Bishop denies rejecting Orange invite; Protests are ‘damaging’ Ardoyne talks – claim; New Bishop’s House proposed for Adare; Former Irish President was ‘close to a breakdown’; Two people seriously injured during Croagh Patrick pilgrimage; Cork rural dean
Bishop denies rejecting Orange invite
BBC News – The Catholic Church has denied that a bishop refused to meet the Protestant Orange Order to discuss the controversy over a parade passing a Belfast church.
There has been no resolution to a dispute over marches past St Patrick’s Church in Donegall Street.
The Parades Commission has placed restrictions on loyal order parades in the area.
The Orange Order asked the Bishop of Down and Connor to visit its headquarters, but he has not as yet.
Talks took place last September to try to resolve tensions in the area, the church said, ahead of an Ulster Covenant commemoration parade.
‘Entirely inaccurate’
Father Eddie McGee, a spokesman for the Catholic Church, told the BBC’s Sunday Sequence programme that the invitation was not for face-to-face talks involving Bishop Noel Treanor.
He said an unsigned, open letter was issued by the Orange Order and reported the following day in local media.
“Over the past number of weeks the portrayal and presentation of this invitation to a covenant exhibition has morphed or changed into what some people believe is that Bishop Treanor has refused or rebuffed or even deferred face to face talks with the Orange Order,” Fr Magee said.
“This is entirely inaccurate because Bishop Treanor has not received any invitation to face-to-face talks around parades. He has received no private communication from the Orange Order so there’s no invitation to defer.”
‘Mutual understanding’
However, Reverend Mervyn Gibson from the Orange Order said the invitation still stands.
“That invitation still stands and is open, whether it was declined, deferred or whatever it hasn’t taken place but the invitation is still there,” he said.
He said the Orange Order had intended that any conversations would have built “mutual understanding around many issues but particularly around parades”.
He said if it required a personal invitation to the bishop, then “that would be followed up”.
The controversy surrounding the church first arose on 12 July 2012, when a loyalist band taking part in the annual Orange parade in Belfast was filmed marching in circles outside St Patrick’s, playing a contentious song.
Since then, the Parades Commission has placed restrictions on loyalist parades passing the Catholic church.
Public disorder followed a Royal Black Preceptory march past the church on last August and there were three consecutive nights of rioting after a republican band parade in the nearby area last September.
However, a major Orange Order parade to mark the centenary of the Ulster Covenant passed St Patrick’s peacefully later that month.
Read more:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-23481751
Protests are ‘damaging’ Ardoyne talks
Continued protests by the Orange Order over the Ardoyne parade decision are damaging efforts to reach a solution to the issue one senior SDLP politician has said.
http://www.u.tv/news/Protests-are-damaging-Ardoyne-talks/c8ece1d5-f1f2-47f6-bb95-327abc2a10da
New Bishop’s House proposed for Adare
Limerick Leader – The Church of Ireland is proposing to build a new residence for the Bishop of Limerick and Killaloe in Adare.
And while the proposal is still at an early stage, the first milestone was reached last week when Limerick County Council gave notice it intended to dispose of a parcel of land it owns in Adare to the Church of Ireland. The figure agreed for the 0.658 hectare site, on the Killarney Rd, was €250,000 and disposal will be subject to planning permission to develop the site.
The Bishop’s House on the North Circular Rd in Limerick was sold a number of years ago, and the current serving Bishop, the Very Rev Trevor Williams, has been living in leased accommodation in Adare.
Trevor Stacey, property manager with the Representative Body of the Church of Ireland, confirmed that the Adare site was intended as a replacement house for the Bishop “subject to planning permission.”
“It is a suitable location for us,” he explained. “It is a good location to get to all parts of the diocese and to Dublin.”
The Church of Ireland dioceses of Limerick and Killaloe are very extensive, and stretch from South Galway and Clare to Limerick and Kerry.
“Since we sold the last house, the diocese has been waiting for a new one,” Mr Stacey said. “It is good news for the diocese and it is good from a communications point of view.”
The Church of Ireland is still awaiting written confirmation of the agreement to sell and the sale itself must go through all the legal channels before then going through the planning process.
Mr Stacey said they would probably apply for outline permission initially before finalising the design.
But he felt that coming up with final proposals would not be too difficult as the church has built a number of new Bishop’s Houses over the past few years. A new Archbishop’s House was built in Armagh and earlier this year, a new Bishop’s House was opened in Cavan to replace a 20,000 square foot “house” in Kilmore.
“It will be done fairly easily,” Mr Stacey said., “We already have the template for what we deem to be a suitable residence for a Bishop.”
“We are delighted to have gotten to this stage,” he continued, and hoped the rest of the process would go smoothly.
The Bishop of Limerick and Killaloe, Very Rev Trevor Williams, when contacted by the Limerick Leader said he was not personally involved in any decisions regarding a new bishop’s house nor indeed with any aspect of the project.
Former Irish President was ‘close to a breakdown’
News Letter – Former Irish president Mary Robinson has revealed she was on the verge of a breakdown when she took one of the top posts in the United Nations. Ms Robinson, who was Ireland’s first female president as well as the first to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace, also discussed her faith.
In a revealing and intimate interview on BBC Radio 4, she also confessed her problems with the Catholic Church over its authoritarian stance on family planning.
Ms Robinson, who quit her presidency three months before her end of term in 1997 to take up the job as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said she struggled with stress.
“I decided to get up earlier in the morning, come in, work harder, work later,” she said.
“I started taking sleeping pills and by the first Christmas in 1997 I was a wreck. I was exhausted.
“My eldest brother who was a doctor took a look at me and he told me, ‘Mary, you’ve got to watch it, you’re going into breakdown territory’.”
The 69-year-old said she ultimately decided to throw away her sleeping pills and take a break.
“I took an extra week and spent a lot of time walking by the lake and pulled myself together,” she said.
“I decided I’ve got to get on top of this. I’ve got to do this job.”
Ms Robinson became emotional during an airing of the famous Desert Island Discs.
She broke into tears as she recalled a trip to Delhi, when a crowd of children gave a rousing performance of We Shall Overcome – a song she chose as one of her desert island discs.
Ms Robinson, who was Ireland’s first female president as well as the first to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace, also discussed her faith.
“I’m not somebody who goes to mass every Sunday because I feel I have to,” she said.
“I’m deeply spiritual and I’m seeking to understand the way in which so much of the Catholic Church is so authoritarian not supporting family planning. So there’s a great deal that I’m very, very troubled by.”
She said she still believes in the “gospel of Jesus as being the highest standard that we can attain”.
Ms Robinson campaigned from the earliest days of her career for the legalisation of contraception.
She said she received a lot of hate mail when she introduced a private members’ bill on family planning when she was first elected to the Seanad in the late 1970s.
“That affected me,” she said.
“I was 25 going on 26 and I remember walking down the main street in Dublin, Grafton Street, and feeling that people were going to jump out and say ‘I hate you, you’re the devil incarnate’.”
The former head of state also chose Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien by Edith Piaf and Pavarotti’s Nessun Dorma as two other desert island discs, citing the latter as her inspiration during her race to the presidency in 1990.
She also chose a solar cooker as the luxury item she would hypothetically take to a desert island, and a book – The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing.
Two people seriously injured during Croagh Patrick pilgrimage
The Journal.ie – Twelve people taking part in the annual Reek Sunday Pilgrimage on Croagh Patrick in Co Mayo have been injured today, with two people sustaining serious injuries.
A spokesperson for Mayo Mountain rescue told TheJournal.ie that the majority of the people hurt sustained lower leg injuries.
One woman in her 50s, who was seriously injured, had lacerations to her head and was rescued from close to the summit at 7.30am. A man, also in his 50s, is thought to have had a serious cardiac arrest and was attended to by the Order of Malta at about 10.30 this morning.
Both casualties were taken by helicopter to Mayo General Hospital. Mayo Mountain Rescue will maintain a presence until about 8pm tonight to attend to any further casualties.
This year’s pilgrammage is led by Archbishop Michael Neary of Tuam, accompanied by Archbishop Charles J Brown, Apostolic Nuncio to Ireland. The bishops began their climb on sunday morning at 7am.
http://www.thejournal.ie/coragh-patrick-pilgrammage-1012370-Jul2013/
Cork rural dean
The Reverend Stella Jones, Incumbent of Kinneigh Union (Ballineen and Enniskean, Co. Cork) hs been appointed by the Bishop of Cork to be as the Rural Dean for the Rural Deanery of Mid West Cork.
Rural Deans are clergypersons appointed by the Bishop to serve as officers of the Bishop.
It is their role to supervise the care of Church property in the rural deanery and to perform other duties that may be assigned to them by the Bishop. The United Dioceses of Cork, Cloyne and Ross is sub-divided into four Rural Deanery areas: North East Cork, Cork City, Mid West Cork and West Cork.