A letter in the ‘Church of Ireland Gazette’

The following letter was published in the Church of Ireland Gazette on 22 May 2009 (p 8):

The General Synod

Canon Patrick Comerford is to be congratulated on his blog which justly won a prize at General Synod. It contains two references to me (8th May, though I am not named) which deserve comment.

First, as seconder to Bill No.1 (that the Church’s 1999 Declaration on the 39 Articles of Religion be printed in future editions of the Prayer Book), he says that I wanted the Bill “amended and watered down”. In fact, the Bill’s proposer and I both supported the amendment. It had been suggested that the unamended Bill might have the effect of changing the doctrine of the Church, which we had not intended.

The Legal Advisory Committee had (understandably and correctly) said that determining this question was beyond its remit; but it was universally agreed that if the amendment were passed (as it subsequently was) there would be no doctrinal implications. This is clearly what Synod intended.

Secondly, Patrick claims that I “pilloried” the Benedictine mystic Dom Bede Griffiths.

I said that Griffiths sought to persuade C.S. Lewis to integrate some aspects of Hinduism into his Christian thinking. I quoted Lewis as responding: “Your Hindus certainly sound delightful. But what do they deny? That has always been my trouble with Indians - to find any proposition they would pronounce false. But truth must surely involve exclusions?” I said that Lewis and Griffiths were lifelong friends; I did not intend to pillory, and I don’t think members of Synod would have taken me to be doing so.

Dermot O’Callaghan
27 Monument Road
Hillsborough
BT26 6HT