A Dublin Presbyterian minister who was censured by her church for participating in a religious service on RTÉ with LGBT+ Christians and who was facing a further enquiry after attending a Pride parade has resigned.
Several complaints, all of which Dr Katherine Meyer said seemed to be linked to her pastoral support of LGBT+ community members, were lodged against her in recent years, resulting in separate disciplinary actions.
Dr Meyer, an ordained minister for more than 37 years, described her resignation from the Presbyterian Church in Ireland as “one of the most painful decisions of my life.”
However, she said it had become “impossible” to cooperate any further with an ongoing enquiry and disciplinary processes “which, in my experience, have been so flawed and destructive.”
She was previously censured and threatened with dismissal in 2021 by Presbyterian Church authorities in Belfast for allowing Steven Smyrl, who is in a same-sex marriage, to become a council member minister at Christ Church Sandymount in Dublin.
In June 2023, she participated in a religious service with the Amach le Dia LGBT+ Christians as part of RTÉ's coverage of Pride events.
Following complaints, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland’s judicial commission in Belfast conducted an investigation before formally rebuking Dr Meyer “for her poor judgement and her actions”.
It said she had not given “due regard” to “her need to strive to preserve the peace and unity of the church and especially that of the Presbytery of Dublin and Munster”.
Further complaints were made by members after she attended the Dublin Pride parade this year.
Mr Smyrl said Dr Meyer walked alongside him and his husband in the parade “not in order to damage the peace and unity of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, but rather to show solidarity with a marginalised group”.
In the statement following her resignation, Dr Meyer said: “The particular claim which has been the common theme of these acts of discipline, as best as I can determine, is that by my teaching and actions I have disrupted the peace and unity of the church. And further, that following censure, I failed to seek to preserve that peace and unity.
“Precisely how I did this was never clearly stated but assumed. The specific trigger for all the complaints, however, in spite of their different circumstances, seems to have been a link to my pastoral support for members of the LGBTQ+ community and my appearance in public in their company, although this was never specifically stated.”
She added that she co-operated “fully, thoughtfully, and clearly” with each enquiry that arose as a result of the complaints and never taught or advocated for “anything that was contrary to the current teaching of the church”.
Following the latest complaint, she said she could have “no further illusions about where the latest enquiry was heading”.
“Like any intelligent woman of my generation, I have worked a lifetime in historically patriarchal institutions, and the signs were particularly clear,” she said, adding that her resignation was the “only path forward”.
A spokesman for the Presbyterian Church in Ireland said the resignation of anyone from within the church is a matter of regret, “but ultimately a personal decision for each individual.”
However, recognising that Dr Meyer’s resignation was offered in the context of judicial processes within the church, the spokesman said she was found to be “at fault” on several separate occasions by representative groups within the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.
“In all aspects of such work, Presbyteries and General Assembly bodies seek to act prayerfully and with grace, integrity and due probity in line with the constitution of the church,” he said.
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