The Presbyterian leadership has reduced the church to a “sect” and it may never recover from the damage inflicted on its wider community in Ireland, a retired university professor has said.
Prof Ruth Whelan, a church member and former professor of French at Maynooth University, accused the leadership of “failures of best practice” in recent disciplinary hearings taken against Rev Dr Katherine Meyer, former minister at Christ Church Sandymount in Dublin.
Rev Meyer resigned last week following three separate inquiries by the church into her continuing support for LGBTI+ members.
In a statement, Prof Whelan accused church members who had taken action against Rev Meyer of making complaints about “a minister in good standing who was clearly living up to her ministerial calling”. She said it appeared that “there seems to be a new sin in the Presbyterian church in Ireland: the sin of public truth-telling”.
Over recent years, she said, it had “become a sect rather than a church”, having imported “the culture wars that prevail in the wider society”.
Prof Whelan said its leadership had inflicted such damage as “the wider Presbyterian church community in Ireland may not recover”.
Rev Meyer was censured in 2021 and threatened with dismissal by Presbyterian church authorities for allowing Steven Smyrl, a married gay man and long-standing member of the congregation, be appointed to the church council at Sandymount in 2019. She and Christ Church Sandymount council were ordered to recant following this appointment.
In June of last year, Rev Meyer took part with Amach le Dia LGBT+ Christians in a religious service at RTÉ as part of the broadcaster’s coverage of Pride events that month. She was formally rebuked by the church for her “poor judgment” in taking part.
Prior to her resignation last week, Rev Meyer was facing a further investigation by the church into complaints that she had attended the Dublin Pride parade this year, accompanying Mr Smyrl and his husband.
[ Presbyterian minister resigns following enquiry over LGBT+ eventsOpens in new window ]
Prof Whelan accompanied Rev Meyer to hearings of the church’s judicial commission last May and again last month. She said just two of 15 commission members at the May meeting were women and that just three of 25 members were women last month, including one who came from the same congregation as a complainant.
She said she felt this raised questions around “failures of best practice”. She said she left each meeting “convinced that justice would dictate” that the commission would find in favour of Dr Meyer and “censure the complainants” for making allegations about “a minister in good standing who was clearly living up to her ministerial calling”.
Instead, she said, “on the first occasion, Dr Meyer received a serious censure from the judicial commission for her conduct; in the latter instance, she was strongly criticised for her ‘ongoing failure to yield submission in the Lord to the courts of the church’ and would have been the object of a more serious censure had she not resigned”.
The church, she said, “no longer recognises the legitimate rights of conscience of members who dissent from clearly controversial decisions”.
In response to Prof Whelan’s statement, a spokesman for the Presbyterian church said it had nothing to add to its statement of last week on Rev Meyer’s resignation. That, it said, was regrettable “but ultimately a personal decision for each individual”. It noted then that Rev Meyer was found to be “at fault” on several separate occasions by representative groups within the church.
Rev Meyer said she had nothing to add to Prof Whelan’s statement.
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