| Friday 15th August, 2008 You are here: Home - 15th August 2008 Index Page |
Front Page
Palestinian Christian young people explore reconciliation during Irish visit
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Three of the Palestinian young people pictured at the lectern in Down Cathedral during their recent visit to Ireland. |
Eighteen Palestinian Christian teenagers from the northern West Bank village of Zebabdeh recently visited a number of places connected with peace and reconciliation, as well as ancient Christian sites, in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, as part of a two-week visit to Ireland. The visitors joined with young people from both the Ballinteer Community School, Dublin - as part of their School Completion Programme - and the Belfast-based Northern Ireland Memorial Fund - an independent charitable fund which seeks to promote peace and reconciliation by ensuring that those who have suffered as a result of the past troubles in Northern Ireland are remembered by providing them with practical help and support.
Editorial
ANGLICAN GOVERNANCE
The Archbishop of Canterbury, in responding to a Times report last week on correspondence in which he engaged some eight years ago on the issue of homosexuality, affirmed his acceptance of Resolution 1.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference "as stating the position of the worldwide Anglican Communion on issues of sexual ethics". Dr Williams continued: "As Archbishop, I understand my responsibility to be to the declared teaching of the Church I serve, and thus to discourage any developments that might imply that the position and convictions of the worldwide Communion have changed." Full Text
Home News
Course to focus on pastoral aspect of lay hospital visiting
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The Revd Jennifer Bell |
The Northern Ireland Healthcare Chaplains’ Association (NIHCA), the Adult Christian Education section of Edgehill Theological College, Belfast, and the Diocese of Connor Training Council have joined together to organise a lay hospital visitors’ course entitled ‘Introduction to Hospital Visitation’
Craigs Quiet Day 2008
The 54th annual Craigs Quiet Day, sponsored by the Ballymena Clerical Union, will take place in Craigs parish church, Cullybackey, near Ballymena, on Tuesday 11th September. The conductor this year will be the Rt Revd David Conner, who has been Dean of Windsor since 1998 and Bishop to Her Majesty’s Forces since 2001.
Reopening of Co. Donegal national school tinged with sadness
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| Violet Wilkin (centre) plants a commemorative tree following the opening of the extension to Ballymore National School. Looking on are the Revd Stanley Johnson, Vi Thorburn and some of the school’s pupils. |
Ballymore National School, near Port-nablagh, Co. Donegal, was recently officially reopened by the Bishop of Derry and Raphoe, the Rt Revd Ken Good, following a period of extensive refurbishment. Two new classrooms were added to the school, and the original building was modified to provide facilities for children with special education needs, including a fullyequipped care room, resource classroom, office, staffroom and a new play court. As a result, it is said that Ballymore National School has now some of the finest facilities in Co. Donegal for the provision of the education of children with special needs.
Armagh music summer school celebrates fifteen years
By Tanya Fowles
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Adrian Brunton pictured outside Charles Wood’s Vicars Hill home, opposite St Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh. |
The Charles Wood Summer School this year marks its fifteenth successive year, and the programme is packed with exciting and innovative concerts, services and workshops, the overall theme of which will be music in worship. Running from 17th to 24th August, the organising committee has ‘pulled out all the stops’ in celebration of Charles Wood, the renowned musician and composer, who was born at 11 Vicars Hill, Armagh, in 1866, opposite St Patrick’s Church of Ireland Cathedral, where he received his early musical education as a chorister.
New book to be launched on West of Ireland’s early Christian sites
A new book, recently published by the Oldchapel Press, entitled Guide to Connemara’s Early Christian Sites, describes and illustrates, with the help of over 100 full colour plates, the settlements of the early Christian monks and eremetics who populated 25 of Connemara’s most beautiful yet rugged island and coastline sites, dating from the early Christian to the mediaeval period of the history of Ireland.
The ‘language of tears’ - diversity and inclusion
By Yvonne Naylor
At the start of what were to be for me four great days at the Lambeth Conference, I attended a sung Eucharist in a packed Canterbury Cathedral. In his address, the Dean talked with wonder about all the different people gathered together who would be sharing stories and making community during the rest of the week. He invited all of us to draw an outline of our hands, all of which would be cut out and made into a collage representing the efforts for reconciliation that all of us would "have had a hand in". It was a great privilege for me to have a hand in it with my puppets, even for a short time.
Tributes paid to long-standing MU branch as Belfast church closes
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The church of St James’, occupying a site at the corner of the Antrim and Cliftonville Road, Belfast, Diocese of Connor, has closed after over 130 years of worship. The church was consecrated in March 1871 and, following enlargement ten years later, had a seating capacity of 950. The church was almost completely destroyed in the Second World War air raids over Belfast in 1941; it was rebuilt and consecrated in 1954 by the then Bishop of Connor, the Rt Revd Charles King Irwin.
World News
Women and gays as bishops undermine unity, says Vatican official
The Vatican’s top official for Christian unity has warned that dialogue between Anglicans and Roman Catholics has been undermined by the consecrations of women and an openly gay cleric as bishops.
US Presiding Bishop reflects on Lambeth Conference
One of the contentious issues of the Lambeth Conference was a continued call for moratoria on blessing same-sex unions and consecrating partnered gay persons to the episcopate and on interference in other jurisdictions to minister to conservatives.
Solzhenitsyn represented ‘freedom and dignity’
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prizewinning author who survived the Soviet gulag of labour camps under the dictator, Josef Stalin, will go down in history as a "model of inner freedom and human dignity," a top official of the Russian Orthodox Church has said.
UNAIDS director salutes work of Churches on AIDS
Dr Peter Piot, the executive director of the United Nations AIDS agency, UNAIDS, since its creation in 1995, has praised the work of faith-based organizations in the campaign against HIV/AIDS, and said his own attitude to religion had changed over the past 13 years.
Popular Culture
Batman as theological text
Gareth Higgins
When Batman first appears on screen in The Dark Knight, this summer’s massive blockbuster, he is bending a rifle out of shape, thus preventing an impostor from impersonating his crime-fighting skills. While the reasons why men might want to dress up in a cape and leather tights - and run around urban desolation under cover of darkness - may deserve sustained psychological attention; whether those men are trying to cleanse the streets or make a name for themselves, it’s an amusing note to begin what turns out to be a very striking movie indeed.
Focus
Canon Law
Canon Law of Communion and Inter-Anglican Relations: the draft Anglican Covenant
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The Revd Kenyon Homfray |
In the second of a series of three articles on Canon Law, the Revd Kenyon Homfray considers the draft Anglican Covenant from a judicial point of view. Full Text
Insight I
Parish Development - A vision for a connected Church
By Paul Hoey
How well connected are you? At one time, that question would probably have been understood as an enquiry about the number of people of position and influence we might know. Today, it’s more likely to be a question about integration and priorities and passions. So, younger people in particular might speak of being "connected into" something - work, music, another person even, in the sense of giving a total investment of their lives and energies to it or them. I once overheard a young woman confess: "I’m totally connected into Big Brother".
Insight II
SAMS Ireland - a dynamic and growing mission agency
Gazette journalist, Harry Allen, learns about the work of SAMS Ireland
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SAMS’ volunteers working on a building project in South America |
The South American Mission Society (SAMS) Ireland is a dynamic and growing mission agency of the Church of Ireland, seeking to help the Church fulfil the Great Commission: to make disciples of all nations. In doing this, SAMS aims to work together with local Churches in South America, Spain and Portugal to reach out with the love of God and the Good News of Jesus Christ.
Life Lines
All’s well ...
Ron Elsdon
The paintballing incident, and the chaos it brought to central London (not to mention Lords cricket ground), transformed press coverage of the Lambeth Conference. No one was interested in sexuality; none of the reporters wanted to have a chat with Gene Robinson, seen wandering around looking lost and forlorn, and inviting sympathy.
Yours Faithfully
Where cockroaches and cooking lead
Maureen Ryan
So hot in Malta this summer that there’s little to do but gulp water; sip wine; lie languid in the Mediterranean; doze; watch geckos; wonder what the ants are so busy about; read books; and dream of all the stories I could be writing if it wasn’t so hot that all you can do is gulp water; sip wine; lie languid in the Mediterranean; and doze.
Book Reviews
ESSENTIAL CARE: AN ETHICS OF HUMAN NATURE
Author: Leonardo Boff
Translator: Alexandre
Guilherme
Publisher: SPCK
THE IDENTITY OF ANGLICANISM: ESSENTIALS OF ANGLICAN ECCLESIOLOGY
Author: Paul Avis
Publisher: T & T Clark
(Continuum), London & New York; pp.201
News Extra
Palestinian Anglican tells Church of Ireland
‘time to stop being diplomatic and be prophetic’
By Garrett Casey
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The Revd Fadi Diab are seen in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, with (from left) Dr Susan Hood and the Revd Anne Marie O’Farrell |
Preaching recently in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, the Revd Fadi Diab, an Anglican priest from Zebabdah in the West Bank, called for active engagement by Christians in Ireland in creating a "new covenant" in the Holy Land.
Primate rejects EFIC criticisms in official statement
In response to a letter from the Evangelical Fellowship of Irish Clergy (EFIC) carried in the News Letter of 2nd August, and an accompanying article in the same newspaper, the Archbishop of Armagh, the Most Revd Alan Harper, has referred to the Pastoral Letter from the House of Bishops of the Church of Ireland of September 2003.
RCB originally wanted competition for Armagh See House design
The Gazette has learned from information brought to us that, in 2003, the Representative Church Body (RCB) intended to allow a number of firms of architects to compete for a contract to carry out a feasibility study in relation to the development of the See House at Armagh’s Cathedral Close.