BASHING THE BISHOPS

I've kept schtum about religion for a while now. It's not a subject that does my blood pressure any good, and so I don't like to dwell on it. Too much evil has been perpetrated in its name, and in the name of God - and no matter how far we might think we're leaving this kind of extremism behind in Ireland, there's always more of it out there. Think Jerusalem, Algeria, Iran, Afghanistan, Portadown - the deeper a zeal for religion has bitten into people's hearts and minds, the greater is the likelihood of acts of violence and carnage being carried out in the name of someone's version of the Almighty.

So I don't have much time for God and I have even less for religion. But now and then something comes along in this realm that gives the spirit a lift. The current row about Communion is a case in point.

Deeply as I might oppose religion and the bizarre obscurantism that it so often represents, there are committed religious people who are fiercely impressive. In the Irish context, Father Peter McVerry, Sean Cassin and, going back a bit in time, Reverand Terence McCaughey spring to mind. And of course there are others, dozens of them - good people whose strongest motivation genuinely is to contribute to the greater good by serving the community.

Archbishop Desmond Connell of Dublin, however, would never have ranked among this coterie. Rather, he has always seemed to me to represent the narrow and exclusive aspect of Irish Catholicism, which is heavily restrictive and authoritarian in its leanings. It fits then that the Vatican likes him, which presumably explains why he has just been made a Cardinal. In the light of which, clearly, what he says on any key doctrinal issue has to be seen as carrying considerable weight.

When the President, Mary McAleese, took Communion in an inter-church ecumenical service in Dublin in 1997, Archbishop Connell weighed in with the opinion that any Catholic taking Communion in this manner was engaged in a sham. That the Archbishop was willing to risk what could only be seen as a rebuke to the President suggests that this is an issue about which the church is willing to get somewhat hot and bothered. Now he's at it again.

In the week of his elevation to the status of Cardinal, Connell gave an interview to the Sunday Business Post. In it he took issue with the Church of Ireland in relation to its practice of inviting all baptised Christians, including Catholics, to take Holy Communion at the Church's ecumenical services, accusing those responsible of failing to respect the faith and obligations of Catholics - and going on to argue that they were damaging the cause of ecumenism.

Inevitably the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Walton Emprey, was stung into a response. Disagreeing with Connell's interpretation, he said that it was regrettable that the occasion of the new cardinal's elevation should be marred by acrimony. And he requested, in turn, that the Archbishop should respect the Church of Ireland's position on this matter.

Of course Emprey is right. The Church of Ireland is happy for any baptised Christian to take Communion in its churches. The Catholic Church does not extend its fellow Christians the same courtesy. Each religion is free to adopt whatever position it wants to on this issue. Equally, any Catholic who chooses to can, of course, ignore such an invitation if and when it is made.

So why does Desmond Connell think that the Church of Ireland should slavishly follow the Catholic lead and stop extending the hand of friendship in the way that it does? Could it be that he considers it to be a sin for a Catholic to receive Communion in a Protestant church? And could it be therefore that he sees the person who issues the invitation to participate in this act as the source of temptation - a kind of accessory to the sin?

Underlying the disagreement is a major difference in the position of the Churches regarding what actually happens at the Communion. For the Church of Ireland, the Communion is essentially symbolic. For Roman Catholics, however, there is the extraordinary doctrine of trans-substantiation, which holds that the host and the wine actually become, literally, the body and blood of Jesus Christ, who - in case you'd forgotten or missed it - actually died just over 2000 years ago.

It was when I contemplated this that I became especially amused by the whole absurd spat. Cardinal Connell believes that the flesh and blood of a long-dead individual is effectively re-incarnated in hundreds of thousands of churches all over the world not just every weekend (when it happens more frequently) but also every day of the week, again and again and again. Jesus Christ has been consumed by the Catholic faithful hundreds of millions of times already. And it will go on happening until - well, until kingdom come.

Here's the rub: if someone came along and suggested that idea for the first time today, there's every likelihood that they'd be locked up for their own safety. Barking mad, we'd all nod sagely. And wouldn't we be right?

Now the fact that an argument between this guy, and a slightly more well-meaning fellow who shares Dr. Connell's belief that the son of God came down to earth and was hung up on a cross to save us but disagrees on a few of the finer points of theology, could occupy the front pages of the national newspapers here for a few days kind of beggars belief. Because, when you step back and think about it, the row about Communion acts as a reminder of just how crazy and irrelevant and plain daft Christian religious beliefs really are.

And what about ecumenism? My own understanding of the Catholic church's position on this is that they believe in ecumenism, as long as it means that the other churches accept that Catholics were right all along. Because this is what they believe - and like Maggie Thatcher, they are not turning.

Sadly, to a very large extent, religion is about believing fervently that all of the other guys have got it completely wrong - when in truth there isn't one iota of what any one of the dominant religions asserts that can be proven, in any way, at all. Ever.

It just goes to show: people are completely fucking mad, aren't they?