Irish Times Notes
Church of Ireland Notes from 'The Irish Times'
Saturday 7 June 2008
Belfast Cathedral Festival
The 104th anniversary of the consecration of the nave of St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast, will be celebrated today (Saturday) and tomorrow (Sunday) with a Cathedral Festival.
Today (Saturday) there will be cathedral tours, lasting 30 minutes, at 10.30, 11.30 and 12.30, while at 11 and 12 noon there will be organ recitals by Philip Stopford and Ian Barbour. All these events are free. At 7.30 pm the Cathedral Choir, with guest soloists Philipp Dawson (baritone) and Lynda Barrett (soprano), will give a Festival Concert for which tickets are required.
During today (Saturday) the Dean of Belfast, Dr Houston McKelvey, and members of the cathedral chapter, will be under the Spire of Hope to receive contributions to the Dean’s Gift Day. This year, donations will go towards the sanding and re-sealing of the cathedral floor and to the first stage of a restoration programme on the cathedral organ.
Tomorrow (Sunday) morning Dr Gordon McMullan, formerly Bishop of Down & Dromore, will preach at a Festival Eucharist which will include arrangements of music that was sung at the 1904 Service of Consecration. The Festival will conclude with Evensong which will feature the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams and the hymns of Cecil Frances Alexander.
Today (Saturday) the Cork, Cloyne & Ross Diocesan Synod will be held in the Rochestown Park Hotel, Cork. The Church of Ireland Mens’ Society will have an outing to Dublin. They will visit Trinity College Chapel, where Bishop Samuel Poyntz, a former President of CIMS, will preside at a celebration of the Eucharist, the Church of Ireland College of Education, and Christ Church Cathedral, where Dr Kenneth Milne, the Church of Ireland Historiographe, will give a lecture on the cathedral.
Tomorrow (Sunday) morning RTE will televise a live act of worship led by the Revd Tom Gordon and focusing on the recent pilgrimage of hope for peace to the Holy Land by the leaders of the four main Christian churches in Ireland. The programme will include reflections on the pilgrimage, an interview with the Archbishop of Armagh, and a reading of the ‘Jerusalem Prayer for a just peace’, which the Churches in Israel and Palestine have invited Christians around the world to pray with them. The prayer was unanimously endorsed for liturgical use throughout the Church of Ireland tomorrow (Sunday) at last month’s General Synod.
Tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon at 2.30 in Christ Church Cathedral the Archbishop of Dublin will ordain three deacons. Stephen Farrell will serve in the parish of Taney, Robert Lawson in Celbridge and Anne-Marie O’Farrell in Sandford & Milltown. At
3pm the annual ecumenical service at St Columcille’s Holy Well, Ballycullen Road, Dublin 16, takes place while in Clonmacnoise there will be a summer service in Templeconnor Church at 4pm.
On Monday, St Columba’s Day, at 7pm the first of a new series of laity led meditative services, called ‘Spiorad’, will be held in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. The services, which will take place monthly will reflect on one of the celtic saints.
The Bishop of Clogher will ordain Charles Eames to the diaconate on Wednesday evening in St Macartin’s Cathderal, Enniskillen. The preacher will be the Revd Dr Maurice Elliott, Director of the Church of Ireland Theological Institute.
On Thursday evening at 7.30 pm there will be a public lecture by the Anglican philosopher, Don Cupitt, in the Arts Building in Trinity College, Dublin. Dr Cupitt is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and is perhaps best known for his book and TV series, The Sea of Faith.