There was considerable negative reaction yesterday to the announcement that the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Desmond Connell, is to be made a cardinal.
Sources in the Presbyterian Church said that, combined with the "ill-judged" intervention by the Catholic Primate, Dr Sean Brady, on the policing issue in the North, the appointment of Dr Connell made it "a bad week" for relations between the churches in Ireland.
The president of the Methodist Church, the Rev Ken Todd, said Dr Connell's "wholehearted support of Dominus Iesus called into question the Roman Catholic Church's commitment to ecumenism".
However, he said the appointment was "an internal matter for the Roman Catholic Church" and that "the Methodist people wish him well with all the responsibilities this new appointment brings".
The former president of the Methodist Church, the Rev Ken Wilson, said the appointment "called into question the serious commitment of the Catholic Church to ecumenism".
Father Oliver Rafferty SJ, professor of ecclesiastical history at St Patrick's College Maynooth, said "it was an extraordinary decision not to make Archbishop Sean Brady a cardinal" and to appoint instead a cardinal "in the relative security of Dublin". It indicated "a lack of political sensitivity on the part of the Vatican, especially as regards the current state of the peace process".
He had been at an ecumenical conference in Greenhills, Drogheda, yesterday and Protestant clergy he had met there couldn't understand the appointment, he said. He did not accept the Belfast Agreement had anything to do with it, but believed it was mainly because Dr Connell more closely reflected the prevailing orthodoxy in Rome. Dr Connell was also "a very worthy person" for the post.
The role of the Archbishop of Armagh as Primate of All-Ireland had not acknowledged the political division of the country, but this appointment "was a worrying phenomenon", he said. The Catholic Church had in effect removed the prestige and status of Armagh by moving the appointment to Dublin. No other primatial See in Europe had been denied a cardinal at its head, he said, even though it had been settled 900 years ago that Armagh was the primatial See on this island. The appointment "added to the complexity of the political division" of Ireland, he said.
It was "as if Rome was saying it is not really concerned with the political issue of a divided Ireland, despite all that has happened over the past 30 years, especially as regards the suffering of Catholics (in the North)".
A spokesman for Dr Connell drew attention to a letter sent by the Archbishop to his priests last month concerning the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. He had said that "the Catholic Church is irrevocably committed to supporting the ecumenical movement and regards ecumenism as essential to the church's life and mission."
