CHURCH OF IRELAND NOTES
For Saturday 29th July 2000
From: The RCB
Library
Email: RCB Library
On Tuesday evening in St. Bartholomew's Church, Dublin, Archbishop
Walton Empey will institute the Revd William Ritchie to the incumbency
of St. Bartholomew's with Leeson Park. The preacher will be the Bishop
of Meath and Kildare, Dr. Richard Clarke, who was curate in the parish
from 1977 to 1979.
Mr Ritchie is a Trinity graduate who was ordained in 1986 after
training in the Church of Ireland Theological College. His first curacy
was Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford and he then spent two years in Egypt as
assistant chaplain in Alexandria. Mr Ritchie returned to Ireland in 1992
to be rector of Kells in the Diocese of Meath, and last year was
appointed to the incumbency of Clondehorkey group of parishes in Co.
Donegal.
In St. Bartholomew's he succeeds the Revd John McKay, who is now
chaplain in Venice, and a line of distinguished churchmen including the
present Bishop of Cashel and Ossory, the Right Revd John Neill, the
present Dean of Christ Church, the Very Revd John Paterson, and the
former Dean of Cork, the Very Revd Maurice Carey.
The church in Clyde Road, which was consecrated in 1867 to serve the
needs of the developing Pembroke area, has a fine reputation for musical
and liturgical excellence in the Catholic tradition.
Its history, which was at times turbulent, was written in 1963
by Dr Kenneth Milne, now the Church of Ireland historiographer, and was
published as St Bartholomew's: A History of the Dublin Parish by
the late Allen Figgis.
Leeson Park is older than St Bartholomew's, having been consecrated
as a chapel for the Molyneux Asylum for the Female Blind in 1862. It was
renamed Christ Church, Leeson Park, in 1862 and assumed parochial status
in 1892. Christ Church was united with St Bartholomew's in 1972, with
the Rev John Paterson as the first incumbent of the union. Later in the
same year an arrangement was made to share the church with the Methodist
congregation from Centenary Church on St Stephen's Green, which had been
destroyed by fire. This arrangement has endured to the present.
Today, the chaplain of Trinity College, Dublin, Dr Alan McCormack,
will attend a collaborative seminar on "Religion and New
Media" in Boston, where he will work on a research project
exploring the theological capacity of contemporary cinema. In University
College, Cork, an interdisciplinary conference on "Pilgrimage -
Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago, Ireland" comes to an end.
Related to the conference will be a pilgrimage in September, details
of which may be had from Dr Dagmar O'Riain-Raedel, department of
history, University College, Cork.
Tomorrow in Dublin the services in Christ Church Cathedral will be
sung by the choir of St Luke's Church, Chelsea, while in St Patrick's
Cathedral the visiting choir will be from St Mark's School from Dallas,
Texas, On Thursday evening in St Barrahane's Church, Castletownshend, Co
Cork, the recital in the 20th Festival of Classical Music will be given
by the RTÉ Vanburgh String Quartet, whose programme will include
Schubert's String Quartet No. 14 and Ravel's String Quartet in F.
The Dean of St Patrick's highly readable, if idiosyncratic short
history of the Church of Ireland has been reprinted. Based on a series
of lectures which was given in Kilkenny, the history retains the
informal lecture style and the many allusions to the united dioceses of
Cashel and Ossory with which Dr MacCarthy is so familiar. Ancient
& Modern, A Short History of the Church of Ireland by R. B.
MacCarthy is published by Four Courts Press at £4.95.
Church of Ireland Notes appear in the Irish
Times whose web site may be found at http://www.ireland.com/ |
