Irish Times Notes
Church of Ireland notes from the Irish Times
New Issue of Search
A new issue of the Church of Ireland journal, Search, will appear shortly and will include articles on history, education (especially ministerial education) and the nature and achievements of ecumenism in Ireland.
Canon John Crawford, Vicar of the St Patrick’s Cathedral group of parishes, and Dr Raymond Gillespie, who teaches history in NUI-Maynooth, have produced an extensive survey of writings on Church of Ireland history over the last fifty years which updates the critical bibliography compiled by Alan Ford and Kenneth Milne in 1993. A Church of Ireland historian from the past, St John Drelincourt Seymour, is evaluated by Dr Toby Barnard of Hertford College, Oxford. Archdeacon Seymour’s The Puritans in Ireland has become a seminal work in Irish historiography but he is remembered also for his interest in Irish ghost stories, witchcraft and demonology.
The more recent past, in the form of Dr James McCann, Archbishop of Armagh, 1959-69, is considered by the former Bishop of Cork, the Rt Revd Roy Warke, and, in particular, the primacy and the retirement of Archbishop McCann are examined. From a similar period, Dr Jennifer Moreton, discusses the Community of St John the Evangelist which, in 1958, established a community in Dublin to care for elderly ladies in St Mary’s Home, Pembroke Park.
On the educational front Mr Salters Sterling, who was for many years one of the principal administrative links between Trinity and the Theological College, contributes a response to a recent Catalyst booklet on ministerial training by the Dean of St Patrick’s, Dr Robert MacCarthy. The achievements, and, more often, the shortcomings of the Irish Inter-Church Movement since the original Ballymascanlon talks, are outlined in an article by Maria Power.
This evening (Saturday) in St Ann’s Church, Dublin, there will be a concert at 7.30 pm by St Mary’s University of Minnesota Chamber Singers in aid of Dublin’s homeless.
Tomorrow (Sunday) morning RTE will broadcast a Service of the Word for Women’s world Day of Prayer. The service will be led by Catherine Murtagh and the preacher will be Dr Gesa Thiessen. In the Chapel of Trinity College, Dublin, the seventh in the Hilary term series of sermons on “What Makes me Tick” will be delivered by the Revd Dr Frank Jehle, Evangelical Chaplain of the University of St Gallen in Switzerland, Dr Jehle is an acknowledged authority on the writings of Karl Barth.
On Monday the Dean of Christ Church, Dublin, the Very Revd John Paterson, will mark the fourteenth anniversary of his appointment to Christ Church and on Wednesday he will be in Killeshin, Co. Carlow, for the institution of the Revd Roy Byrne. Mr Byrne has been curate in the Christ Church Cathedral group of parishes since his ordination in 1999.
The Bishop of Cork will visit St Luke’s Home on Friday when the Minister of Health and Children will turn the first sod of the fourth unit at the Home. In Dublin, the Irish Theological Association’s annual conference on “Faith and Post-Modern Culture” will begin in the Redemptorist Centre on Orwell Road where the key note address will be given by Dr Denys Turner, Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity in Cambridge.
Two second year students from the Church of Ireland Theological College are visiting theological colleges of the Church of England. Ian Linton is spending three weeks in Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and Christopher Woods, will be in Westcott House, Cambridge, for two weeks. Such visits widen the spectrum of ordination training and allow Church of Ireland ordinands to experience other perspectives of life in a theological college.