Church paper urges reform of canon law
By Alf McCreary
featureseditor@belfasttelegraph.co.uk
THE Church of Ireland Gazette has suggested a Church law rethink following the row over Tibetan Buddhist monks being barred from performing at Down Cathedral.
Down Council had applied to use the Cathedral for a performance during an Opera Fringe Festival on June 13.
The Tibetan monks’ cultural programme was to including “chanting and reciting mantras, the ringing of bells and cymbals and the blowing of trumpets”.
The Cathedral authorities decided, however, that while the visit by Tibetan monks was acceptable, it was “not acceptable for them to perform Buddhist religious rituals or related cultural rites in the Cathedral”.
The performance will now take place at Down Arts Centre.
The decision by the Cathedral sparked off a controversy and the Church of Ireland Gazette in its latest edition calls for consideration to be given “to an amendment allowing for some discretion in this area of inter-faith relations”.
The magazine notes that the canon law of the Church of Ireland states that in any church performance or exhibition, the clergy should take care that “the words, music, pictures and performance are such as befit the house of God, are consonant with sound doctrine and contribute to the edifying of the people”.
The Gazette argues that Buddhist religious rituals would fall down on that score but states that “in matters of law one should never be overly sure of one’s own position before it is tried”.
The Gazette also concludes that “laws are not necessarily for all time”, and that the current canon law in this area “does seem overly restrictive in today’s world”.
