The Church of Ireland Dean of Cork, Dr Richard Clarke, has said that Christian unity has become a "luxury" that is now far lower down the `churches' agenda than "keeping the faithful faithful, or the youth from defecting or the finances from collapsing".
Dr Clarke was preaching at a service of prayer for Christian unity in The Lough Catholic church in Cork. He said he had no doubt that the Irish churches would eventually change their attitudes and realise that the true service of Christ is something which "we as Christians can only do together".
"The crucial question is whether it will only be through necessity, through weariness, through the absence of alternatives, that we will face ourselves outwards together to a country which is steadily losing faith - to the thousands of men, women and children in this city and this country who are losing faith in Jesus Christ because they have first lost faith in us, the Church."