The Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, the Very Rev John Paterson, has criticised the Church of Ireland Gazette for an "insensitive, not to say crass" editorial on the Communion controversy.
The Gazette had accused the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Desmond Connell, of "muddled thinking" and of hurting members of both churches "by his comments and by his demeanour".
In a letter in the latest issue, Dean Paterson regrets that the magazine's first editorial on the issue was "more than a little insensitive, not to say crass, in its references to the people involved and to the event itself".
The letter continues: "there is also a degree of hypocrisy in disguising the fact that . . . the Church of Ireland operated similar, though less well policed, Communion practices as late as my own ordination in 1963.
"Lay pressure . . . caused us to begin a period of rethinking. Lay pressure is showing itself today in some of the most unexpected places too". Suggesting that "the biblical allusion to motes and planks" should be remembered by everyone, the letter points out that "Anglicans do not practise indiscriminate or open Communion. It is limited to `Christians who are baptised in the name of the Holy Trinity and qualified to receive Holy Communion in their own churches'. "