The following is the full text of Prof James McEvoy's letter to the Irish News attacking President McAleese
Your editorial "Breaking Bread Not Bridges" (9 Dec) conceded to the Church the right to speak (thanks very much) but admonishes its representatives to respect individual conscience. Your readers have come accustomed over a number of years to being lectured by the Irish News about the Catholic faith. But the moment comes when the worm turns. Why, after all, have we got bishops?
Your editorial defends the action of the President of Ireland in receiving Communion in a Protestant church. Your paper instructs Catholics to believe that "this is not an issue". It is! It should be, for the Irish News, for your Catholic readers, and indeed for the President herself, as a member of the Catholic Church.
Rome does not allow Catholics to receive Communion in Protestant churches because full agreement in faith and morals has not yet been reached, as between the Catholic church and any of the Protestant denominations. On the other hand, eastern Orthodox Catholics, whose belief in the sacrifice of the Mass and the real presence is identical to ours, can be permitted to receive Holy Communion in our Church for good pastoral reasons, such as geographical isolation from their own. The same holds true of Protestants. The latter, however, are required individually to affirm their agreement with the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist, before being admitted to Communion.
The office of President of the Republic of Ireland of course implies that the holder should attend religious ceremonies (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or Muslim), to which she may be invited. By doing so, she gives due public recognition to the freedom of worship that is enshrined in the constitution of the Republic of Ireland. Her presence, furthermore, encourages public belief in God's providential love for all his people.
The President of Ireland acts in a representative capacity, but she is inhibited by the nature of her office from pursuing any private agenda she may happen to have; she is no longer a private citizen. She has infringed upon this condition by receiving Communion in a Protestant church. I would find it repugnant if she should ever again abuse the august office which she occupies, in a way which would once more embarrass the Catholic Church, by giving scandal to its members.
It would of course be equally wrong of her to use her membership of the Church in order to enhance her occupancy of the presidential office. Such things do not belong to the role of president. The President has been elected to office, she does not need to earn plaudits in the South, either by flouting the authority of the Catholic Church to which she belongs, or by employing religious ceremonies in order to widen her popular appeal.
Goodwill and friendship to all are subject to no limitation or restriction; that is simply the nature of universal love. However, a president who might decide to implement a liberal, do-it-yourself, two fingers up to the bishops agenda, is a different matter entirely. Besides, we have had that already, it is not even new; her predecessor did something similar in regard to the Pope.
Writing in the Tablet earlier this year, Mary McAleese likened the Irish bishops collectively (admittedly, in their handling of clergy convicted of child abuse) to Pontius Pilate. She expressed her view that the Pope has woodworm. She has publicly referred to the Down and Connor priests from Maynooth as being cold (as distinct from the passionists of Ardoyne). As a feminist, she wants women to be ordained as priests; the solemn restatement of the Church's position by the Pope himself apparently does not deter her from repeating her opinion.
Evidently, she is accustomed to the robust expression (even in public) of her opinions and her dislikes. She gives no sign of caring about the hurt and pain she has caused. Maybe the time has come for her to build another bridge, one that will bring her back to her fellow-Catholics.
Many Catholics who voted for her, and others who (especially from a northern direction) welcomed her election, will feel even more distressed, should she decide to pursue her private religious agenda through the influential agency of the presidential office. Should that turn out to be the case, some may in the future prove to be just as forthright in their public use of language as she has shown herself to be.
If she were to pursue an a la carte menu in matters of Catholic life, making it up for herself as she goes along, that would be an abuse incomparably more egregious than those which the editor of the Irish News has come accustomed to perpetrate, by urging upon his readership views that are supported neither by competence in terms of knowledge nor by any theological qualification.
Surely there must be somewhere within the northern dioceses, a Catholic priest suitably qualified to advise the editor of the Irish News concerning the Catholic Church's teaching and policies!
James McEvoy (Fr) Professor of Philosophy, St Patrick's college, Maynooth, Co Kildare.
PS Some of your Protestant readership may have been dismayed by the heading of your editorial, in particular Protestants who may not think of the Communion within their own Church as simple `bread'. I sympathise with them at this (wholly unintended) insult regarding their own Eucharistic belief.