Irish Times Notes
Church of Ireland notes from 'The Irish Times'
Saturday 31 January 2009
New Book on the Census
Next Friday evening in the Linenhall Library, Belfast, Lord Eames will launch a new book on the census of population and the Church of Ireland, Counting the People of God? which has been written by Malcolm Macourt.
Mr Macourt is a social statistician who has taught in the Universities of Dundee, Durham and Northumbria and since 2003 he has been an Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Census and Survey Research in Manchester University. In addition, he is a son of the rectory, his father being the retired Archdeacon of Down, the Ven. W.A. Macourt.
For nearly 200 year the census has been the most extensive social inquiry into Irish people and their circumstances and since 1861 it has consistently included a question about religion. This book is the first specific study of the inquiry into religion in the Irish census and concentrates on the Church of Ireland which is the second largest denomination on the island of Ireland. This in-depth study demonstrates how much the Church of Ireland has changed, and considers the effects of establishment, disestablishment and partition as well as more recent events such as the Good Friday Agreement and the late lamented Celtic Tiger.
Counting the People of God? is the most ambitious publication so far by the recently established Church of Ireland imprint, Church of Ireland Publishing (CIP) and, like the earlier more modest publications, owes much to the dedication of the Church of Ireland Publications Officer, Dr Susan Hood.
Tomorrow (Sunday) morning in the Chapel of Trinity College, Dublin, the address at the Choral Eucharist will be given by Mr Trevor Sargent TD, Minister for Food, who will speak on ‘Thinking Aloud about Faith and Food’. In Christ Church Cathedral the Candlemas Procession, marking the end of the season of Christmas, will take place at 5pm and will include music by Byrd, Hadley, Holst and Howels.
In the past few weeks, Cambridge University has started celebrating the 800th anniversary of its founding in 1209. An impressive round of celebratory events is planned, and the anniversary coincides with events marking the 200th anniversary of the birth in 1809 of the naturalist Charles Darwin.
Both Darwin and Archbishop Rowan Williams were undergraduates at Christ’s College, Cambridge, where the chaplain is the Revd Christopher Woods, a graduate of the Church of Ireland Theological College, now the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. The Director of Spiritual Formation at the Institute, Canon Patrick Comerford, is the guest preacher in the Christ’s Church College chapel tomorrow (Sunday) at the Solemn Orchestral Eucharist for the Eve Candlemas. His sermon is part of the ‘Sundays at Six’ series on the theme, ‘The ears of the heart’, exploring various aspects of prayer.
On Monday, Canon Comerford will be in the City of London, where he will preach at a Service of Light in Saint Botolph-without-Bishopsgate to mark the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple (Candlemas). The Vicar of Saint Botolph’s is the Revd Dr Alan McCormack, a former Church of Ireland chaplain in Trinity College, Dublin.
On Wednesday evening Dr Maighréad Ni Mhurchadha will give a talk on her book, The Vestry records of the United Parishes of Finglas, St Margaret’s Artane and the Ward, 1657-1758, which was published by Four Courts Press as part of the Representative Church Body Library’s Texts and Calendars series. The talk will be hosted by the Old Dublin Society in Dublin City Library and Archive, Pearse Street.