Parish Choir produces a Christmas CD; Bishops’ Appeal Allocations; Joint Christmas Message from the Bishops of Clogher; Media review – Ireland – The year of the child; Pope’s Christmas message warns gender theory is a denial of God and the Bible; Labour TD calls Pope’s gay marriage comments “deeply insulting”; Peace initiative for Irish churches
Parish Choir produces a Christmas CD
Magherally Parish Choir, Down & Dromore, under the directorship of Lorna Palmer, has produced a CD of Christmas carols and anthems called ‘Love Shone Down’. The CD has been available at the church and over half of the copies produced have already sold.
“We made the CD to help raise money for church funds,” says rector, Revd David Palmer, “but we’re delighted that people will get pleasure out of the music as they play it at home or in the car. We’re also grateful to the talented sound engineers and graphic designer who have donated their time and expertise so that the end result is very professional.”
David’s wife, Lorna, is an Associate of the Royal College of Music and and a skilled and enthusiastic choir mistress. The choir practises each week and leads worship on Sundays.
Bishops’ Appeal Allocations
The Church of Ireland Bishops’ Appeal has recently made a number of allocations to projects in the developing world. £12,000 has been allocated to an innovative Christian Aid project in Brazil improving the working conditions of waste collectors, and the same sum has also been made available to Tearfund projects in Cambodia where agricultural training is being implemented to improve the lives of the poor along the Thai/Cambodia border. A Women’s Education Programme has been funded in Pakistan through the agency ‘Feed the Minds’ – £10,332 will allow women in rural areas to learn how to read and write so that they can vote in future elections and have a say in the governance of their country. £24,000 has been allocated for a training centre in Kenya – this CMS run project will enable the training of clergy and lay people in areas as diverse as agricultural and community development, literacy and biblical studies.
In addition there have been several of diocesan initiatives. The Bishop of Cashel & Ossory’s Diocesan Peregrinations have raised over €50,000 for a USPG project in Swaziland and a CMS project in Rwanda. The projects will directly benefit 10,000 Swazi school children and 10,000 Rwandese farmers. The Bishop of Tuam has launched the ‘Mabweni’ project in support of Masaai Girls Education in Kenya. The diocese aims to help support the building of dormitories and toilet blocks for a CMS supported Girl’s Secondary School in the Kajiado district. The Bishop of Derry and Raphoe has launched the ‘Nets Work’ appeal. Through encouraging each family in the diocese to buy a mosquito net, it is hoped to radically reduce the number of malaria illnesses and mortalities for up to 16,500 families in Nigeria. In Meath and Kildare the diocese is raising funds for farmers in Haiti. Alongside Christian Aid, they hope to help farmers strengthen milk production
Joint Christmas Message from the Bishops of Clogher 2012
For mothers and fathers Christmas has to begin early. There are a lot of preparations to be made and expectations to be met. There is a general awareness of the times being tough but children don’t find it easy to see how that could affect Santa Claus and his legendary bag of plenty. No one wants to leave children with the fear that the current economic situation could decimate the Christmas tree and wreak havoc on the Christmas table. It may be a frightening and stressful reality for mothers and fathers making plans over a cup of tea when the children are asleep and it may furrow many a brow scanning the price of items in November shop windows.
Christmas Cards along with Shop and Public Christmas Scenes are well sanitized and decorated especially if they are part of a promotional effort; the scruffy, the shoddy and the tawdry are not going to help sales. The original events that inspired the Christmas scenes did not receive the same manicure. Mary and Joseph were living out of a suitcase and it all seems to have happened somewhat unexpectedly. Arrangements and bookings had not been made. Whatever about wise men travelling from the East, shepherds do not usually dress up for work, and animals like cows and mules are not the most congenial of house guests even if they do bring the level of warmth up a notch. The manger may have been a feeding station for animals, dressed up.
Jesus Christ came into human existence in this raw setting by all accounts. He did have a mother’s love, a father’s care and God’s protection. It was hardly an accident that God came in this way into our brokenness, our flaws, and our limitations. He wanted to be with us as we are. He had come to heal our brokenness, not to disguise it or paint over it; to feed our hunger, not to deny it. It was not a piece of stage drama, the Word was truly and authentically to live among us. We were to be shown how love could survive on a cross and forgiveness overcome the pain of thorns and betrayal.
In one of his stories Dostoyevsky describes the coming of Christmas in a Siberian camp. Through barred windows the prisoners could see a small Cathedral on a hill the other side of town. When the Cathedral Service was over the priest came to a crude altar in the prison. “God has come to us,” the convicts said. “This is where he lives all year long,” said the priest, “he goes to the Cathedral only on special occasions.” Jesus wanted to be close to us so he came among the small and the straw.
For all who are troubled and maybe feeling burdened or broken by life’s daily challenges, not to speak of the extra demands at this time of year, would it be a help to exchange the manicured for the real? Leave aside the cards, the presents and the extras for a few days and instead talk and listen to the one whose birth we are planning to celebrate. He has things to say to us that could change our perspective, lessen our worries as we count our blessings and he could show us how celebrating the simpler, long-lasting and more precious gifts of life and living can make for a different but ultimately more satisfying experience of Christmas joy and togetherness. It just means getting back to reality, the reality that Christ the Son of God was born, lived among us and taught us where lasting treasures are to be found. God direct us in our search and bring us peace.
+Liam MacDaid +John McDowell
MEDIA REVIEW
Ireland – The year of the child
An Irish Times feature examines the past year’s legislation and developments affecting childhood in Ireland
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2012/1222/1224328114618.html
Pope’s Christmas message warns gender theory is a denial of God and the Bible
LifeSite News – The gender theory, which is behind the homosexual revolution and the attack on the family was highlighted in Pope Benedict’s Christmas message to Vatican prelates. “There is no denying the crisis that threatens,” the family “to its foundations – especially in the Western world,” he said.
Crediting the Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, for the research, Pope Benedict XVI said “the attack we are currently experiencing on the true structure of the family, made up of father, mother, and child, goes much deeper” than was originally believed. “While up to now we regarded a false understanding of the nature of human freedom as one cause of the crisis of the family, it is now becoming clear that the very notion of being – of what being human really means – is being called into question.”
According to “the ‘gender’ philosophy,” explained the Pope, “sex is no longer a given element of nature, that man has to accept and personally make sense of: it is a social role that we choose for ourselves, while in the past it was chosen for us by society.”
The Pope added: “The profound falsehood of this theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious.”
Labour TD calls Pope’s gay marriage comments “deeply insulting”
John Lyons claims this is second time in a week that Vatican has “targeted the international LGBT community”.
http://www.thejournal.ie/john-lyons-pope-benedict-gay-marriage-anger-727523-Dec2012/
Peace initiative for Irish churches
Belfast Newsletter – Entitled the ‘Irish Churches Peace Project’ the programme is a partnership involving the Presbyterian, Roman Catholic and Methodist Churches, the Church of Ireland and the Irish Council of Churches. It will be funded through the EU’s PEACE III …
http://www.newsletter.co.uk/community/churches/peace-initiative-for-irish-churches-1-4615279