Diocesan News
Launch of 'Leslie's Clogher Clergy and Parishes'
Address by The Rt Revd Dr MGStA Jackson, Bishop of Clogher
As the Diocese of Clogher meets for its Synod of 2006, we do so in a spirit of thankfulness for the past and expectation for the future. The publication of a substantially revised Leslie?s Clogher Clergy and Parishes is a significant achievement at any time. It is a great joy to us all that it coincides with the year in which we have been celebrating MACARTAN 1500, a wonderful year for us in Clogher when we mark fifteen hundred years of Christian witness in this diocese of great antiquity and vibrant contemporary life.
Leslie?s Clogher Clergy and Parishes in its earlier edition is a volume through which I looked time and again in fascination as a child growing up in rectories in this diocese. It intrigued me that the footmarks of parishes whose rectors and people I knew well could be found in the deep recesses of history and that so many varied and interesting clergy served and still serve in the same parishes. For me, therefore, it is a great pleasure to be here for the launch of Leslie?s Clogher 2006 and to express my appreciation to all of you for coming and to so many of you for staying far into what has been a long day of Synod.
My thanks go to two successive groups of people who have made Leslie happen and in particular to Dean Thomas Moore who represents the continuity between the two groups. The idea to revisit Leslie was his as he ministered in Kilskeery. When he was Diocesan Secretary he consulted with a son of Kilskeery Rectory, in the person of the Reverend Canon WEC Fleming, whose father had indeed had a tremendous interest in the history of Clogher clergy and parishes. He also drew on the expertise of the late Canon James Merry, the Reverend Nigel Baylor, Mr Jack Johnston, Mrs Evelyn West and Miss Chapman. The work on Leslie was resuscitated in 2001 when the Reverend Canon David Crooks, Raphoe Diocese, expressed his interest and willingness to put a great deal of work and nervous energy into the publication. Dean Moore continued to work on it along with Canon Fleming and, for a period, Mr Jack Johnston. To the new Committee were added the Reverend Canon George Little, the Very Reverend Norman Barr and Mrs Barr and Mr Fred Rankin assisted by today?s Diocesan Secretary Mr Glenn Moore. This group was inspired throughout by Canon Crooks and Dean Moore and I wish to thank both of them in particular for the hours and kilometres which they have expended on today?s publication.
Our thanks go also to the Ulster Historical Foundation, and in particular of recent times to Mr Fintan Mullan, and also to the Rural Development Council for the support which they have given us in financing publication. The completion of Leslie enables us to play our part in the overall picture of the Church of Ireland as with a proper sense of history we today hold the memory of history as something living, something dynamic and something for tomorrow.
+Michael Clogher