THE PRESBYTERIAN Church has been asked to reconsider its 1999 decision not to take part in “a single, interchurch body for Ireland, including the Roman Catholic Church”.
In a statement, editor of the Church of Ireland Gazette Canon Ian Ellis also pointed out that “there were no doctrinal issues that could have prevented the Presbyterian Church from being part of the new body”. He said “the negative decision of the 1999 General Assembly brought dismay to other churches”.
Welcoming the Presbyterian Moderator the Rev Norman Hamilton’s “emphasis on tackling sectarianism and affirming the church’s role in building better community relations” in his first address to the General Assembly in Belfast, Canon Ellis said that “as far as church relations are concerned, we also need to be looking to a shared church future”. It was for that reason he was appealing to the Presbyterian Church to reconsider its 1999 decision not to proceed with a single, interchurch body for Ireland, including the Roman Catholic Church.
Earlier, the outgoing Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, the Rev Stafford Carson, said he was “very moved” by a recent observation of the Catholic Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin.
Speaking in his last address as Moderator to the Presbyterian General Assembly Dr Carson quoted from Archbishop Martin’s speech in Dublin last month to the Knights of Columbanus.
Dr Carson said: “ said this: ‘Our young people are among the most catechised in Europe but among the least evangelised . . . This immediately brings us to the deeper question about the level of understanding of the message of Jesus Christ which exists in our Catholic Church and in our society in Ireland today. What do we really know of the message of Jesus?’”
