CHURCH OF IRELAND NOTES
For Saturday 12th May 2001
From: The RCB Library
Email: RCB Library
General Synod Meets in Dublin
Next week the General
Synod will meet from Tuesday to Thursday in the new venue of the
O'Reilly Hall in University College, Dublin. Although the Synod has, in
recent years, met in both Cork and Belfast, Dublin, despite continuing
problems in securing an ideal venue, remains the most popular and the most
convenient place to meet.
The difficulty in finding an entirely appropriate meeting place may
occupy the minds of members of the Synod on Tuesday when they consider a
bill which has emerged from the work of the Synodical Structures Working Group. If accepted this
bill will substantially reduce the size of the General Synod and improve its
representative nature.
There will also be bills to improve clerical pensions and on the establishment of provincial mediation panels in the context of pastoral
breakdown. However, the legislative programme will be dominated by
liturgical reform with bills on Holy Communion, the calendar, the collects and post-communion prayers,
and the canticles. There will also be resolutions to
initiate legislation on initiation, marriage, burial and sentences of scripture.
As always the reports of the Representative
Church Body and the Standing Committee and their various boards and
committees provide opportunities to discuss almost every aspect of the
Church's life and witness. One matter, which seems certain to command
attention, is the continuing controversy over the fate of the Palace in Kilkenny.
The Synod will be preceded by Evensong in St Patrick's Cathedral on
Monday when the preacher will be the editor of the Church of Ireland Gazette, Canon Cecil Cooper
and on Tuesday evening the Bishop of Tuam will be the preacher at the
General Synod Eucharist in St Patrick's. On Wednesday morning in the
Conservatory of the O'Reilly Hall there will be a Synod Week Breakfast,
hosted by the Council for the Church Overseas and the Council for Mission in
Ireland, at which the Revd Charles Irwin will speak on "Preparing for
Mission in Ireland Today".
Today (Saturday) in Dublin there will be fetes and sales in the parishes
of All Saints, Blackrock, Whitechurch and Zion while in St Andrew's Church,
Lucan, a Festival of Flowers will continue until tomorrow (Sunday). The
choir of St Peter's Church, Belfast, will sing at Mass in the Cathedral of
St Patrick and St Felim, Cavan, tonight (Saturday) and at the Eucharist in
St Fethlimidh's Cathedral tomorrow morning (Sunday) when the preacher will
be the Rector of St Peter's, the Revd Charles McCollum.
Tomorrow (Sunday) morning in the Chapel of Trinity College, Dublin, the
Revd John McCann, organist and composer, will play a series of
improvisations on the Missa Orbis Factor. The preacher, the Revd Dr
Benjamin Quash, Dean of Peterhouse, Cambridge, will comment theologically on
"improvisation". The Bishop of Cashel and Ossory, will preside at
a Thanksgiving Eucharist for the re-opening of Killurin Church, Co. Wexford,
where the preacher will be the Revd Patrick Comerford. In the evening, in
Crinken Church, Co. Dublin, the preacher will be the new Bishop of Kilmore,
the Rt Revd Ken Clarke, who was the incumbent there in the 1980s.
In Trinity College, Dublin, on Monday the preacher at the Order of
Commemoration and Thanksgiving for Trinity Monday in the College Chapel will
be the Moderator of the General Assembly, the Rt Revd Dr Trevor Morrow and
the lesson will be read by the out-going Provost, Dr Thomas Mitchell.
The AGM of Crosslinks will be held at 7.30 pm on Wednesday in the Church
of Ireland Theological College where the speaker will be the Revd Andy
Lines, General Secretary, London.
Church of Ireland Notes appear in the Irish
Times whose web site may be found at
http://www.ireland.com/ |
