Opinion

Denis Bradley: Churches still not full brothers and sisters in Christ

Denis Bradley

Denis Bradley

Denis Bradley is a columnist for The Irish News and former vice-chairman of the Northern Ireland Policing Board.

Archbishop Eamon Martin
Archbishop Eamon Martin Archbishop Eamon Martin

The two Archbishops, Richard Clarke and Eamon Martin, have clearly formed a close friendship.

Photographs and warm words about the friendship between the leaders of the Anglican and Catholic Churches were carried in the media on Archbishop Clarke’s recent retirement. There is a powerful impact when friendship cuts through historical enmity. Perhaps friendship is the only real transformative power human beings have.

However, both men would have read the editorial in The Tablet on the same week that the Archbishop took his leave. The

Tablet is an international Catholic Weekly magazine produced in England that gives reasonable coverage to religious and political affairs in Ireland. In addressing the state of ecumenism between the Churches, here and abroad, the article describes the relationship as having reached a plateau. It claims it has become a comfortable place, instead of the resting place it was meant to be. The Christian Churches have become comfortable and complacent in the friendships and liturgical gestures that are common on that plateau. The danger, the article claims, is that this resting place risks becoming a place where Churches go to die.

It is uncomfortable to observe Churches, from that plateau, call upon politicians to put their differences aside and get back into government. Those calls for political parties to put their differences aside is akin to challenging the politicians to get rid of the elephant in the political rooms while ignoring the exact same elephant in the religious rooms. It is even more poignant since the clerics believe their institution is founded by Christ who prayed that his followers would all be one ‘as you Father are in me. And I in you’.

The Tablet says that the effort for unity among the Churches has stalled and been tamed by familiarity. There are no longer any radical actions that challenge the disunity. There is no energy or drive to tackle the fundamental divisions. People have settled for attending each other’s funerals and marriages.

In that regard, there has been improvement. No one bats an eye when the priest or the minister reads a scriptural text or leads a prayer in the other’s church. Arlene Foster told The Late Late Show audience that, even though she had lost some friends as a result, she did not regret attending the funeral of Martin McGuinness. Many members of the Orange Order ignore the ban imposed by the organisation and go into Catholic churches to bury their neighbours.

Catholics regard themselves as more tolerant than Protestants. For years they would consider it rude not to attend and partake in the rituals of separated churches. At the recent retirement service of the Rev David Latimer, the Presbyterian minister who became a friend of Martin McGuinness, it was clear that there was a large turnout of Sinn Féin members in the congregation. Officially, however, the authenticity of the ministry and sacramentality of protestant services is still disputed and even theologically rejected by the Catholic Church. We share friendship but not sacraments, not schools, not teacher training colleges. Pertinently, it is becoming more difficult to ignore that those separations cost the economy a billion pounds every year.

Ecumenism is an effort to heal the crude divisions between Protestants and Catholics. It has certainly civilised us, but it has failed to bring theological or structural unity. We have become friends but not full brothers and sisters in Christ.

Bishop James Mehaffey, Anglican and friend of Edward Daly, Catholic bishop of Derry, died last month. At Bishop Daly’s funeral, a few years before his own death, James left his hospital bed and was wheeled into the front of the church. He could be involved in the service but not at the central act of the receiving of communion. That clash of friendship and theology is the plateau that churches presently share, and The Tablet describes it as the place where Churches go to die.