Irish Times Notes
Church of Ireland Notes from ‘The Irish Times’
Saturday 7 January 2012
The Representative Church Body Library which is, among other things, the Church of Ireland archives, has launched a new archival outreach project. Beginning this month ‘Archive of the Month’ will showcase specific collections in the Library’s custody. A digital link will be available at: www.ireland.anglican.org/library/archive. This is an initiative of Dr Susan Hood, Assistant Librarian and Archivist in the RCB Library, who will manage the project.
For January, the ‘Archive of the Month’ will be the papers of the General Convention which re–organized the Church following disestablishment. These papers document the life of the Church at a most challenging time in its history, and reveal the thinking and strategy behind the general and diocesan synodical structures through which much of todays Church is administered.
The collection includes minute books, resolutions, correspondence, petitions, printed material and covers the period 1868–1874. A detailed catalogue of all of the materials in the collection is provided online, linked to a slide show of key documents and photographs of some of the bishops, clergy and laity tasked with the transition of the Church from state to private control. Letters, mostly from the archbishops of Armagh and Dublin (Marcus Gervais de la Poer Beresford and Richard Chevenix Trench), other bishops and prominent laity in the period both before and after the passage of the Irish Church Act provide a particularly colourful insight into the personal views of the various episcopal, clerical and lay correspondents on Gladstone’s radical legislation.
Future ‘Archives of the Month’ to be featured later in the year will include the Monegall register containing President Obama’s ancestors; a rare–late 19th century collection of lantern slides featuring the Dublin University Mission in Chota Nagpur, India; images from a late–19th century Holy Land pilgrimage; digital images of 18th–century parish watch books from Dublin and lots more!
This evening (Saturday) there will be an ‘Evening of Carols & Songs by Candlelight’ at 8pm in St Doulagh’s medieval church on the Malahide Road at Balgriffin, in support of the church restoration fund.
Tomorrow afternoon in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, there will be an Epiphany Carol Service at which the readings will be given by the lay members of the cathedral staff while this evening at 8pm there will be ‘Music and Readings for Epiphany’ in St Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick.
Friends of the Boys Brigade are cordially invited to the Chapel of the Mageough Home, Cowper Road, Dublin, tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon at 3.30pm Bishop Samuel Poyntz, Hon Chaplain of the BB in the Republic of Ireland, will deliver an address to the BB Steadfast Association on the theme ‘Darkness & Light’. Music will be provided by the Steadfast Brass Band.
On Thursday evening at 8pm the Archbishop of Dublin will institute the Revd Niall Sloane to the incumbency of Holy Trinity, Killiney.
The annual Living Worship course, run by the Dublin and Glendalough Church Music Committee, starts on 14 January and continuing on the following three Saturday mornings, Living Worship looks at aspects of church music in a wider context than simply playing the organ or singing in a choir. It has something for everyone – musicians, worship leaders and those with pastoral responsibility (not only clergy) – anyone interested in the music of worship. This year’s speakers are Dean Tom Gordon, John Harper, former RSCM director–general, Canon Gerald Field and Jonathan Rea, artistic director of New Irish Arts, Belfast. The venue is Mageough Hall, Rathmines and there is more information on www.churchmusicdublin.org and 087 668 3998