Churches plan new peace initiative with EU help; RTE to broadcast Archbishops’ Christmas Message on Christmas Day; Archbishop Clarke – Irish Times interview; Bishop of Down & Dromore’s Christmas message; Chief Justice launches guide to rights for gay couples
Churches plan new peace initiative with EU help
A new peace project supported by the largest Christian denominations in Ireland is currently recruiting senior staff with the aim of publicly launching the new initiative in the springtime of 2013.
Entitled the “Irish Churches Peace Project” the programme is a partnership involving the Roman Catholic, Presbyterian and Methodist Churches, the Church of Ireland and the Irish Council of Churches. It will be funded through the EU’s PEACE III Programme which is managed by the Special EU Programmes Body. Additional funding is being provided by the Northern Ireland Executive through the Office of First Minister and Deputy First Minister (OFMDFM) and by the Department of Environment, Community and Local Government (DECLD) of the Irish Government.
Aimed at promoting good relations, reconciliation and peace work at both strategic and grassroots levels across Northern Ireland and in the border counties, the £1.3m project has placed ads seeking to appoint a director and two support staff for a temporary period up to June 2015. It is also expected that six field staff will be recruited early in 2013.
Since 2008 discussions have been taking place between the various denominations as to what the peace process in Ireland requires to ensure its continued success and what unique contribution the churches could make to that. What emerged was an inter–church project with three main aims. The first of these aims is to promote sustained and well facilitated cross–community dialogue particularly focusing on the contentious issues that need to be addressed in order to develop good relations and promote reconciliation. Secondly, to support local inter–church/cross–community groups in their development of new grass rootsinitiatives that will contribute to the lasting peace. The final aim of the programme is to facilitate a process by which the main denominations speak more frequently in the public sphere with a united voice on social and political issues, and through that to model positive cross–community cooperation and undermine the vestiges of sectarian politics.
With its programme of work agreed and funding in place the “Irish Churches Peace Project” has now moved to recruit senior staff with a view to making appointments in January 2013. The closing date for applications is Monday 7 January 2013 and more information can be found at:
www.presbyterianireland.org/opportunity
For more information on the SEUPB: www.seupb.eu
RTE to broadcast Archbishops” Christmas Message on Christmas Day
RTE ONE Television will broadcast the joint Archbishops’ Christmas Message with Cardinal Sean Brady and Archbishop Richard Clarke on Christmas Day from 12.25 to 12.35pm. The Message will also be broadcast on RTE Radio 1 from 1.05 to 1.15pm.
This year, the two Archbishops of Armagh will speak on the theme of ‘Journeys to Hope’ and the broadcast will include contributions from people involved with Cuan Mhuire in Newry, Cafe 180 on the Hill, Armagh and choirs of schoolchildren from the Armagh area, performing at the Shambles in Armagh City.
The Christmas Message will also be available to view after broadcast on the RTE Player.
Archbishop Clarke – Irish Times interview
– with Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent
The new Church of Ireland primate, Archbishop Richard Clarke, is 105th in the succession of abbots, bishops and archbishops of Armagh since St Patrick.
It is “an immense heritage”, he acknowledges. His new post was “not really how I envisaged spending the next few years”, the 63-year-old archbishop says. People, he says, “know what they’re getting”. “All I can do is give it my best shot.”
He will rely on other people to help him in the job, he says, “and I hope, with God’s grace, good will come out of it.”
Facing him is the same-sex issue that has dogged worldwide Anglicanism in recent years and made its awkward presence felt at the church’s general synod in Dublin last May.
“I may sound naive but I really do believe that if we can somehow depoliticise an awful lot of the language being used and some of the attitudes we could find a way through,” he says.
At the synod a vote reaffirming support for traditional marriage was won by a two-to-one majority. It followed a contentious debate and was inspired by the disclosure in September 2011 that Dean of Leighlin Tom Gordon had entered a civil partnership that summer.
Archbishop Clarke, perceived as liberal on such matters, supported the motion. Two of his colleagues, Bishop of Cork Paul Colton and Bishop of Cashel Michael Burrows, did not. Archbishop Clarke found what happened at the synod “disappointing”. It is in the nature of synods to be adversarial, he says. “It invited that.”
He is convinced that if people “accept that we are all trying to find God’s will through the scriptures” and “would be patient and at times forbearing”, “we could well find a way through it”.
“There are homosexual people in every place, in every community, in every Christian tradition. That is where we start, with the people rather than with the issue.”
His other concern is that preoccupation with same-sex matters could mean “we are not doing some of the other work” they should be doing. One of his passions is the end-of-life debate. “Is assisted suicide justifiable? Is human enhancement something we can justify? When does life actually begin? What about experimentation with embryos, which can actually bring good to some people?”
These are “things people are really talking about, believers or not, and I feel that if the churches can say something intelligent and compassionate, we’d be listened to”. He says that on such matters “the only place a Christian should be is not in the trenches at either end”. It is so with “many moral things”, he says: “If you are not in that middle between the trenches you are probably failing in many ways.”
He acknowledges that the “place in the middle, that no-man’s land, the grey area, is sneered at as being ‘wishy-washy’.” But he sees it as “actually the most dangerous place”.
On abortion legislation he says the church “sadly” feels intervention is “justifiable” where the life of the mother is at stake. It “regarded abortion as a tragedy”. “You’re talking about two human lives, and I would use that language.”
He would be “extraordinarily cautious”, personally, where end-of-life issues areconcerned. In 2009 his wife Linda died of cancer in a hospice.
“I think it [assisted suicide] is something that I don’t think Linda or I would ever have felt could be done, that that could ever have been right. But I cannot speak for other people.”
New dynamic
Being a Dubliner in Armagh is something to which he looks forward. He thought there was now “a very interesting dynamic at work”. “For the first time in nearly 40 years we have a northerner in Dublin [Archbishop Michael Jackson] and a southerner in Armagh.”
His priority now was “to get to know the diocese of Armagh”. “That and the Church of Ireland.”
As to the prospects of a woman bishop any time soon in the church, he says: “I’ve no doubts. We’ve two vacancies coming up.” He says “when the time comes it must be the right person for the right job”. “Tokenism would be patronising.”
Bishop of Down & Dromore’s Christmas message
Bishop Harold Miller writes – For many people, Christmas can be a very difficult time. The celebrations going on all around them only heighten their sense of sadness, loneliness or poverty. It can be as though the heavens are as brass, and God is a long distance away.
For us in Northern Ireland, all those factors have been exacerbated this year by disruption on our streets, difficulties for businesses and for some, a sense of loss of cultural identity. ‘Where is God in all of this?’ is a question many are asking.
One of my favourite pages in the Bible is a page which says absolutely nothing: the blank page between the Old Testament and the New Testament. It is a page which represents many years when it was not clear where God was or what he was doing. The truth of Christmas, which we know with hindsight, is that he was putting in place his biggest ever plan for the world: the birth of his Son, Jesus Christ.
My message for Christmas AD 2012 is quite simply this: When there is a blank page in our lives or our community, when God seems distant, never forget Christmas AD 1! God has not forgotten us. He is still at work quietly but firmly behind the scenes. That’s worth affirming and celebrating at a challenging and difficult time like this.
MEDIA REVIEW
Chief Justice launches guide to rights for gay couples
The guidelines point out rights and obligations attached to civil partnerships and protection for cohabiting couples.
http://www.thejournal.ie/chief-justice-launches-guide-to-rights-for-gay-couples-725608-Dec2012/