardinal Connell's statement yesterday concerning comments he made about his Church of Ireland counterpart in Dublin, Archbishop Walton Empey, in a forthcoming book. It is good to know he holds the Archbishop "in the greatest respect and respect in particular his widely acknowledged and admired pastoral gifts."
It would be churlish not to acknowledge his confession that "I am too aware that I myself sometimes say things in the course of an interview without sufficiently adverting to the reactions of others". And few would doubt his words "when the result is the giving of offence, no one is more regretful than I am and this is so in the present time."
But, sadly, it all has about it a by now wearying familiarity. In his statement yesterday the Cardinal felt the report of what he said was "likely to give rise to misunderstanding" when in fact there was little room for misunderstanding. He felt he "might have appeared to denigrate him (Archbishop Empey)" when there was no doubt that he had done so. And in the statement's final paragraph, he suggested that the problem was with the reactions to what he had said, rather than what he had said.
In December 1997, following President McAleese receiving communion in Dublin's Christ Church Cathedral, he said it was "a sham" for a Roman Catholic to receive communion in a Protestant Church. Days later he apologised for the comment and was "sorry for any offence caused", but continued immediately to blame media reporting of those comments for the offence caused.
Last February, prior to his going to Rome for elevation to the College of Cardinals, he criticised the Church of Ireland for its practice of inviting all baptised Christians to receive communion. He insisted later that, while he stood over the remarks, he had never intended to cause offence.
Is any wonder that this pattern of offending comment, followed by immediate if generally qualified regret, gave rise to such a widespread 'here we go again' reaction yesterday.