Leading members of church in South deplore `Gazette' editorial

Leading Church of Ireland politicians have strongly criticised the editorial in the current issue of the Gazette, while the Catholic Church has taken exception to its implications.

A spokeswoman for the Church of Ireland said yesterday the Taoiseach's relationship with Ms Celia Larkin was "his personal affair".

The Fine Gael spokesman on public enterprise, Mr Ivan Yates, said he was quite taken aback by the editorial, which he considered ill-judged and inappropriate. He found it upsetting and would essentially disagree with it.

He felt the editorial did not represent the majority view of church members. It was not astonishing in a modern State in the secular world for the Taoiseach to have such a relationship, he said.

Mr Yates also knows of nobody in his generation of Church of Ireland members who wants to return to the days of Archbishop McQuaid. "Everyone is relieved they have been consigned to history," he said.

Senator David Norris felt the editorial was extraordinary and offensive, and showed a great lapse of taste and judgment. It was also very personal and, allowing that it was an editorial, he regretted its anonymity.

He would be astonished if any member of the Church of Ireland wanted a return to the days of Archbishop McQuaid, and he hoped Ireland would never go down the Rupert Murdoch route followed in Britain.

He would also remind the editorial writer that in Britain Prince Charles, who would one day be head of the Church of England, was conducting a relationship with an excellent woman. The prince was much better doing that, he felt, as being in a loving, caring relationship was a great help in public life.

He thought the editorial may have been intended to goad the Catholic Church to attack the Taoiseach, and he hoped that church had the wit to keep its own counsel and not be provoked. He advised people to remember Parnell and how Protestant evangelicals and the Catholic hierarchy had contributed to that tragedy.

As for Ms Larkin, he found her "charming, elegant, intelligent, and in whose company any decent person would be glad to be found". "Would people prefer hypocrisy?" he asked, "that he should hide her in a flat in Drumcondra?"

Senator Mary Henry called for "a little Christian charity. We don't know the situation here. What's going on in people's hearts is very important".

Ms Liz Harries, spokeswoman for the Church of Ireland, said the Taoiseach's relationship with Ms Larkin was "a personal matter for the Taoiseach, and the church doesn't really want to comment on his personal affairs". The church, she said, "never comments on the private life of public figures".

She pointed out that the Gazette was an autonomous publication and was not an official organ of the Church of Ireland. Various people wrote its editorials, and the current one was "an individual view and would not reflect necessarily the views of the whole of the Church of Ireland".

She believed the matter would probably be raised at the magazine's next management committee meeting. Ms Harries is a member of that committee.

While editorially independent, the Gazette is run by a board appointed by the church's standing committee and receives a subsidy of about £3,000 a year from church funds.

Addressing criticisms of the Catholic Church in the editorial Mr Jim Cantwell, director of the Catholic Press and Information Office, said of the Taoiseach's relationship it was not the practice of the Catholic Church to comment on individual cases.

But he found it interesting that the editorial should have cited Archbishop McQuaid. He was "unaware of any instance, in any circumstances, where he [Dr McQuaid] commented publicly on the behaviour or the lifestyle of people individually".

Mr Ronan Mullen, of the Catholic Church's Dublin archdiocese communications office, said the implication in the editorial that the Catholic Church refrained from speaking because of the impact of scandals was "unwelcome and patently untrue".

Moral leadership by the church had been given recently on refugees, taxation, pro-life issues and inter-communion, and the popularity of the message was not an issue in deciding what ought to be said.

"The church tended to speak where there is a doubt about what its teaching is. But this is not one of these cases," he said.

Neither the editor of the Gazette, Canon Cecil Cooper, nor the chairman of its board of management, the Rev Norman Lynas, was contactable for comment.

A spokeswoman for the Church of Ireland press office in Dublin could not recall ever receiving so many encouraging phone calls from people identifying themselves as Catholics.

A spokesman for the Taoiseach, who is attending the EU summit in Vienna, said Mr Ahern was declining to comment on the article.