Sir, – We expect a Dean of St Patrick’s to cause a stir, and the Very Rev Robert MacCarthy (a native of Clonmel) is no exception. On this occasion, without apparently resorting to any authority higher than his own conscience, he has extended a Christian invitation for the use of St Patrick’s Cathedral by all Irish Christians to all seven presidential candidates in the election just concluded.
Since these candidates included not only a member of his own congregation in Senator David Norris, but also a former member of the IRA in Martin McGuinness, now Deputy First Minister in Northern Ireland and (I believe) a practising Roman Catholic, we must at least admire his ecumenism.
Indeed, his invitation is a supreme gesture of Christian reconciliation and compassion, especially in the light of the persecution of Protestants in Ireland, whether in 1641 or in the 20th century. Indeed, when I came to Trinity College Dublin in 1968 the ban imposed on the attendance of Roman Catholics by Archbishop McQuaid in his Lenten Regulations of 1944 was still in force. It would be good to see the dean’s personal generosity reciprocated in some way, not least by Martin McGuinness (a former colleague of Ian Paisley) whose present role as peacemaker I warmly applaud.
No doubt the dean was acting ultra vires. St Patrick's Cathedral is the national cathedral of the Church of Ireland and is not in the gift of its dean. As such it is a symbol of Christian unity throughout the 32 counties of Ireland. But without jeopardising the status of St Patrick's Cathedral within the Anglican Communion perhaps we can extend a small measure of Christian charity to the dean himself, whom I know and honour as a man of God and a true Irishman.
It is surely time that we put an end once and for all to the conflict between Protestants and Roman Catholics that has stained the history of Ireland and assert in its stead the unity of our Christian tradition extending as far back as St Patrick himself. Let us turn a local difficulty of a kind sadly not unusual among Christian congregations into an opportunity for Christian renewal under a new and enthusiastic president. Roman Catholics and Protestants in Ireland must surely wish in 2011 to operate on a basis of complete and true equality.
And, after all, the Church of Ireland is Irish. – Yours, etc,