A group of influential Church of Ireland members has asked the church to "seriously and urgently examine its relationship to the Orange Order".
In a letter to the Church of Ireland Gazette, Dean Victor Griffin, Canon Charles Kenny, the Rev Brian Stewart, the Rev Stewart Heaney, the Rev William Odling-Smee, Mr Brian Fitzpatrick, Ms Faith Gibson, Mr Norman Gibson, Ms Joan Douglas and Mr Michael Arlow refer to a submission they made to the Church of Ireland's sub-committee on sectarianism last January. In that submission they said: "Common worship should never be compromised by parades to or from a church, by requests from organisations with no formal links with the C of I to attend public worship in regalia, or by attempts to impose or request particular readings, prayers, hymns, sermon topics or preachers.
"Since certain Orange church parades give rise to public strife and serious controversy, the synod [which meets once a year] as a matter of urgency should decide and make public what specific act
ions need to be taken about such parades." The group notes: "To the best of our knowledge, these matters were not considered at the May 1998 synod."
They say: "Can the church be true to its witness if it fails to treat these critical issues with a sense of urgency? Or are we hoping that they will somehow go away or that others will solve them for us?" They share the view of the primate, Dr Robin Eames, and his senior clergy in their letter to the Portadown lodges "that unrest and disruption on a return from . . . worship degrade the spiritual and indeed the sacred nature of worship" and "the Church of Ireland does not wish to be associated with such divisiveness".
"At the time we felt they [senior church clergy] should then have asked the lodges not to attend the morning service, unless they were prepared to agree to terms specified in an open letter. If the loyal orders had declined to do this, consideration should then have been given to changing its venue."
In other letters to the Gazette, the Provost of Tuam, the Very Rev Robert McCarthy, says: "Like most church people in the South, I am ashamed to be a member of a church which is so timid and craven as to have protested at the unauthorised use of its property at Drumcree only after such use had effectively ended."
The Rev Tony Whiting from Mallow, Co Cork, finds "everything about the Orange Order distasteful and unchristian". The Rev David Oxley of Tullow, Co Carlow, says the bishops and general synod "must take steps to clearly repudiate the Orange Order and what it stands for . . . we can either act decisively or stand condemned as ineffectual babblers and fellow-travellers with bigots".
