Envoy suggests churches could be `more flexible'

The British Ambassador, Mrs Veronica Sutherland, last night said she thought the various churches in Ireland could "learn to be more flexible".

She drew attention to a weekend sermon by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, on inter-church communion in which he called on the Catholic Church to abandon its ruling forbidding Protestants from receiving Communion in its churches.

The archbishop's comments were "to the effect that the Eucharist is a gracious gift from God to be shared among all Christians of whatever denomination," she said. He was, she felt, "making a plea for tolerance amongst us all".

Dr Carey was preaching at an ecumenical service of vespers in Luxembourg's Catholic cathedral on Sunday.

Referring to Communion as "the Lord's supper", he said no church could claim ownership of the sacrament.

The Church of England regularly invited baptised members of other churches to receive Communion, he said, and "this was a reminder that the Eucharist does not belong to us, we do not own it."

He also referred to the "pain and hurt" felt by Christians in a mixed marriage with a Catholic, when they cannot share Communion "at deep moments of joy, celebration, sadness and despair". This pain, caused by divisions from the past, could in the long term be damaging, he said, as "it hurts to be denied the Lord's supper by a fellow disciple of Jesus Christ".

The Catholic Bishops of these islands are due to publish a joint-document on inter-church Communion this summer.

Mrs Sutherland said last night that while the churches had made an important contribution towards reconciliation in Ireland, "all agreed more can be done, by lay people and within the churches".

She was speaking at the launch of Pluralism and the Religions: the Theological and Political Dimensions in Dublin.

The book, edited by Mr John D'Arcy May, is a collection of papers delivered at a 1995 conference celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Irish School of Ecumenics (ISE).

Praising the reconciliation work of the ISE, Mrs Sutherland said it was of "absolute importance, probably nothing is more important in Ireland today".

She referred to the "wonderful development of the Stormont agreement" and said that while nobody will like everything in it, everybody will like something. People in her own country might not like the idea of prisoner release, she said, but they were willing to accept it for the greater good.

Where misgivings were concerned about the agreement, she felt that this greater good approach should be acceptable to all.