The new Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin is considering offering the Catholic Church the facility to celebrate Mass there on weekdays.
The Very Rev Robert MacCarthy says he sees it as a way of broadening the cathedral's ministry to the 275,000 tourists who visit each year, many of whom are not Anglican. "My Northern colleagues may be a little sensitive about it," he says.
While Mass has been celebrated in Church of Ireland churches before, such as in St Mary's, Bunclody, Co Wexford, last year while its Catholic counterpart was being refurbished, this would be the first time it was done on an ongoing basis.
In an interview with The Irish Times, Dean MacCarthy criticises the Catholic Church's approach to the public backlash it is experiencing. "I think the Catholic Church is behaving foolishly, not trying to get its nerve back. If you've a problem as an organisation or an individual you get nowhere by keeping your head down under the table."
He blames the Catholic hierarchy for failing to lead from the front. "By and large the leadership says nothing because it is so overwhelmed with the problems."
Having spoken out at the recent Remembrance Sunday service on the "miserable failure" to deal with the "not-very-large-flood" of refugees, the dean says there is nothing more pressing for moral comment than the refugees situation. "Yet the [Catholic] bishops are saying nothing," he says.
Of the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Desmond Connell, he says: "I think he's a product of a bad system which is a non-consultative system."
The dean says he believes the Catholic Church has "some super clergy down the line - how they keep them I don't know - but they're not listened to".
The move to invite the Catholic Church, and the Methodist Church, to use the cathedral would be one of the more radical changes the dean is making. Last week he appointed the first woman priest to an office in the cathedral. The Rev Bernadette Daly, curate of Taney parish and a former Catholic, is to be Chancellor's Vicar Choral.
