Just before Christmas there was a comedian on the Late Late Show who made what were described as sacrilegious remarks about Mass. I didn't see it so I cannot comment. Various church people who did, however, said it was a scandal. They said it should not have been broadcast. Maybe so.

But I venture to suggest that churchmen themselves have given even greater scandal to the faithful by their public, uncharitable bickering about the Eucharist in the wake of President McAleese's mature and thoroughly understandable decision to partake in Church of Ireland Eucharistic worship.

This week there will be much talk about Christian unity. There will be joint services in churches, North and South, and prayers will be solemnly offered to change the hearts of the evil men of violence.

How can any normal person be expected to take such services seriously now? And is it not arguable that there are churchmen's hearts and minds which need to be changed, as much as with the people of violence, if we are ever to have an island where we can live side by side - respecting our differences, theological, social, cultural?

What caused most scandal and most pain was the bitterness of the attacks, especially from Catholic clergy, who should have higher standards, not to mention more accurate up-to-date knowledge.

It was a most awful time. It is not over yet. The President, herself well trained in theology, must now realise just how much the Catholic Church has regressed in a few years. And that is the central issue here - a dispute about inter-faith Communion indicates a deeper malaise.

The viciousness of the words, the utter insensitivity, the personal attacks, were shattering. Never was the difference between religion and spirituality more crudely highlighted.

The fact that Archbishop Desmond Connell had the good sense to offer an apology for some of the words he used showed admirable humility. It seems to me, though, that others have been less willing to accept that there can be no excuse for the manner in which they expressed their views, even if those views could be backed up by law.

Such clerical bitterness reveals a deep flaw in the image of the Catholic Church and is the reason why many under 50 - and many who will never see 50 again - simply find the kind of male club, which some claim the Catholic Church has become, a most uncomfortable location.

The only reason good-thinking people remain in the church is that they realise it is not, and cannot ever be, a mere male club governed by human laws which must be accepted without question. They refuse to accept that.

As a consequence they have suffered rejection and isolation on their lonely way to discover a meaningful church. Many, including some priests, simply give up the struggle. Others resort to a kind of doublethink - they keep "Father" happy and find God where they can.

The letters I received over Christmas brought an almost unanimous support for the President and a total despair that her taking Communion in Dublin's Christ Church Cathedral had become an issue of conscience rather than of prudence.

On the other hand, a disturbingly large proportion of clergy backed the views, if not the language, of their fellow clerics. They declared that the President "had let the side down" - the ultimate sin being disloyalty, by the way, for those who see the church as their club, irrespective of what the prophetic stance should be. That's the way of the clerical church these days. There have been too many battles lost. What we have, we hold.

Or, they say, she "should have shown more humility." Which seems to me to be remarkably close to hinting that a mere woman - and a laywoman at that - should not have the audacity to think and act for herself, especially if that thinking is not at one with those who wish to make infallible dogmas of faith out of the teaching of those who are in authority at this given time in church history.

It is one of the signs of a decaying institution - church or state - that some leaders wish to dogmatise what are still opinions. It is the ultimate failure in teaching, when one needs to examine one's teaching and one's teaching method.

Father Sean Fagan reminded Irish Times readers of Aristotle's dictum: "No teaching takes place until someone is taught."

If you try to make everything infallible you succeed in making nothing infallible. That's real heresy. Churchmen have been so wrong about so many issues that nobody listens when they speak on genuine issues, like abortion.

So many institutions, including the church, have lost credibility now that the mass media, not the church leaders, have the real power over people's thinking, moral and otherwise. The misuse of authority eventually damages legitimate authority, sometimes fatally.

When you are able to self-criticise, you are in a healthy position. Your identity is clear and your boundaries are clear. The real problem is for the mass of people who love their church yet can no longer find a comfortable home there.

Like so many others, I'm experiencing that feeling now. The attitude of oppression seems designed to snuff out all hope. People are made to feel bad and, worse still, strangers in a church they have given their lives to. I know it's part of Passion, but is there any merit in needless Passion?

I feel caught between the far right, who have taken over the church, and the far left, who refuse to acknowledge any order, any mystery. God, if mentioned at all, is used as a weapon by both. The two extremes push each other apart. Those in the middle are squeezed out.

Is that what is happening? I believe the unspoken problem is that the images of the church are so diverse as to be irreconcilable. Those who base their arguments solely on canon law work out of an image of the church which is totally alien to the modern thinking of the church and the world. It is as if the second Vatican Council never happened. The other extreme is that nothing matters, so why bother with religion at all?

The sad fact is that I know exactly the response I will get to this article. There will be the usual anonymous letters from the far right, most of them fellow priests (their language is the giveaway) followed by the persistent pleas to bishops to shut me up.

On the other hand, there will be a silent majority who recognise the need for new thinking for a new world. They'll know that many church people do not think their thoughts or speak their language. They'll know that there are many important issues in Ireland today, yet angry clerics can only sling insults at a civic leader; a leader making a mature choice which, in the totality of things, is her right.

They'll know their own children, no matter how well brought up, don't bother going to Mass at all, and even when they do, have little more than a vague idea of what the Eucharist is.

In some senses it is good the President's mature choice has given rise to this debate. But it would be a pity if it simply fell by the wayside now. A real issue has surfaced and no adequate debate has taken place. It's all been too vindictive. Yet in Christian Unity Week there will be meetings and services bordering, I fear, on mere hypocrisy.

Perhaps Father Sean Fagan was most accurate in his Irish Times letter when he wrote: "The real scandal is still our divided Christianity. What really separates us is not so much faith, belief, or, in many cases, even theology, but rather entrenched attitudes and traditions that have little to do with Gospel.

"A basic principle of ecumenism is that the closer we come to Jesus, the closer we come to each other. The fact that we keep our distance so much from each other suggests that we should examine our conscience on how close we are to God. This would be a more fruitful exercise than publicly examining our President's conscience."

Father Brian D'Arcy is a Passionist priest, based in Crossgar, Co Down. He is also a columnist with the Sunday World, where this article has already appeared.