Iggy gets a wiggin'

I'm told an event of apocalyptic proportions has rocked Co. Meath. A Church of Ireland rector has helped officiate at a Catholic mass in Drogheda. Did you feel the earth shake? I didn't.

Fr. Iggy O'Donovan (I jest not) has been berated by his Primate, Dr. Seán Brady, and a similar fate has befallen another cheeky monkey, Rev. Michael Graham, who apparently may be feeling the sharp edge of Dr. Robin Eames' tongue at a convenient juncture.

I try to avoid being disrespectful, but this really is a load of old bollocks which has more to do with slavery to church politics than celebrating the outrageous generosity of the God who made us and then bought us back.

At the heart of the whole transubstantiation issue is the question of whether the bread and wine look and taste like bread and wine but are symbols of Jesus' flesh and blood (the Protestant view) or whether the bread and wine look and taste like bread and wine but are transformed spiritually into his actual body (the Catholic view). Now, I can argue the anti-transubstantiation bit as well as any good Prod, but why take our eyes off the ball? It's one for the pub, not for stopping me communing (in the true sense of the word) with my fellow Christians who also follow the man who prayed, "Let them be one, Father".

I'm in good company. Mary McAleese was rapped over the knuckles by Cardinal Desmond Connell for accepting Anglican Communion. What was he worried about? If, for some perverse reason, he thinks Anglican Communion, Methodist Communion or Baptist Communion has no spiritual meaning, then the worst she could have done was to eat some bread and have a drink of wine. Hardly the stuff a good damnation is made of.

However: even though the theological debate is a red herring, Seán's and Robin's imminent response is anything but a non-issue. In fact, it's central to the social healing we need in Ireland. Are we prepared to put honouring our neighbour before upholding silly dogmas dreamt up by power-churchmen in their own pathetic struggle of centuries past?

The man who prayed "Let them be one, Father" knew that the forces of evil prefer to disable from within than to attack from without. It's far more effective.

What honours God is not the pride of lifetime-academic churchmen but the heart of every individual that can see past it to Bigger things.