wfn.org | Irish Presbyterians Say Ecumenism Doesn't Extend to Catholics

[PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>]

13-September-1999 
99300 
 
    Irish Presbyterians Take a Principled Stand, 
    Say Ecumenism Doesn't Extend to Catholics 
 
    by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - An effort to make an existing Protestant-Roman Catholic 
committee the top ecumenical body for Ireland has been stymied by a vote of 
the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (PCI). 
 
    The plan, which had been approved by the three other major 
denominations in both the Republic and in Northern Ireland - the Anglicans, 
the Methodists and the Roman Catholics - went down by a 224-144 vote during 
the Belfast General Assembly in June. Its opponents say it was defeated by 
the fact that an institutional identification with the Roman Catholic 
Church would imply approval of its doctrine. 
 
    And that is, in a word, apostasy. 
 
    If this all sounds like theological separatism, it is. But this is 
Northern Ireland, where politics and religion stay unintelligibly and 
painfully entangled - no matter how much distance Catholics and Protestants 
put between themselves, and no matter how many centuries go by. 
 
    The political stalemate isn't so dissimilar. 
 
    Ulster's major unionist (and largely Protestant) party is refusing to 
form a four-party administration to govern Northern Ireland - including 
Sinn Fein, the radical republican party - because the Provisional Irish 
Republican Army (IRA) has refused to disarm, and because of apparent 
breaches of the outlawed group's 1997 cease-fire. 
 
    To some, the Protestants' refusal - either politically or ecumenically 
- is just principled pragmatism, taking a stand and sticking to it. That is 
how the PCI's evangelicals understand their vote against creating one 
Protestant-Catholic ecumenical body for Ireland. But to others, this ballot 
represents another lost chance to sit Catholics and Protestants together at 
a central ecumenical table - just as, in the political realm, calls for a 
politically inclusive, power-sharing governing body fall on deaf ears. To 
those folks, the vote sounds suspiciously like what unionists have been 
accused of for centuries - plain, old-fashioned bigotry. 
 
    "The Reformed churches gained their identity from the Reformation, from 
opposing the Catholic church. There's a deep anti-catholicism within Ulster 
Protestantism. ... It's in all the Protestant churches," said David 
Stevens, who added that Ulster's Presbyterians are no exception to the. 
"The Presbyterians and ecumenism have had a tortured and difficult history 
over the last 20 years. 
 
    "They left the World Council of Churches (WCC). They did not join the 
Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland. ... This," he said of the most 
recent vote, "is about relations with the Catholic Church." 
 
      Stevens is general secretary of the all-Protestant Irish Council of 
Churches (ICC) and joint secretary of the Protestant-Catholic Irish 
Inter-Church Meeting (IICM), the two bodies at the center of the hubbub. 
 
    The proposal was to eliminate the ICC and give more authority to the 
IICM, eliminating some duplication of work, and to cut at least 40 percent 
of the cost the PCI now incurs to support the two groups. 
 
    "This was all perceived as a compromise of doctrine and authority," 
said the Rev. Robert Herron the chairman of the PCI's Inter-Church 
Committee, who put the overture before the more than 1,000 elders and 
ministers who comprise the PCI's annual assembly. "The fear is that the 
Roman Catholic Church would be perceived to be speaking on behalf of our 
church. 
 
    "Fear was the word used most repeatedly ... and the comments made were 
really reciting the errors of Rome, rather the addressing the issue before 
us, which was ... restructuring two ecumenical bodies." 
 
    Fear is what governs much of what goes on in Northern Ireland. Voters 
want peace, but, as they admit about themselves, they get spooked when it 
looks as if peace will be costly. Which is why longtime British 
Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) analyst Eric Waugh says the odds are 50-50 
for a political settlement now. "It's in the balance at the moment," he 
said during a telephone interview from his Belfast residence. 
 
      Right now, Ulster unionists are threatening to withdraw from former 
U. S. Senator George Mitchell's attempt to mediate the blocks to peace - 
especially if he rules that the IRA is meeting the terms of its cease-fire. 
Anxiety is not any less in the Republican camp, where the latest uproar put 
demonstrators in bloody standoffs with the police to protest the annual 
parades celebrating Protestant victories in 17th century religious wars. 
 
    Ecumenical equilibrium is almost as precarious; although the PCI's vote 
in no way curtails the denomination's current role in the IICM, a body that 
speaks for the four churches on major issues in Ireland. 
 
      Evangelicals are intent on preserving what they call doctrinal 
purity, fearing that compromising Calvin on one issue will lead to more 
compromises. Moderates are hesitant to cast a ballot for more ecumenism, 
because they have to go back home and face the more conservative folks who 
sit in their pews -  many of whom don't consider Catholicism to be a 
Christian faith, and who use the Roman church's doctrines about 
justification, transubstantiation and the role of Christ as evidence. 
 
     And then there's just plain fear among Ulster's Protestants and 
largely unionist population - similar to the feeling in Ulster's Catholic 
and predominantly republican one - that they've been giving in on issue 
after issue in the peace process, and that, when it comes to the principles 
of the reformed faith, it is time to take a principled stand. "You can't 
avoid the fact that the divisions within the political systems are not 
[purely] over political issues," said Herron. "There's deep-seated 
religious feeling in there. That's all part of it." 
 
    Hence, in Herron's mind, the "no" votes. 
 
    Former PCI Moderator the Rev. William Craig - a retired pastor now in 
his 80s - is adamant, however, that the vote was doctrinally, not 
politically, motivated. He said unionists are  unhappy with the way 
political events are shaking down, and evangelicals like himself are 
unhappy with the way ecumenism dilutes evangelism. "We committed at our 
ordination to teach doctrine ... and defend [it], I think the phrase is, to 
our utmost power. And I'm not too happy to become deeply involved with a 
denomination that does not [have] the same doctrinal standards. ... 
 
    "Obviously, the Roman Catholic Church has many doctrines that are 
unscriptural. This has nothing to do with politics," he said, just before 
putting down the phone to get his tea. 
 
    The Rev. Norm McAuley of Maderafelt says much the same. 
 
      "We're not anti-Roman Catholic at all. But we are strongly anti-Roman 
Catholicism," he said, stressing that the informal ties between the 
churches provide enough links for now. "My vote has nothing to do with 
politics," said McAuley, insisting that the kingdom that matters most to 
him is eternal. 
 
    But he does draw the line where political accommodation means what he 
calls religious accommodation. 
 
    The PCI did - a century or so ago - state formally that the Roman 
Catholic Church is, indeed, Christian. That act was reaffirmed again in 
1968 - the same year that the paramilitary and street violence that has 
killed more than 3,500 people erupted in a spectacularly gruesome way 
throughout the province. 
 
    But practicing what the church preaches has been harder, especially 
when it means sitting down at a table that was once Protestant, although 
not thoroughly reformed, and now only filling 50 percent of the seats. 
 
    "The IICM has been going on for 25 years and has been increasingly 
active in different ways.  But to formalize the relationship was too 
difficult of a step for many people," said Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 
mission co-worker Doug Baker. Baker has been tied to the PCI in Belfast for 
more than 20 years and believes that a sizeable chunk of the membership in 
the province's churches are clinging to outdated perceptions of each other. 
Republicans, he says, can't see the compromises unionists have made, and 
vice-versa. 
 
     "It was a bridge too far for the majority of the church," said Baker, 
who described the Ulster Protestant psyche as highly moral and ethical, but 
unyielding when it comes to pragmatic kinds of compromises. 
 
    "This reflects the degree of isolation that still exists. So many folks 
have not had the opportunity or experience to be enabled to move beyond 
their mistrust," he said, noting that neither the political nor the 
ecclesiastical systems have been able to provide the assurances or 
guarantees that are necessary to quell centuries of accumulated fears. 
 
    The quest for pure doctrine only intensifies mistrust, according to 
Baker, and unwittingly fuels divisions and hostilities within the larger 
society. "Behind the vote shows the level of profound mistrust of the 
Catholic church as a body," Baker said, noting that similar levels of 
distrust pervade both sides of the political stand-off. 
 
    The PCI's press spokesperson, Stephen Lynas, said that the 100 or so 
PCI voters who filed a formal dissent after the balloting worry that the 
"no" vote is one with symbolic repercussions - since the churches have been 
pushing Ulster's political leaders to make peace. "There's a big weakness 
in our Christian witness," he said. "There's a big split in it. 
 
    "Compared to where we were, we've come a long, long way. But in the 
wider world context, we have a long way to go," said Lynas. 
 
    That would get no argument from Stevens who says the Presbyterians have 
left Ireland's other three major denominations with a big decision. 
 
      "The Presbyterian Church is going to have to stand on the sidelines 
while others decide what to do," he said, noting that the options run from 
maintaining the status quo - since the PCI is such a large church in 
Northern Ireland, particularly - or forming an ecumenical body that does 
not include Presbyterians. "I doubt that would happen immediately," he 
said, "but it could happen." 
 
    The fact that many PCI delegates simply failed to show up for the vote 
is what gripes Stevens.  He reads that not as apathy but as fear - a way to 
avoid taking a position that might be tough to explain back home.  "It's 
like [Irish writer] Seamus Heaney said: `Whatever you say, say nothing.' 
They [the PCI] don't want to appear anti-Catholic. But they don't want to 
take a stand, either." 

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  This note sent by Office of News Services, 
  Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
  to the World Faith News list <wfn-news@wfn.org>.
  For additional information about this news story,
  call 502-569-5493 or send e-mail to PCUSA.News@pcusa.org

  On the web:  http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/

  If you have a question about this mailing list, 
  send queries to wfn@wfn.org