Irish Times Notes
Church of Ireland Notes from The Irish Times
Saturday 16 February 2008
QUB Theological Lectures
The 2008 Church of Ireland Annual Theological Lectures at Queen’s University, Belfast, which are sponsored by the Church of Ireland chaplaincy, will be delivered by the eminent New Testament scholar, Dr David Wenham, on the theme ‘Mountain Top Theology – Jesus and Paul’.
The lectures will take place next Monday and Tuesday evening at 6 pm in the North Lecture Theatre in the Medical Biology Centre on the Lisburn Road, opposite Elmwood Avenue, and will be preceded by tea and biscuits in the Church of Ireland Centre, 22 Elmwood Avenue, from 4.45 pm. Admission is free and all are welcome.
Dr Wenham is Senior Lecturer in New Testament Studies in Trinity College, Bristol, and a former Vice Principal of Wycliffe Hall. He has been a prolific writer especially on the gospels and the life and theology of St Paul and is well known for books such as Paul and the Historical Jesus, Gospel Perspectives, and Paul: follower of Jesus or founder of Christianity? Dr Wenham already enjoys an association with Queens where his father, John Wenham, gave the Theological Lectures in 1994 and his brother, Gordon, taught for many years in the Department of Semitic Studies
Today (Saturday) the Bishop of Tuam, Dr Richard Henderson, will lead a day of prayer and reflection for the clergy and lay readers of Tuam, Kilalla and Achonry while in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, Evensong will be sung by Piccolo Lassus.
Tomorrow (Sunday) in Dublin the services in Christ Church Cathedral will be sung by the Lassus Scholars while in St Patrick’s Cathedral the visiting choir will be the Lichfield Cathedral Girls’ Choir. At the Sung Eucharist, at 10. 45 am, in the Chapel of Trinity College the preacher on the Hilary term theme of ‘Holy Irrelevant?’ will be the Revd Colin Coward who is Director of Changing Attitude, the group working for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender affirmation in the Anglican Communion. He will speak on ‘The Church and LGBT Affirmation’.
In St Mary’s Church, Kells, Co. Kilkenny, the Bishop of Cashel & Ossory, the Rt Revd Michael Burrows, will institute the Revd John Paul Kavanagh to the incumbency of the Kells/Inistioge group of parishes in succession to the Revd Denis Sandes who is now Rector of Omey in the Diocese of Tuam. Mr Kavanagh, although from Ireland, has spent many years in Australia and is a former chaplain to Bishop Druitt College in the Australian diocese of Grafton.
The penitential season of Lent is now upon us and is being marked in contrasting ways in two Dublin venues. In Christ Church Cathedral on Monday evenings at 7 pm , ‘Sacred Space, Journeying through Lent’ will be held. This will be a quiet, reflective time of prayer, music and silence in candlelight in the south transept. It will be informal, Taizé influenced and loosely based on the late evening office in the Book of Common Prayer.
Meanwhile on Thursday evenings at 8pm in the Church of the Annunciation, Rathfarnham there will be an ecumenical series of Lent lectures sponsored by the local Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic parishes on the theme of ‘Church & State Relations’ The speakers at the opening session, next Thursday, will be the Church of Ireland Historiographer, Dr Kenneth Milne, and the journalist, John Cooney, who will consider respectively the influenec of the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church.
On Wednesday afternoon the Executive Committee of the Representative Church Body will meet in Church of Ireland House, Dublin.