Press Releases27 Sep 04

Clogher Diocesan Synod presidential address

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

delivered by
The Rt. Rev. Michael Jackson, Bishop of Clogher
to
The Synod of the Diocese
on
Friday 24th September2004
in
St. John's Church Parochial Hall, Fivemiletown, Co. Tyrone

Walking on a very, very hot afternoon in late July high up in the spine of mountains which both divides and connects the island of Corsica, I came upon a most welcome, instructive and inspiring find: a modest but steady flow of water. It filled a small stone basin as gravity dragged it eagerly downwards to fill a much larger stone basin with what to any dusty traveller could only be described as: living water. Alongside both basins lay the course of the cascade, that powerful, bouncy French word for what we with pedestrian accuracy in English call a waterfall, silent and inert in the summer sun and occasional breeze yet still populated by stones, once living geological entities in their own right. Now in their sheer enormity, weight and awkwardness they found themselves mobile no longer, yet still caressed and tickled by the living water. The two small basins and the structure which surrounded and supported them were a deviation, a displacement and an alteration of the course of this waterfall. But through this diversion they provided a flow of water in the heat of summer for human and animal consumption alike.

These basins were something generous and something gracious, the gift in 1910 of someone whose parents were determined that their son should start where they intended him to keep going as his names suggest: Cesare Augusto AGOSTINI. For these are names which express a confident sense of inheritance of the most expansive of the classical and imperial past along with the most influential of the theologians of the early Christian church: Caesar Augustus AUGUSTINUS. Today's all-pervasive yet short-lived sports culture might come up with something like Michael Schumacher RONALDO.

But a variety of things have struck me since this moment when I saw something ordinary transfigured. My encounter with Cesare Augusto AGOSTINI was brief, parched, ever so grateful and ultimately anonymous. And yet I think of it often now that I am restored to danker, darker northern climes and to work rather than vacation for the rest of the year. I remember most of all the inscription expressing the spirit of his own generosity and a human challenge which has long outlived his benefaction:

One who lives alone to himself doesn't deserve to have been born.

and I would wish also to offer us today the positive version of that challenge:

One who lives for others lives a life which deserves to be lived.

Secondly I remember the surname AGOSTINI and for a specific reason. For I had just walked downhill from the village which in its day had been a citadel, with its watch-tower strategically placed with a good view down the serpentine roads and into the valleys which are the topography of this particular part of Corsica. It also had its church and its sad but inevitable record of its twenty enfants children as it, I imagine, rightly called them who were killed for France in 1914-18. A similar memorial relating to the First World War is to be found across the parishes of our own rural diocese. So it struck a chord of sad familiarity with me.

There were twenty names in all. There were two surnames I could not forget because alphabetically they topped the list: AGOSTINI. Perhaps they were grandsons, brothers, sons, nephews of this Caesar Augustus. Perhaps they were both his children as well as the village's children as the memorial stone hauntingly called them. They may well have been the village's only Agostini in the emerging generation. Yet as a testimony to the living spirit of this family in a tiny community there was still in 2004 the living water for man and beast to drink and to live by and the inscription:

One who lives alone to himself doesn't deserve to have been born.

In his hours and years of grief at the death of these Agostini children I wonder what Cesare Augusto made of his proud and wise dedication. I wondered how well he lived by it or whether he became embarrassed by his own idealism, for grief does the strangest of things to the best of people. I wondered also did anyone in the village of S Maria Poggio think of helping him to tie together both parts, both experiences and to live in both realities, the reality of personal tragedy and the reality of personal generosity while also living beyond them in the new, ennobling and exciting reality of what I can only call

the community of the unknown :

unknown because of what had really happened to those two children Agostini at The Front, for the details of their end may never really have been known;

unknown because of the countless travellers grateful to the man himself for the streams of living water still flowing now almost one hundred years later for everyone irrespective of class or creed, colour or nationality, sadness or exuberance to enjoy as they quenched their thirst time after time.

And then I began to think of the Church of Ireland of which I am a part and I saw both myself and my fellow-members of the Church of Ireland today profoundly challenged by that dedication: Whoever lives alone to himself doesn't deserve to have been born. Because I see it as a positive invitation to live and work together in enjoyment of the presence of the Risen Christ in our midst in our church, in our interactions with one another, in our engagement with the community which surrounds us. I see it also as a very clear challenge to the fragmentation which could all too quickly become our self-definition if we take the road of exclusivity or self-satisfaction. I was cheered by my recollection that membership of the Church of Ireland is, has been and remains an inclusive, not an exclusive, definition. In the clear light of that summer's afternoon my thoughts turned to specializations which are now becoming part of our ecclesiastical landscape and which seek increasingly to make the running on behalf of and in the name of that far too silent, frustratingly silent, silent majority:

1. The shrunken definitions of discipleship approved of or disapproved of depending on your preference, too often imposed by those who presume to read or rather burgle your mind, for liberalism or conservatism but seemingly ever narrowing in spirit, impatient, lacking in generosity, ultimately fearful of any form of radical engagement with vital matters of faith and life in the world around and beyond us.
2. The shrivelled scope of religion too often with its head high and its ears closed, no longer even aware of its unhelpful pride or its confident conviction that it does not need to listen to others inside and outside the churches.
3. The particularities of party sectional interest groups pushing their own agenda and parading their certainty while others marvel at such flinty conviction.

And my mind turned again to that parable of living water and living stones in front of me: the living water open to all who pass by and the living description of life itself chiselled into the stone clearly, legibly and itself challenging the traveller, more grateful than he had ever imagined. The challenge came through the clear cascade of water guided and diverted in such a way as to trickle gently and generously - both important words for us as we seek to disclose and present Christ today - for the convenience of the passer-by.

Whoever lives alone to himself doesn't deserve to have been born

You can perhaps see the source of my anxiety along with the hope that our practical vision as a diocese and as a church might be such that that trust and not suspicion would force the pace of responsible commitment and genuine enjoyment together of who we are in today's world as Gods enfants, Gods children.

I want, however, to explain something of the source of my anxiety. My anxiety came from a recognition of what I call the decay of simplicity more than from sentimental naïveté. The diminishment of true simplicity in a time of unparalleled sophistication is something which worries me profoundly and pastorally. Let me expand a little. Conventionally the use of the term naïveté expresses an uninformed, an ungrounded sense of hope, one in which expectation has already outrun any grasp of reality as it is or of reality as it may yet unfold. In this way it is also quite different from idealism. But as well as lacking information, it lacks discernment. It is wide open to manipulation. Simplicity, if only we give it the credit which is its due, is much more direct. It has more insight, more subtlety and more reserve all at the same time. But it can be direct and vocal if it takes its own courage in its own hands and one day, surely, it has to do so. Very often simplicity has already discerned what lies behind and before situations which we have made to become very complicated. And such simplicity is exactly what we need to grasp and to discover afresh in troubled and anxious times. But this sort of simplicity is nobody's fool.

It is indeed already a truism to say that we live in a post-modern age. In fact it has already become something of an anachronism. But behind the most boring of clichés within the most sugared of sound-bytes, there lie both a current actuality and a future danger which someone, somewhere and for some good reason has spotted. In the convenience culture of which we are all part and which none of us who are its beneficiaries really would wish to see go away again, there are choices to be made, there are decisions to be implemented, there are criteria to be adhered to. Of course there are and thank God for them.

But at the same time a diminishing sense of responsibility towards others accompanies our rather sophisticated world-view. It runs hand in hand with a bewildering and exciting plethora of choices in terms of life and life-style. It is a mixture of sophistication and selectivity, a convenience which each of us here can access at will but not everyone can. Many of you will say:

Don't be so down on it or down on us, bishop!
Surely this sort of thing has happened before and we have survived.

It certainly has done so and it certainly will continue to do so. And in each situation the church responds and carries on. Down through the ages the key to dealing with accelerated sophistication has been to keep abreast of developments and also at the same time to keep a firm hold of simplicity. I cannot erase from my memory my coming out from a Confirmation Service in a very rural parish in the diocese during the last World Cup only to find some of the newly confirmed in behind headstones, with just a twinge of guilt, texting home to find out what was the current score where the real action was happening. It was both a refreshing and a sobering moment. The two realities lived side by side: the ancient seven-fold gifts of the Holy Spirit and the modern mobile. Such is the contemporary market-place of competition for attention in which the church finds itself today. The greatest danger is not, I think, to be bewildered by it all but to have given up and retreated into a cocoon where we are reacting with an instinctive, impulsive, inevitable negative to the world around and within us.

Sophistication is an easy rubbish tip into which to pitch all of the causes of our problems. But this would be to delude ourselves hugely. The allure of the primitive is, I suggest, no more than skin-deep. We can all say that we don't really need the things which now we take for granted but sooner or later many of us try, and succeed, to have them. We can say that the other children in school had got them. So we only gave in because our own children made life so difficult for us that we caved in for the sake of peace and quiet. We can blame it all on the television, the internet, the relentless advertising and the direct marketing. But we all like a bargain, or something new, and we want it before they run out or before absolutely everyone else has got one. Simplicity is fragile as anyone involved with Safeguarding Trust knows and needs to know and may not have had the chance to smell the dangers. But given the proper climate, simplicity can and will strengthen. Given appropriate carefulness and attentiveness to content, influences and directions, simplicity can challenge shallow sophistications which are pre-packaged certainties, the convenience diet of what fills a space but does not nourish. And such equipping of people for a happy life where simplicity protects them and also brings the best out of them for themselves and for other people is and remains our work in the church. In the midst of all of our confusions it is: Business as normal.

Responsibility for one another is something which our society lacks and needs today. If the church is to have credibility in its contribution to society rather than being tempted to withdraw from society and prescribe to society, then society needs to be able to see the church leading the way rather than hanging back. It has to do with relationships which delight in the well-being of others. It has to do with relationships which respect difference. It has to do with relationships which are not frightened to be foolish for the sake of the good. The opposites of these relationships and responsibilities are well known, as we in the Church of Ireland have on countless occasions recognized and most recently acknowledged in The Hard Gospel. People are awakening to the profound review of the priorities of the Church of Ireland which the Hard Gospel invites and demands. This very afternoon, with your permission, we will have the opportunity to see this whole area opened up for us by Dr Duncan Morrow of the Community Relations Council in a way which, I assure, you will be honest, compassionate and devastating.

Too easy has it been and will it remain for us to say that sectarianism is someone else's problem. Too easy is it for us to say: At least we do not live in one of those terrifying areas where there are racist attacks. But as a society we are waiting for the other person to make the move. We all have a responsibility for others as well as for our own neighbourhood. We want to look after ourselves and those whom we hold dear but the Gospel question returns again and again: Who then is my neighbour? And the answer is a very open one and a very dangerous one. Neither question nor answer has gone away.

I think that some of these abstracts can be given a sharp focus from the very Scriptures which we hold so dear. The parallels remain and they are as fresh as when first they gave expression to a human and a divine truth embedded in them. I am convinced that the use of the Revised Common Lectionary in association with the Book of Common Prayer which has been so gladly welcomed and so widely used within our Diocese can and does expand our imaginative hearing of Holy Scripture. We have Sunday by Sunday the lived history of the Old Testament, the church situation of the Epistle and the incarnate Word of God of the Gospel. We see a continuity of development, we have a challenge to grapple with things which are different yet make sense together as today in our own lives we embrace with fervent faith and eager expectation the impact of the same Scriptures in vastly different contexts. In relation to what we are talking about let me give you one or two Biblical parallels:

1. The diminishment which comes from racial hatred: remember Jonah and the Ninevites.
2. The intolerance of those whose very entitlement to exist can irritate us towards active or passive hostility: remember Ahab and Naboth.
3. The cynical neglect of those whose decline and disintegration as people we simply watch with detached condescension from near or far: remember Legion among the Gerasenses or Lazarus at the gates of Dives.

In a world where contradictions abound, despite our clutching at certainties, I wonder is there any of us who cannot see something of ourselves in any of these pictures and burn with shame.

The archbishop of Canterbury is frequently criticized for his dense prose, for his liberal views but rarely credited with spiritual openness to God or with theological acumen. It would seem to me to be a serious limitation on the part of many that diminishment of the archbishop of Canterbury as a servant of God and leader of the church has blinded us to much of his genuine simplicity. Let me - simply - offer you a question which he poses in a short, fairly recent book. It seems to me to be neither dense nor liberal: Why is our contemporary sense of success so often dependent on the failure of someone else? I might even go so far as to suggest that it is inescapable in its simplicity and unavoidable in its honesty.

This type of attitude is prevalent off the page also: in schools, in the workplace where much contemporary intimidation and harassment takes place because this is where many of us spend, and now it seems will increasingly spend, our waking hours. In the Church of Ireland we need to be very careful about labels which, the more they are used, breathe such a sense of success and failure. And you all know what I am talking about: successful parishes so called and unattractive parishes so called; the ever-widening gap between the urban and the rural (and in the Northern Ireland between what lies east of Sprucefield and ourselves who lie to its west): the unresolved tension, often acutely felt, between stipendiary and non-stipendiary clergy, male and female clergy; the distorted and fruitless superiorities of evangelical and liberal vying over points of principle which all too often deflect the attention from the true work of ministry: service and, again and again, service.

My own sense of hopefulness that this emerging caricature is not us as we really are, nor us as we ought to be derives from a number of situations where I do the work which is vital to me as a bishop, that is where I meet people from all walks of life and from all parts of the country. Sunday by Sunday I meet people who are extraordinary precisely because they are ordinary. From them I learn so much in terms of lived Christianity. They are the quieter people, the silent majority, who have no time or no need for the machinations of ecclesiastical politics. They are the people whose parish and whose church matter to them. They are the people of faith and of trust. They are the people who keep the parish alive locally when there are vacancies and clerical crises. They are the people who form our diocese and for whom clergy ought to be most grateful.

I'll give you one example: I spoke recently with someone who had served for more than thirty years as Parochial Treasurer. This person expressed gratitude for the opportunity that such work had given to return to full-time employment because through the treasurership it has been possible to keep up with money, accountancy procedures and so forth. I was positively taken by surprise and found this up-beat attitude a welcome corrective to much of what is often heard: Where are we going to get another treasurer? or Who would want this job? It is far too complicated and anyway there's no money for anyone in it. I took great heart from this personal incident. I found myself back in a situation where people are in fact willing to be asked to assist with their gifts and skills in the service of God in the church. We need to be very careful about selling out to the negative. It is important not only for our internal morale and our confidence, for our will to carry on even if such carrying on is a struggle, but also for the credibility which we need for the rest of the world to take us seriously or notice us at all.

The archbishop of Canterbury takes his argument about success depending all too often on the failure of others a stage further. He develops an argument about the person as such in today's culture. He suggests, and again I detect neither wilful obscurity nor unwarranted liberalism in what he says, that the fulfilled person in today's society is part of a network of relationships rather than being merely a successful individual on a solo run. Many of the relationships in the network of life we cannot control but we still need them. Many of them are invisible and beyond our manipulation and yet we continue to be part of them and to give of ourselves to them in simple trust and in good faith. What is true of our everyday life is true also of the life of our church. In ways visible and invisible we need one another. And this becomes more, rather than less, self-evident as life becomes more complex. Sophistication does not shield us from our deepest needs of security, of belonging, of acceptance and of affection. We do ourselves a great disservice by declaring UDI either within or without the church and we do violence to others.

A visible and tangible sense of community is something which we need to develop and to protect. It is at risk and we may not see the dangers. I say this because there seems fairly good evidence that more and more the rural parts of Northern Ireland are becoming an extended, sprawling suburb of Belfast and the rural parts of Monaghan, Cavan and Louth are becoming the suburb of Dublin. I can only see this trend developing at an accelerated rate between the present and 2020. Many of the people coming to settle as new residents in the countryside will be commuters in a variety of directions. Their choosing to come and live with those of us who are established residents of the country will bring its own challenges. Farming continues to be under pressure particularly in the case of the smaller farmers. There is a danger that farming below a certain acreage will all but disappear as a way of life which can sustain a family. This is very worrying indeed and brings serious challenges to what we have known as settled parochial life as itself an intrinsic part of rural life. It is not as if there have not been challenges to such a way of life before but each generation needs to respond positively and imaginatively to these changes. The problem is increased by the fact that there are so many other challenges and influences which we need to address and deal with all at once.

The sort of new situation which I am sketching is not however the conventional mission situation. For a start there are all of us still living and working here. We have heard and continue to hear the Good News regularly and we seek day by day to live it out. Like everyone else we are less consistent than we should wish but we are trying. Many of the people who will arrive to live here will not be new to Christianity either. They, like us, will have heard much of it before as well. We could all of us find ourselves in the position of Paula Radcliffe in the 10,000 metres when our heart went out to her. Can't you remember the commentary: tired legs after the Marathon, mentally unprepared, facing failure because all she had known was victory? The model of open hospitality will eventually, some may even say finally, have to be given a chance. We will in fact probably get only one chance to make the first impression, as people say. This is the real situation of mission a brown field, not a green field site. We talk time and again to those in church about the un-churched. Somehow we don't see that we might just be demoralizing those who are doing their bit and doing their best again I am back to the silent majority. And like anyone else involved in this work I need to see Mission Agencies taking seriously, sensibly and creatively these points of contact where new and old, settled and settling meet one another. My hope would be that there can and will be a genuine ministry of welcome in our churches towards and for what is already a more fluid and mobile population and also that the host population will find enjoyment and fulfilment in this unselfconscious lay ministry, this service through friendship of others whom we will come to know, love and respect.

My conclusion from all of this and my suggestion to all of us is that we need one another. We need also to be careful that we are not too stubborn, not too individualistic to admit this. The church, like any other large-scale body, is currently in danger of running out of direction because it is too keen to replace one sophistication with a different sophistication, one refinement with another refinement, while losing sight of the simplicity which sustains those sophistications, those refinements and challenges all of this with the arguments from common sense. We also have to let God be and let God do rather than relying on a succession of human schemes as if they of themselves will do the transforming work of mission and outreach.

The substantial job of work before you and me - members of the church today - is the difficult and unspectacular job of enabling the individual person and the institution of individual's space and scope to find and to love God in today's world. Authoritarianism will not work today. People in all walks of life like to be consulted, they are stakeholders in their own future. But the cost of being listened to is the expressed willingness to act and to move forward once there has been sufficient talking and listening. This process is not a back door for everyone to get his or her own way without reference to others yet again. Neither will the laissez-faire work today. Something concrete is needed for concrete situations. In so many ways we need to return to an essential simplicity of living alongside one another. We need to harness in a new way the opportunities for knowing and feeling one another's needs and one another's celebrations. We have the communications, we have the technology and yet I ask time and again: Do we have the humility? or do we have the hunger?

The Anglican Communion has for well over a year now fed voraciously off a world-wide media, itself hungry for dissension, for news of schism, for rumours of hypocrisy, for chinks of inconsistency. Already there is a massive price to pay for this air time. Too many initiatives essential to the cohesion of the church, its mission, its quest for unity, its companionship in Christ across cultural boundaries have been frozen. Meanwhile suspicions grow, phobias mushroom and charity suffers. But the questions are already coming back at us and the boomerang has in a very real sense already turned. For example:

1. Do you members of the world-wide Anglican Communion care so little for issues of justice? Does your God have no guidance to offer, nothing to say to a world well-divided as far as you are concerned, a world of economic distribution which always seems to favour those of the northern hemisphere? Did your Lord not say: Sit the people down that they may eat when his disciples said to him: We have barely enough for ourselves to eat let alone feed this lot?
2. Do you members of the nation-wide Church of Ireland care nothing for the issues of racial discrimination, intimidation, aggression and violence directed against people of ethnicities and faiths other than your own once they become your neighbours in your homeland? Am I wrong to remember the Good Samaritan as part of your Holy Scriptures?
3. Do you who are members of this local parish care nothing for us who are also members of this parish? We wish you well, not ill. We live here too. We respect you for your difference from us but we cannot understand, when you are being your religious selves, why we are so irrelevant to you. Do you actually know us? Are you happy to live with the caricature of us which others have given you and, please, can we get to know you sooner rather than later? But maybe you have a different God and maybe you have Holy Scriptures which do not contain the writing of St Paul where he speaks of one-in-Christ: male and female, Jew and Gentile or maybe you think this has no modern parallel or contemporary application?

These are to my mind simple, very simple scenarios, real, very real situations and I see them everywhere. These questions, these issues economic exploitation, racism, sectarianism cannot be combated, they cannot be rectified by any hierarchy, real or perceived. They are an agenda for prayer and action for parishes rightly understood as communities of different people and not solely as congregations of like-minded people.

Discussion fluctuates and flares up from time to time about whether the diocese or the parish is the basic unit in the Church of Ireland. If the parish becomes an exclusive entity, if in fact it becomes a lone competitive individual distancing itself from other parishes, then it simply has lost the spirit of grace which is vital to being a Christian community defined not by any sense of superiority but defined by the sharing of responsibilities which are relationships at their best. The diocese through its bishop has a special link with the unity of the church, with the apostolicity of all ministry and with the servanthood of Christ. To seek to stop the flow of the living water between parishes and diocese is to do a wrong thing. It is to deprive the people of the diocese who are also the people of the parishes of this living water.

I daily thank God that I am myself what I have just called one of the people of the diocese and of four of its parishes, as the Diocese of Clogher is my home. It is the diocese in which I received from God the call to follow Him, to serve Him and His people in the ordained ministry. It is in the same diocese that this call was fed and watered, challenged and battered through the years of The Troubles when normality in this part of Ireland was virtually buried alive. I still cannot go to St Mark's Parish Church Aghadrumsee, to Garrison Parish Church, worship in Galloon Parish Church, cross the Border at any of the many points where frontiers meet with Monaghan, with Cavan, with Donegal, with Leitrim, walk through Enniskillen or indeed my own towns of Ballinamallard, Lisnaskea and Fivemiletown without stopping and thinking how the flame of faith, the trickle of tolerance, the rivulet of respect might have gone - but didn't - in a climate where anger, confusion and fear tried their best to goad us into impetuous retaliation. This is a side of the Diocese of Clogher which we must never forget. This is a simplicity and a decency which have stood us in good stead before and will stand us in good stead again as we journey together in faith, hope and love.

Politically times remain uneasy. I myself have spoken more than once of the plight, the sense of alienation and near defeat of Border Protestants. I see much froth and rhetoric, hopes raised and dashed time after time in relation to political progress, actual and active devolution, community development and enrichment. I see a society polarized politically, with two competing majorities and another majority silent and effectively disenfranchised. And again I say: We need to discover more and more a simplicity which builds trust, gives opportunities for happiness and challenges our latent instinct for negativity, for aggression and for intimidation of one another. Otherwise our young people will, sadly, act as has been their pattern over the past decades. Many who might in other circumstances have contributed to a future at home will leave and flourish elsewhere. If what they see is adults indulging their differences, then they will readily seize their opportunity to find a different type of life elsewhere. And we shall remain the poorer for their departure as we already are for the departure of their predecessors.

There are three areas of the life of the Church of Ireland and the Diocese of Clogher to which I wish to refer. In all of them I see signs of hope, opportunities which we need to continue to take if we are to keep growing, changing and developing. They are already part of who we are and of what we do but I shall outline them briefly in the context of this Diocesan Synod.

The first is this: The Book of Common Prayer 2004, to which I shall from now on refer to as The Prayer Book, was launched in and by the diocese in the cathedral church in Clogher on Ascension Day, May 20th of this year. That was the place to be and it was an evening never to forget. People came in their hundreds from parishes throughout the diocese. The Prayer Book was, to mind properly launched, not as an end in itself but as a living liturgy: younger and older were confirmed together, Holy Communion was celebrated and all present individually and personally had the occasion to renew the vows of their baptism for service of the Ascended Christ in their daily life. The Prayer Book was launched not by me but by you, the parochial people of the diocese. The initiative was taken by Miss Alice Johnston a member of the Cathedral congregation recently confirmed. Not only were we the sole diocese in the Church of Ireland so publicly to involve our partners in the Methodist-Church of Ireland Covenant in the launch but we were also alone in giving as a diocese a copy of the Book for use in every parish church open for public worship and to every ordained person involved in parochial ministry.

To the best of my knowledge the vast majority of churches are using the Prayer Book now regularly for worship. I thank you for taking your place in the mainstream of the contemporary Church of Ireland and for taking so much to your hearts the work of more than two decades on the part of the General Synod. At this point it would indeed be fitting to make mention of the dean. His work in planning and executing the Ascension Day Service was and remains outstanding. That characteristic combination of practicality, efficiency and cheerfulness is now something which we rightly associate with Thomas Moore. He has also played a key role in being the Diocesan Liturgical Officer over the period of introduction of the BCP. As lakeside retirement beckons him I wish, on behalf of all of us, both Tom and Hazel many, many years of happiness in the Diocese of Clogher which is Tom's home diocese and which he has served with consistency and constancy for more than three decades. Taking up the baton of his assiduous predecessor Canon Frazer he has continued work to the highest standard on St Macartan's Cathedral. His legacy is legion but the excellent state of the diocesan cathedral is one for which we are all immensely grateful. Not only do he and I share the delight of being Clogher ordinands. We also share the delight of serving a first curacy with Bishop Warke, formerly bishop of Cork and a much appreciated preacher of a series of three sermons on The Ministry of Healing in our diocese during the year. The work of implementing the spirit of the Book of Common Prayer which is hailed across the Church of Ireland as a fair and comprehensive book continues. I am delighted to say that the Reverend Dr Robin Wakely has kindly undertaken to continue this work and become the dean's successor as Diocesan Liturgical Officer.

The Prayer Book is proving itself to be easy to use, easy to follow. It has already established itself as a vehicle of expression of the worship of Almighty God which can be used across the spectrum of traditions. Diversity is built into it as is also discipline. Those who have been part of this development at each stage have worked hard to combine both of these qualities, diversity and discipline. We owe it to them and to ourselves to use it again and again as the authoritative book of worship. I know that many of you have been generous in giving copies of the Prayer Book to your parish churches as a thank-offering, in memory of those you love now deceased and for numerous other reasons. This has been a marvellous and a practical generosity and it has greatly facilitated the introduction of the Book. So, I thank you all.

I make the suggestion that in your parish churches you use imaginatively and creatively two services in particular: the Service of the Word which proved itself during the period when it was not part of any Prayer Book but was approved by The Bishops of the Church of Ireland for use has built into it an elasticity and an adaptability for which many have long been waiting, and also the Service of Holy Communion which offers great scope for a sense of the immediacy of God dynamically present in worship and for the participative response in faith of us, God's people. Why not let those recently confirmed in the last year or two take a significant part in your Christmas Holy Communion? After all Alan Ferguson, then recently confirmed in Inishmacsaint Parish, administered the chalice with my permission at the launch of the BCP in Clogher Cathedral. A person confirmed is both a child of God and an adult of the church. Young people could well read Lessons, lead intercessions, take up the alms, administer the elements of Holy Communion and welcome to church those who come to worship at Christmas. It would be a positive move on the part of any parish anxious about age profile to take this route. It would give hope to the lay people of our parishes and diocese. Handled carefully I commend it to you.

But there is more to the Prayer Book than anything which I have outlined so far. It contains within itself the challenge constantly to unite our public and our private prayer daily as well as weekly. It is in this way that the work of God will become our work. So many rejoice to have a single book so comprehensively catholic and so readily reformed, an open book working on the basis of guidelines more than prescriptions. It is a book of the whole people seven days a week. The challenge is to the people of our parishes to find through its use our faith re-newed, re-invigorated, re-vitalized through worship.

The second is this: The Hard Gospel was considered by this Diocesan Synod as by all other Diocesan Synods in the Church of Ireland during the year past. All members of this Synod have a copy and there has been a Bible Study Pack available for use during 2004. I can conclude from this that everyone has had the opportunity to digest the enormity of its findings, the serious questions which it raises about the triumph of denominationalism as a societal definition of religion. It points clearly to the ultimate insufficiency of such a definition and to the scandal of sectarianisms being a working definition of Christianity. It also exposes our deep-rooted difficulties in being a servant church, vital in ministry and mission, in our own day. These are significant and alarming findings. They are also big challenges to any church. But they are also mature expressions of honesty on the part of the Church of Ireland and from this we must take heart and courage.

The very positive agenda of the follow-up to The Hard Gospel which is emerging is manifold. In the Irish context the positive is always vital in countering the ebb tide of the negative. Through taking the process of The Hard Gospel a stage further, the Church of Ireland pledges itself to making a sustained contribution to the creation of the sort of society in which activities which have long been abhorred by the silent majority and which have become the thumb-nail sketch of Ireland world-wide will cease to be our self-definition and our public face to others. Our society needs to give life to the long, slow word: reconciliation. Our Church of Ireland, along with other Churches, needs to turn around the negative and the destructive words and actions like sectarianism, racism, intimidation, exclusivity, to be positive and creative words and actions such as joy, hope, welcome and respect. In all of this my prayer would be that The Ministry of Healing might lead with love and that Clogher might have the courage to make the running.

Too easy would it now be to settle for that interim definition of peace as the cessation of violence. But our society has more to do and our people have more to give than hope grounded in the negative language of absence. Active, sustained peace-making, peace-giving, peace-sharing are the hallmarks of practical Christianity and of healthy society. It is just over ten years since the Ceasefires which in their day were hugely significant. A cloud lifted, everyone began once more to hope for the ordinary as something normal. Much political ground has been opened up since then. Much progress has been made. Many hearts have been changed, softened, inspired. Many people work away quietly and effectively for community-building and for the sharing of respect in our own diocese as elsewhere. But devolved government as a mature outworking of a society's desire to take active responsibility together for the present and for the future has had nothing but false starts. Making provision structurally for the effective carrying out and carrying through of ideals into actions has likewise had nothing but false starts. Not only ought this to surprise us, it has to worry us profoundly. Our hope remains that peace will yet become the dynamic force for transformation in our deeply divided and tragically reticent society.

Last year we could and did tell ourselves that we were the only church to have taken this particular sort of hard look at ourselves. But I now ask you: having had the power-point presentation, having had the discussion, having had the study pack through your rectors and having in your possession the document itself - do you still want to look only? Because The Hard Gospel process is another of those brown field sites of which I spoke earlier. It has to be a process of mission, it has to be a process of conversion and I use both of those words in their generous and gracious meaning. Within it, as a resounding expression of the mind and voice of the General Synod and of each diocese, it has the possibility to transform from within for good and for Gospel the Church to which we pledge our allegiance and to which we express our loyalty. It has the capacity to equip us to make a sustained, coherent contribution to the healing and the maturing of our society north and south. But the cycle of opportunity turns from away the sun as well as towards it. There are many types of cold climate.

We in the Church of Ireland, as those in particular who keep abreast of what is happening in both jurisdictions are aware, and indeed a number of our clergy have themselves served in both parts of Ireland, know well that our work as members of the Church of Ireland cannot be understood from the perspective of Northern Ireland alone or the Republic of Ireland alone. More often than not do I hear the words of a friend ringing in my ears: The North needs the South and the South needs the North. Daily I know it to be true. Take for example the Committee work of the Church of Ireland which we take for granted but which remains vital to the life of both General Synod and Representative Body. You may think that The Hard Gospel is all about Northern Ireland and the problems which the Church of Ireland has there. No! The Hard Gospel Committee is made up of members from North and South together. This is how we work, this how we are, and may we be shielded from any machinations which might make it otherwise.

The third is this: In 1993 Clogher undertook a diocesan review. Some aspects of this work were implemented, some remain. In 2002 as bishop I requested formally the Diocesan Council to appoint a Diocesan Review Committee to take a fresh look at the diocese ten years on, to consult widely with lay people and with clergy, to report with a view to the implementation of proposals for the future. It seemed a fair thing to do as I was new to the diocese and the diocese was new to me in this form. The Committee comprised a devoted and courageous group mainly of lay people under the experience and guidance of the archdeacon. I use the word: courageous because, regrettably, in certain parts of the diocese they were, I understand, met with nothing short of arrant hostility. Such an attitude is not a way forward. The members spent long winter evenings preparing and delivering consultations across the Rural Deaneries of the diocese. There was good representation of both the northern and the southern parts of the diocese. They met with lay people without their clergy. Clergy met in Rural Deaneries by themselves. Young people had their own forum. Each group of what today are called 'stakeholders' had an opportunity to have its say.

The process brought with it a growth in understanding of people across the diocese. It also brought an opportunity to ventilate ideas and to air grievances. The former is good as an ice-breaker, the latter is less fruitful. The archdeacon painstakingly drew together the findings of all the groups. He presented to the Diocesan Council of November 23rd 2003 what was generally and genuinely regarded as a masterly Final Report. The diocese has reacted swiftly and positively in the establishment of a full-time Diocesan Secretary and a Diocesan Office (albeit currently in temporary accommodation) is being set up. Mr Glenn Moore was appointed to such a position, after due process, taking up duties on August 1st 2004. He is currently based in The Rectory in Augher. We welcome him to this Synod and wish him well in the significant work which lies ahead. The Report contains the proposal of the employment of a Ministry Development Officer and a Diocesan Youth Officer, each on a three-year contract, together with various suggestions for implementation in individual parishes and in combined parishes. To some the proposals will seem far from radical. To others they will seem threatening. Whatever you think of them, they will not go away.

The Report also contains, and again the Diocesan Council endorsed this aspect with unanimity, a Diocesan Mission Statement which could complement a Parochial Mission or Vision Statement. Again, as I have said earlier in this Address, it is: Business as Usual. The findings of the Committee are to my mind genuinely exciting. The prospects for change, development, growth and the dawning of reality about ourselves are to my mind greatly to be welcomed. I see collaboration here across parishes, I see collaboration between diocese and parishes and I see a stronger and more confident presentation of the Gospel and the Christian faith in our time through the implementation of what will be another process. The willingness of parochial people to face reality is essential in this.

The one inescapable conclusion of the Final Report is that the present is unsustainable. This aspect of the Report is one which will not go away. I am delighted that the Diocesan Council has agreed to set up a Working Party to prepare proposals building on the Final Report of the Diocesan Review Committee and in particular relating to issues raised by the general admission of unsustainability of ministry and of many other things in the diocese. This is with a view to engaging in consultation and effecting changes which will be both creative and sustainable. We await their proposals and again I wish them well in this difficult and vital work. I would say only this: without a willingness to embrace change, the ivy of decline simply will creep in upon us. The strength of a system is not to be found in the pushing of exceptions to the limit but in the cohesion which is bred of trust and respect. Things are too serious for us to be carrying passengers of wilful dissension when what we need is voyagers of active collaboration. I quote again this year from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, page 735 as I did last year: Sirius did not hate Kreacher, said Dumbledore to Harry Potter, He regarded him as a servant unworthy of much interest or notice. Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike

As I conclude my own modest remarks I have great pleasure in welcoming all of you, ladies, gentlemen, friends, colleagues and visitors today to the Clogher Diocesan Synod, the one hundred and thirty-third occasion of its meeting. For your presence today I thank you all. Some of you are here as a regular part of your work, some are here by creating time in your own lives to be here and others are representing other Christian churches. Among them I wish to include from the Methodist Church the Reverend Daphne Twinem and from the Presbyterian Church the Reverend Gordon Acheson. They will all bring greetings to us during the Synod. I welcome Lady Brenda Shield whom I trust you will receive graciously as Assessor. Lady Brenda brings a wealth of expertise in both the ecclesiastical and legal fields. Mrs Janet Maxwell, Head of Communications in Church of Ireland House, has come again to our Synod. Mr Geoffrey Perrin has come from The Representative Church Body and Mr Martin O'Connor Education Advisor to The Bishops Appeal Advisory Committee has come also. Dr Duncan Morrow, Director of the NI Community Relations Committee, will address us during the day. Our own Impartial Reporter staff, whose interest in our parochial and diocesan activities all year round we greatly appreciate, are also here. I seek your compliance in welcoming all of these persons to a happy Synod.

At this point I express admiration and gratitude for the work of the Clogher Diocesan Board of Religious Education who have produced so fine a Guide to the Prayer Book for children, the Girls Friendly Society, the Church of Ireland Youth Department and our own Youth Councils Northern and Southern together with the work of Sunday School Teachers and Youth Leaders across our parishes. The pioneering work of J1 in 2002 and 2003 the most inspiring initiative of our Youth Council together with our growing association with the CIYD continues into 2004. All of this is good news in and for our diocese. These initiatives deserve the active support of the parochial clergy and youth leaders. Another J1 is planned for later in the Autumn and interest is very keen.

At the end of this month we shall say: Farewell to Dean Moore now in his thirty-second year of service in this his native diocese. As rector of Kilskeery with Trillick, of Trory with Killadeas and of Clogher with Errigal Portclare he has combined pastoral and liturgical duties with the work of Diocesan Secretary for twenty-one of those years. This is an outstanding achievement not least as he served as Diocesan Secretary for almost half of that period while also being dean of Clogher. For his contribution to the lives of individuals and communities in situations of need and rejoicing he will long be remembered with that truly telling combination of respect and affection. For his contribution to the administration of this diocese he will likewise be remembered and honoured in the annals of history. The Reverend Isobel Nixon also blazed a trail as the first woman to be ordained in our diocese. Isobel has worked assiduously in Rossorry Parish, throughout the diocese and has added her own experience and insight to The Healing Committee and to the GFS.

The Reverend David Luckman after a second curacy in St Macartin's Cathedral Parish, Enniskillen was instituted rector of Galloon Group of Parishes in late September 2003. We wish David, Sarah and their young daughter Rachel well at this time of anxiety for them all. We welcomed the Reverend Marianne Witting from the Church of Sweden who came to work, and to laugh (because Marianne has a wonderful laugh), with us from December 2003 until the summer of 2004. Marianne was the first woman to hold parochial responsibility in Clogher Diocese and she was the first person to do so likewise under the provisions of the Porvoo Agreement in the whole of the Church of Ireland. It was an adventure for her and also for the people of County Monaghan. Her contribution in terms of human concern, gracious ministry and the raising of morale will not be forgotten. We wish Marianne well in her new work in the Diocese of Gotland. In February of this year we welcomed two new incumbents within a fortnight of one another, the Reverend Christopher Matchett to be rector of Magheracross and the Reverend Francis Rutledge to be rector of Fintona with Barr. Both have settled into their work among us with alacrity. The Reverend William Campbell, well known and highly respected for his time in Sallaghy and Clones, returned to work in St Macartin's Parish, Enniskillen after the departure of the Reverend David Luckman and also spent a period of seven weeks in Drumkeeran Group of Parishes. I personally should like to think that the Diocese would show its appreciation of the sterling work which Bill, as we all came to know him, did during this period with us. The Reverend Stanley Bourke has become Rural Dean of Enniskillen in succession to the Reverend Canon Peter Wilson. In welcoming the former we thank the latter for all the work which he has done in this regard. The Reverend Henry Blair and the Reverend Ian Linton were ordained deacon in St Macartin's Cathedral, Enniskillen on a most joyous evening on St Barnabas Day, 11th June. The Reverend Dr Robin Wakely was ordained priest on Sunday June 27th in St Macartan's Cathedral, Clogher. It is quite some time since three people were ordained in Clogher in one and the same month. This is indeed a cause of rejoicing to us all and to the members of the parishes in which each of them serves. We express our sympathy to the family of the Reverend Gordon Roycroft who served the diocese faithfully as rector of Drumkeeran Group of Parishes for eight years. To those who have relinquished existing roles and to those who have assumed new roles and responsibilities we give our thanks for what they have done and share our hopes for what lies ahead of them. I wish also to pay a tribute of gratitude to the retired clergy, to our one auxiliary priest and to Diocesan and Parish Readers in good standing for all they give in terms of service, encouragement to others and hard work all year round in our diocese. Without you we would be in what I called last year and still can only call: worshipful liquidation !

It would indeed be remiss of me not to mention the twenty-five years of service which my counterpart Bishop Duffy has given to this diocese. Like me he is native to these parts. Like me he feels the needs of his people deep within him. It is my privilege to work alongside him. I value his warmth and his realism along with his immense scholarship lightly carried. Earlier this month he marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of his episcopal ordination. He is known to many of us personally. His contribution to the Clogher Historical Society alongside that of Mr Jack Johnston has not only put local history on the map. It has also made the Society the largest in the country. The Society draws its membership from right across the broad spectrum of the community, includes many members of the Church of Ireland among its number and is an example to us all. I trust that Bishop Duffy has the goodwill and good wishes of all of us.

Our calling remains God's calling of us to reconciliation and peace. The streams of living water flow for us all. The life lived to oneself, as I saw inscribed on that fountain in Corsica, is not a life at all. But the life lived for others is where delight and fulfilment are to be found. Let us do two things: let us keep it simple and let us keep it together. Let the voice of the silent majority be heard, gentle but firm. Let the spirit of respect for others temper our thirst for an integrity which is nothing other than a rallying cry to exclusivity or an invitation to unbridled relativism.

The spirit of Clogher is very much summed up in the Collect for St Macartan's Day, our Patron Saint, with which I end. It talks of building and strengthening, of Gospel proclamation and leadership, of reconciliation and peace in our time:

Heavenly Father, we thank you for Macartan, faithful companion of St Patrick, and builder of your church in Clogher: Build up your church through those whom you call to leadership in this generation and strengthen your church to proclaim the gospel of reconciliation and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord.