THE new church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Rev Walton Empey, is a plain-spoken man. He believes that his church has tended to keep its head down in the Republic because of its minority position, and he intends to set an example by boldly speaking out on issues of public concern.
His strong speech at yesterday's Dublin diocesan synod on Drumcree came partly out of that feeling. But it also came from what he called a real "groundswell of anger, frustration, bitterness and hurt" among Church of Ireland people in the Republic about how their church is perceived by their Catholic neighbours following the violent confrontations outside Drumcree church in July.
"It was particularly painful watching Drumcree church night after night on the television, and seeing a banner in a republican area of Belfast reading `Drumcree church must burn'," said one Dublin lay member yesterday.
In the wake of the disturbances there was also a strong feeling - equally strongly denied by Archbishop Empey yesterday - that the church had been silent about its role in the events outside Portadown. Church members well known in their communities have had to contend with the outrage of their Catholic friends and neighbours.
Such feelings have provoked bishops all over the South to speak out, a process helped by this being the season for bishops' addresses to diocesan synods, with their potential for making headlines. Bishop John Neill of Tuam started last month with an admission that many church members had found its association with Drumcree "deeply embarrassing and offensive".
He was followed by the Bishop of Cork, the Right Rev Roy Warke, normally the mildest of men, who said that no incident in the North over the past 27 years had provoked more reaction from the Church of Ireland community in the South.
Last weekend, it was the turn of the new Bishop of Meath and Kildare, Dr Richard Clarke, who said the Drumcree events had driven many Southern Church of Ireland members to say, "This isn't the church I belong to".
The unhappiness of most Southern Protestants at being associated with loyalist bigotry and violence was exacerbated by a small number of incidents of churches and schools being daubed with republican slogans, and one arson attempt on a church in north Co Dublin, which gardai denied was politically inspired. "People were very uneasy - it was all coming too close to home," said one senior layman.
THAT is certainly the accusation that many Northern Church of Ireland people will level at their Southern co-religionists: that when Border Protestants and RUC men were being murdered no one in the church in the South raised a voice, but when their Southern neighbours start making hostile remarks, they suddenly become agitated.
They will say the Southern bishops who have spoken out, from Archbishop Empey downwards, have little or no experience of the hardships of life as a minister in Northern Ireland: burying victims of IRA attacks, consoling relatives, dealing with bombings, boycotts and intimidation. Many of them will be bitter that, with so few friends in the world, they are now being abandoned by their fellow church members.
They will echo that most open-minded of Northern bishops, Dr Jim Mehaffey of Derry, in cautioning that what happened at Drumcree was a lot more complex than appeared on television. Northern church sources say there were huge efforts by church leaders in the weeks before last July's confrontation to find a compromise, perhaps involving the Orangemen taking a route other than the Garvaghy Road, but that some local republicans were determined to have a confrontation. Archbishop Eames was told by his doctor to take sick leave because of his post Drumcree exhaustion.
There will be an angrier reaction among many Northern Protestants with no particular love for the Church of Ireland. The tone was set by the former unionist minister, Mr Roy Bradford, writing in the News Letter about Bishop Neill's comments, under the headline "Save us from this meddling priest".
He accused Bishop Neill of swallowing Sinn Fein propaganda, "assiduously peddled by the republican media", that Drumcree was about the British government capitulating to the Orange threat of force. In fact, Mr Bradford said, echoing the dominant unionist view, last July's events were sparked off by threats from the IRA-led Garvaghy Road residents.
SUCH reactions are predictable enough. However, one thing is clear on the post-Drumcree flare-up in the Republic's normally quiescent Church of Ireland community. Southern members of the Church of Ireland - from archbishops down to lay people - and particularly its younger generations, now have far more in common with their Catholic fellow-citizens than with their Northern co-religionists.
In 1972, the General Synod went into a highly unusual private session to discuss the then near-civil war situation in the North. The burning of the British embassy in Dublin a few months before had brought the Northern Troubles right onto Southern Protestants' comfortable doorstep. In the event, the church's solidarity and unity was strongly reasserted behind closed doors.
Church leaders say the North-South tensions over Drumcree are nothing compared to that crisis moment. Archbishop Eames has already had meetings with the rector and select vestry of Drumcree church, as well as with Orange representatives, to begin the process of ensuring that next year's Drumcree march is a peaceful affair, or at the very least is removed from Church of Ireland property. The tenor of next spring's General Synod will depend to a considerable extent on the primate's efforts.