Former Taoiseach cites problem of authoritarian Catholic Church

A former Taoiseach has said that while he does not think Catholics fear Protestants on this island, Protestants do fear Catholics.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the National Priests' Conference in Dublin yesterday, Dr Garret FitzGerald said: "The continued authoritarianism of the Catholic Church is still a problem." He chaired a discussion on reconciliation in Northern Ireland.

In the North, he said, religion had exacerbated differences between the Scots and the Irish. The Church of Ireland's behaviour in the 18th and 19th century generated hatred which lasted for generations. On the other hand, the authoritarianism of the Catholic Church and its Ne Temere mixed marriages decree had left "a residual fear".

He called on both sides for empathy towards the other, and repentance, which he defined as "a public acceptance of one's own contribution" to the strife. He had heard nowhere near enough repentance, he said.

The parish priest of Strabane, Father Oliver Crilly, recalled the days of the hunger strikes when he was one of the churchmen attempting to negotiate a settlement. "We have come a long, long way from the tension of those days," he said. But he detected remnants of the same battle of absolute wills in the impasse on decommissioning and at Drumcree.

The Rev Robert Herron, a Presbyterian minister in Omagh, told of his own personal journey from a stereotypically negative image of Catholics to discovering that men such as Father Crilly were people of genuine true faith. "I knew I had to identify with that," he said.

The Rev Ian Ellis, from Newcastle, Co Down, dwelt on a piece by journalist Eamonn McCann in last August's Hot Press magazine which described the word "Christian" as a synonym for darkness and evil, and "un-Christian" to mean kindness and light. Though Christians, like everyone else, were part of a fallen world, Mr Ellis felt the view was essentially unjustified but believed the task of Christians in Ireland today was "to disentangle our beloved Christianity from the sorry mess as much as we can".

Earlier, a panel of editors of religious publications heard Father Kevin Hegarty of Ceide magazine explain how his term as editor of Intercom, a magazine published by the Irish bishops, came to an abrupt end in 1994. His attempts to encourage dialogue "perished on the Rock of Cashel and other icebergs in the dark of the night", he said.

He was now serving in a parish on the Mayo coast "where Ireland ends", a place he enjoyed, while also editing Ceide - "a review from the margins". Its main concerns were poverty in the cities, the North, and the west.

Father Bernard Treacy OP, editor of Doctrine & Life magazine, said recent papal encyclicals had introduced a "catastrophic" system of penalisation. People feared a legal process being put in train, "a process which is deeply, deeply flawed".

It saddened Father Tom Jordan OP, editor of Spirituality magazine, "to think we cannot talk about our faith without fearing something or other". He believed people should step out in courage and take whatever comes.

Father Bernard Cotter, recently appointed editor of Intercom magazine, saw it primarily as a resource for priests.