The exercise of individual conscience has become such a feature of modern Irish Catholicism this past 30 years that some commentators have concluded it has made Protestants of us all. This summer the Irish Catholic bishops will be issuing a document on conscience.

Dr Brady described conscience as "a gift from God, who has also given us our freedom, and the gift of authority to the church and society".

Conscience, he said, is "the voice of God, which enables us to see and judge, and to choose in accordance with what is right".

There is, he said, a tendency to see authority as a killjoy, but every society had authority. There was also a tendency to see the moral views of Christianity as restrictive, but anyone who thinks it was all about rules was missing the point.

The fact was that down through the centuries Christians who wanted to love God and their neighbours with all their heart had often come across difficult situations or dilemmas.

The rules of Christian morality are the answers of those Christian communities to the difficult questions with which they were confronted.

"It's not that the Pope and bishops sat down and tried to think of things which would make life more difficult," he said.

"The moral teaching of the church was not just of the church but was from Christ himself." It was not just "thought up by a whimsical God" but was there to protect the commandments and their fundamental values of fidelity, honesty, and truthfulness. Christ was "the freest person of all".

The rules were there to expand freedom, and extend whatever was essential to living. There are freedoms which are illusory, which lead to slavery, away from community to loneliness and rootlessness.

"Freedom can't be exercised without community," he said, "and someone has to bury us.".

Authority was the service of guidance, and one which "gets a bad press", he felt. As with individual freedom it too came from God, and "it would be a very strange way of honouring the source of all gifts by exercising freedom against the will of God", he said.

Authority in the church was also an exercise of the responsibility to hand on to every generation the fullness and richness of all the church believes in fidelity to Christ her founder.

It was at the service of the people, to help them make right choices and find the answer to the rich young man's question in the New Testament "what must I do to gain eternal life?".