Press Releases
Installation of next Dean of Armagh
The Precentor of St Patrick?s Cathedral, the Revd Canon Henry Moore, will install the Ven. Patrick Rooke as the next Dean of Armagh at a special service in the Cathedral Church of St Patrick?s, Armagh on Thursday 27 April 2006.
The Archbishop of Armagh, the Most Revd Dr Robin Eames, will preside at the service and the Bishop of Connor, the Rt Revd Alan Harper, will give the address.
Archdeacon Rooke is currently Rector of Agherton Parish, Portstewart, and Archdeacon of Dalriada and he was appointed by Dr Eames to be the next Dean of Armagh in succession to the Very Revd Herbert Cassidy on his retirement.
Archdeacon Rooke is married to Alison and they have three children.
Notes to Editors:
Biographical details
Archdeacon Rooke was ordained in 1978. He served as Curate in Mossley Parish (Connor) and then in Ballywillan Parish, Portrush. In 1983 he became Rector of Craigs, Dunaghy and Killagan and in 1985 was appointed Rural Dean of Ballymena.
In 1988 he became Rector, Ballymore Parish, Tandragee (Armagh) and from 1992 was appointed Assistant Provincial and Diocesan Registrar. In 1993 he was appointed Honorary Vicar Choral of St Patrick?s Cathedral, returning to Connor Diocese as Rector of Agherton in 1994.
He is also Chairman of the Church of Ireland?s Hard Gospel Committee, a co-opted member of the Standing Committee, Chairman of Connor Diocesan Training Council and Chairman of the Board of Directors of The Good Book Shop, Belfast.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Installation of the Very Revd Patrick Rooke as Dean of Armagh
Sermon by the Rt Revd Alan Harper, OBE, Bishop of Connor
27th April 2006
A city that is set upon a hill cannot be hid
By an irony barely considered, when the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach came to Armagh to announce proposals for the resumption of devolution they chose Navan Fort ? Emhain Macha ? as their location of choice. Did they realise, I wonder, that the mound of Emhain Macha signified the dramatic end of the capital of the Ulaid - a memorial to the last days of an ancient kingdom? The massive sacred enclosure where the mound now stands, the ritual heart of pagan Ulster, had been set ablaze and then a complex stone and sod cairn erected over the ruins.
Within a short time the ritual capital that was Emhain Macha had been was transferred two short miles to the Hill of Armagh ? the hill where this cathedral now stands. Emhain Macha was the past, Ard Macha was the future. Patrick, you have been appointed custodian of the future, of the sacred enclosure at the heart not just of Ulster but of all Ireland. Your task is to see to it that the heritage passed to you is not merely preserved but enhanced to the glory of God.
I want to express my personal delight that you have been appointed to this task for you are richly endowed with the gifts that are required.
Why does the Bishop of Connor rejoice in the appointment of an able and trusted colleague to work in another diocese? Because Connor?s loss will become gain not just for Armagh but for the whole Church of God and especially the Church of Ireland.
Patrick you are called to this office. You are no random choice. You have answered ?Yes? to that call, and I, for one, am immensely pleased that you have. I will tell you why.
Consider these words of the prophet Isaiah:
I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give Him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem, and makes her the praise of the earth. [Isaiah 62.6,7]
You have been called to be Dean of Armagh at a particular time and for a very particular kind of ministry. I make no apology for suggesting what kind of ministry that might be and why it is required in this place and at this time.
First, the time of your calling.
Years ago, in a different life, I directed excavations to the south of this cathedral. The excavation identified and partly explored a massive and very deep ditch running around the hilltop upon which this cathedral now stands. Within that enclosure another Patrick, the Apostle to the Irish people, built his Great Stone Church. It was the greatest building in this city of Ard Macha and the spiritual springboard for Patrick?s work of proclaiming the gospel throughout this island.
I believe when you read the works which survive from Patrick?s own hand ? his Confessio and the Letter to Coroticus ? you may be persuaded that the days of St Patrick were not so very different from our own.
They were days of doubt and dissension in an Ireland of internal division and rivalry; they were days of conflict and violence, days in which the Hard Gospel had to be preached; they were days of religious pluralism and a vigorously contested struggle for the truth; but they were also days of great opportunity.
So then, the task:
Patrick erected his Great Stone Church on this hill so that it could be seen far and wide. Around it grew a city - an ecclesiastical, monastic city - a city dedicated to the work and witness of the People of God.
A city that is set upon a hill cannot be hid and there should be no intention to hide the City of God. This city and especially this Great Stone Church was built to be seen and to draw men and women to Christ, as moths to a flame. That is the contemporary task.
That is the heritage you enter tonight and to which you have been appointed a Watchman.
But, many may ask, ?What is the role of a cathedral in the post-Christian Ireland of the 21st century?? In particular, ?What is required of this cathedral in the times that are ours??
Ecclesiologically this is the mother church of the Diocese of Armagh, but Armagh Cathedral must be more than that. This great establishment is not here merely to serve a single diocese or even a single denomination. It is here with a mission to the people of the whole island and to others who choose to visit us. It is here for Christian and non Christian alike, because even those who consciously and thoughtfully reject faith in Christ, as well as those who never give consideration to such things, need to know what shapes the history and culture of this island and what is the nature of the DNA that is the shared spiritual heritage of us all. There is no better place on earth to explore such things than this place.
Increasingly cathedrals ? as sacred space, symbolic buildings, repositories of the history and faith of uncounted generations of people - are places which both tourists and seekers after meaning and coherence choose to visit. Cathedrals are primary contact points for people whose religious practice is unformed and whose religious curiosity is unsatisfied. Men and women willingly, even enthusiastically, visit places like this. The challenge for you, Patrick, is to find ways to turn spiritual curiosity into spiritual encounter ? but I suggest you do it subtly. People seek out cathedrals because of their splendour but also the anonymity they offer; for the quality of their worship but also the mystery of internal silence evoked here. These are qualities that the world can never offer.
When I worked on the excavations in Castle Street, the carillon sounded from the bell tower of this cathedral and the songs of Zion echoed across the city. It witnessed to the ancient heritage of worship, and especially musical worship, associated with this place. Centuries before Sir Charles Wood, the Singers of God ? the Ceilidh De, the Culdees ? offered psalms and hymns and spiritual songs here to the glory of God.
Patrick, worship of the highest order, honouring the majesty of God and the heritage of the Culdees and their successors, has now become your prime, national, concern and responsibility. If this place does not resonate to the strains of worship of the most sublime quality the witness of this building and its people will be impaired. I recognize the difficulty of your task, for we live in times that often seem devoid of sustained commitment. Yet this is a task I know you will relish because the ordering of worship is closest of all to your heart.
To speak of the witness provided by the carillon reminds me that witness is communication. Therefore, I want to say something about communication in contemporary society.
An article in last Saturday?s ?Times?, by Tamara Kaminsky, reflecting on the work of the feminist thinker Andrea Dworkin, drew towards a conclusion thus:
What Dworkin had attempted to do was to use words and language to free the world from the abuse of women and everything that contributes towards it. This is where she failed. Words are not the tools of a modern campaign. Images are. Complex ideas have given way to single slogans. Manifestos have been replaced by stereotypes.
Pornography, with its glossy pages, its vernacular of bold iconography and its commercial humour, understood this from the start. It translates into popular culture because it needs no intellect, no understanding and no voice to get across what it is trying to say. Dworkin? demanded these attributes, so her [their] message has been lost in translation. [The Times, Saturday 22nd April, Books p17]
Kaminsky?s observations are not new ? it is 25 years now since Jacques Ellul published his classic work ?The Humiliation of the Word?. The point, however, should not be lost: the transmission of demanding ideas and thoughtful propositions in 21st century society is unappealing to an image focussed generation. Simple, strident images and vernacular slogans are the accepted tools of the modern campaign.
The truth of her observation presents to the Church of God an immense challenge: how do we transmit the Word so that it is not trivialised, compromised or ?lost in translation?? Within the context of a visual culture, how are we to identify and present images that will inspire people of this generation and the next to be open to the transformational experience of the presence and the love of God in Christ? Here also cathedrals must seek to lead.
Perhaps, nowadays, it is not so much words but musical sounds and the visual image that have the power to initiate a closer walk with the Unseen God, and it is in cathedrals that such experiences may be most effectively offered and most frequently sought. If the cathedral of this city, set upon a hill so that it cannot be hidden, and where we are ?surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses? [Hebrews 12.1], is to witness today with the same power it deployed in Patrick?s day, it may need to become facilitator and patron of all that is most visually and musically moving, arresting and spiritually powerful in contemporary Ireland.
There remains immense power in story, but perhaps the story of salvation needs to be set forward again, as it once was, visually as well as by word. We have lost a full sense of what once was the visual power of our great high crosses like the Cross of Armagh. Antiquity has stripped away the bright colours that once picked out the scenes depicted upon them. They stood as icons, visual signposts for an unlettered age. New visual signposts of equally arresting magnificence and artistic quality are required again in our own dyslexic culture and this is the place to provide them!
Cursed though they are by post-modern dyslexia, a ?lost content? in the religion of scientific modernism, and a loss of religious memory, people are still on a spiritual search. Much of what they turn to is exploitative trash, but not all. You hear a lot these days about ?Celtic? spirituality. Some of it is fanciful but much is valuable. In particular, the ancient understanding of the inseparability of the material and the spiritual is an understanding reborn. This quiet place, soaked in centuries of prayer and discipline, is ideally suited to provide space and opportunity for people on a spiritual journey to come apart and seek what Tillich called the ground of our being.
Through quiet and prayer and reflective exploration, might not this place offer structured opportunities for people in search of their true selves to discover what, in the providence of God, they already are? Here is safe and gracious space for encounters of ultimate meaning, how is it to be made available to those who need it most? That also is a direction you may need to explore.
In his great High Priestly prayer before his passion, the Lord prayed,
?As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.? [John 17.18]
What then of the relationship of this place to the world beyond the Church?
The Church of God is set in the world to effect a transformation of society. She has a vision of how society ought to be. True, our long history of rivalry and dissension among Christians of different traditions has damaged our capacity to articulate and commend that vision. That past must be put behind us! There is a much about contemporary society in both jurisdictions in Ireland that cries out for measured critique and constructive dialogue. Political arenas in parliaments or council chambers are often cockpits of confusion. Now is the time for the Christian Church to listen carefully and contribute calmly to the building of a more harmonious, respectful, compassionate and generous society in Ireland. To that end, I believe it is time purposefully to fashion a forum and a mechanism for just such an enterprise ?why not here?
The initiative of the Archbishop in hosting a conference on Child Poverty is a first sign and step. It is time to engage civic society in public debate about policy and practice in the lives of Irish people. We should draw together the powerful and the thoughtful, the executive and the theorist, not only to inform and challenge church people, but also to inform and challenge the world. This is work for the spiritual city set upon a hill.
In his vision, Isaiah saw the restoration of Jerusalem as an inspiration for all nations:
The nations will see your righteousness and all kings your glory?you will be a crown of splendour in the Lord?s hand, a royal diadem in the hand of your God. No longer will they call you Deserted, or name your land Desolate. But you will be called Hephzibah and your land Beulah. [Isaiah 62.2-4a]
Patrick, you have been called to maintain and build upon the heritage of a distinguished past. Just as Isaiah dreamed of Jerusalem as an inspiring new place, built upon historic foundations but destined for a glorious future, the challenge to you is not merely to live on the past but to fashion a future. I do not believe, and I do not think that you believe, that you are called here to look back. You are here to look and to stride forward.
Since, then, surrounded in this place, by a great crowd of witnesses, throw off you everything that hinders and run with perseverance the race now marked out for you on the hill Ard Macha.
Further information from:
Tel: Belfast (028) 9023 2909
Press Officer: Sarah Williams (duty phone) +44 (0)7787 881582