A plea for sensitivity towards "our fellow pastors in the Roman Catholic Church" has been made at the Methodist Church Conference in Cork. The Rev Tom Kingston, of the church's Dublin district, spoke in the context of "when we sometimes demand that which they may feel they are not able to respond to".
He wondered whether "we should be pushing a door that may not be open to us".
He referred to the Roman Catholic Church's One Bread One Body document on inter-church communion published last year, which said Catholics may not take communion in a reformed church and that members of reformed traditions may receive communion in Catholic churches only in limited circumstances.
"How far do we [Methodist ministers] feel free to be involved when communion is part of a service in a Roman Catholic church?" Mr Kingston asked.
Ms Elizabeth Kelly from Dun Laoghaire said her husband was a Catholic. "It is very difficult to explain to my three children why mummy is not allowed go up with daddy and our nine-year-old daughter to receive communion," she said. She pleaded for more sensitivity to inter-church couples and asked the conference particularly "to remember those in the North who are literally in fear of their lives because they are inter-church couples".
The conference passed resolutions approving the constitution of the proposed conference of churches in Ireland and that the Methodist Church become a member. Similar resolutions were rejected at the Presbyterian Assembly in Belfast last week primarily because the proposed conference would include the Catholic Church.
The Rev John Farris, representing the Presbyterian Church, said he stood there "having to be loyal to members of the assembly though I have strong reservations about how they arrived at the decision".
He said about 100 members of the Presbyterian Assembly had asked for their dissent on the decision to be recognised and were now doubly determined where ecumenism was concerned.
"We may seem to be closing the door with a Presbyterian thud but I would appeal to you to be gracious and to keep knocking on our door," he said. The conference, which concluded yesterday, also passed a motion directing its council on social responsibility to consider "as a matter of extreme urgency" the plight of farmers. Such a debate should take account of the wider concerns of rural communities and Government plans for the development of the countryside.
The Rev Roy Cooper said he would like the conference to challenge governments as to why one-third of farmers had received two-thirds of income from the EU and why so many had been entering farming just to benefit from premiums.
The conference also passed motions urging town and city councils not to receive sponsorship from alcohol manufacturers for sporting events "since prowess in sport cannot be equated with the consumption of alcohol" and directed that negative references to dancing be removed from the relevant section of the church's manual of laws.