Outreach into community is a gift to families in need; Ballymacash on the air; Records Of St Audoen”s Tell a Tale Of Early Dublin; Ex-Impartial journalist wins IFTA award for clerical abuse documentary; Religious orders refuse to budge on child-abuse payout; Catholic-bashers have embellished the truth about abuse in Catholic institutions; Full-time carers under financial strain; NI’s domestic abuse rates rise; Children as young as 11 ‘sexting’ on social media
Outreach into community is a gift to families in need
Parishioners from All Saints’ Parish, Eglantine, put the Connor Diocesan vision for outreach into community into action over the Christmas period.
On the suggestion of one of the parish Sunday School teachers, it was decided last November to begin a collection of toys.
The rector, the Rev Tim Close, said: “When we as a team discussed the proposal, we felt that this was one thing we could do to fulfil our part of the Connor vision for outreach into our local community.
“We felt Christmas 2012 could be a very difficult time for many families with the worsening economic climate. We also felt it was important for our young people to be involved and to see each week the number of toys grow at the back of the church and realise that they, and we, should not take for granted all that we have.”
Mr Close said that everyone in the parish and Sunday School supported the initiative 100 per cent, and a local branch of the Rotary Club also collected toys at its Christmas meeting in support of All Saints’. “This help was much appreciated,” he added.
The toys were collected from the Church by the Salvation Army on December 18 and distributed by them via their established networks to families in need.
“In all more than 200 toys and books were donated, which hopefully helped to make a happier Christmas for some children who may otherwise have had very little,”
Ballymacash on the air
A service in St Mark’s, Ballymacash, will be broadcast live on BBC Radio Ulster from 10.15am on Sunday February 24.
The service will be introduced by the rector of St Mark’s, the Rev Canon George Irwin, who will also preach the sermon.
The Curate, the Rev Ken Gamble, will conduct the service with the assistance of Mr Mervyn Patton, Mrs Gillian Larmour and Mrs Valerie MacKay.
During Holy Week, on Tuesday March 26 at 8.00 pm, St Mark’s will host ‘Seize the Day,’ an annual Discussion Forum with a Chairman and panel of speakers drawn from politics, education and social care to discuss leading questions.
Holy Week Services in St Mark’s take place as follows:
Monday March 25 to Maundy Thursday March 28 – Holy Communion at 7.30am. Breakfast will follow Holy Communion on Maundy Thursday.
Monday March 25 to Good Friday March 29 – Service and address at 7.30 pm.
Looking ahead to Sunday April 25 and St Mark’s will hold a Patronal Festival with a focus on the forthcoming Christian Stewardship Renewal Programme. The service begins at 11am and refreshments will follow.
Records Of St Audoen”s Tell a Tale Of Early Dublin
A new book entitled The Vestry Records of the Parish of St Audoen, Dublin, 1636–1702 was launched on Monday 11 February in St Audoen’s Church, Cornmarket, Dublin 2.
Edited by Dr Maighréad Ní Mhurchadha, the volume is a partial reconstruction of the vestry records based largely on printed extracts from the originals which were published in the Irish Builder and previously unpublished transcripts in Marsh’s Library made by the Revd Christopher McCready. While the parish registers from the late 17th century have survived, the vestry minute books have not. They may have been destroyed in the Four Courts in 1992. Therefore the new book provides valuable insights into the life of the parish and the city of Dublin in the 17th century.
Following a welcome by Canon Mark Gardner, Professor Raymond Gillespie of the History Department of NUI Maynooth, launched the book. He said the book was important because the material within cast a light on what was a central moment in the emergence of the parish system. He observed that the RCB Library had been publishing the records of the parishes and all the pre–1660 records were now in place. “So now we are uniquely placed to understand the workings of the parishes in the city and this parish in particular,” he stated. The professor said St Audoen’s was a unique parish as it was attached to the Roman Catholic Guild of St Anne. He added that the church lies at the centre of the early modern city. “They are not simply the records of a church, they are not simply the records of a denomination, but they are the records of the life of a city,” he stated.
Dr Ní Mhurchadha recalled the late Canon Crawford who had been a great help in piecing together the vestry records. She thanked Professor Gillespie for suggesting the project and Dr Raymond Refaussé of the RCB Library for agreeing to it. She also paid tribute to the staff of Marsh’s Library, Gilbert Library and the National Library for their help and everyone else who assisted. “It is wonderful to think that at long last we know a bit more about this beautiful church – the oldest parish church in Dublin,” she said.
Dr Refaussé said he was grateful to Dr Ní Mhurchadha for taking the project on and praised her dedication and determination to see it through to the end. He also thanked Four Courts Press for their involvement, Michael Webb chairperson of the RCB Library, and Canon Gardner and the parish for their support of the project. He thanked the Office of Public Works for facilitating the launch. He said they were indebted to Professor Gillespie for his continued support of the RCB Library.
The hardback book costs €55 and is available now. For additional details see: http://www.fourcourtspress.ie/product.php?intProductID=1119
MEDIA REVIEW
Ex-Impartial journalist wins IFTA award for clerical abuse documentary
Enniskillen published Impartial Reporter basks in the sun – Fermanagh-born journalist Trevor Birney has picked up a major award for his role in a defining new film which details the role that Pope Benedict played in investigating the sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church while he was a cardinal.
Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, by Oscar winning filmmaker Alex Gibney, examines clerical sex abuse in the U.S, which led to a case that spanned three decades and resulted in a lawsuit against the Pontiff. The film follows four deaf men who set out to expose the priest who abused them from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, through Ireland’s churches, and all the way to the Vatican.
Co-produced by Mr Birney and his colleagues at Below the Radar in Belfast, the film was awarded The George Morrison Feature Documentary Award at the prestigious Irish Film and Television Awards in Dublin at the weekend. More at :
http://www.impartialreporter.com/news/roundup/articles/2013/02/14/399906-eximpartial-journalist-wins-ifta-award-for-clerical-abuse-documentary/
Religious orders refuse to budge on child-abuse payout
Independent – Negotiations between the State and religious orders on the multi-million euro compensation owed for institutional child abuse are at a stalemate.
Education Minister Ruairi Quinn is now preparing to bring the matter to Cabinet for a decision on the next step.
It will then be up to the Government to decide whether to continue to pursue the religious orders for a full and final settlement, and if so, how it should be done.
The Government wants the 18 religious congregations involved to pay a combined €735m – half the estimated €1.47bn final bill for compensating victims.
But, to date, the congregations have offered €480m, in a combination of cash and property. More at –
Catholic-bashers have embellished the truth about abuse in Catholic institutions. It’s time to put the record straight
By Brendan O’Neill, Telegraph – The publication last week of the Irish government’s McAleese Report on the Magdalene laundries has proved kind of awkward for Catholic-bashers.
For if McAleese’s thorough, 1,000-page study is to be believed, then it would appear that those laundries were not as evil and foul as they had been depicted over the past decade. Specifically the image of the laundries promoted by the popular, much-lauded film The Magdalene Sisters – which showed them as places where women were stripped, slapped, sexually abused and more – has been called into question by McAleese. This has led even The Irish Times, which never turns down an opportunity to wring its hands over Catholic wickedness, to say: “There is no escaping the fact that the [McAleese] report jars with popular perceptions.”
In the Irish mind, and in the minds of everyone else who has seen or read one of the many films, plays and books about the Magdalene laundries, these were horrific institutions brimming with violence and overseen by sadistic, pervy nuns. Yet the McAleese Report found not a single incident of sexual abuse by a nun in a Magdalene laundry. Not one. Also, the vast majority of its interviewees said they were never physically punished in the laundries. As one woman said, “It has shocked me to read in papers that we were beat and our heads shaved and that we were badly treated by the nuns… I was not touched by any nun and I never saw anyone touched.” The small number of cases of corporal punishment reported to McAleese consisted of the kind of thing that happened in many normal schools in the 1960s, 70s and 80s: being caned on the legs or rapped on the knuckles. The authors of the McAleese Report, having like the rest of us imbibed the popular image of the Magdalene laundries as nun-run concentration camps, seem to have been taken aback by “the number of women who spoke positively about the nuns”. More at:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brendanoneill2/100202781/catholic-bashers-have-embellished-the-truth-about-abuse-in-catholic-institutions-its-time-to-put-the-record-straight/
Full-time carers under financial strain
UTV – Full-time carers in Northern Ireland say the rising cost of living and lack of government support are putting them under severe financial strain. More at:
http://www.u.tv/news/Full-time-carers-under-financial-strain/cfdb4576-f7a0-4d57-a966-60fe175eb27d
NI’s domestic abuse rates rise
UTV – A woman who suffered 22 years of violence at her husband’s hands has urged other victims of domestic abuse to get out of the relationship before it kills them. More at:http://www.u.tv/news/NIs-domestic-abuse-rates-rise/99a8b7c9-00ac-4f0a-a256-25a6abc1e1bb
Children as young as 11 ‘sexting’ on social media
Newsletter – Boys as young as 11 and 12 are sending sexually explicit messages to girls via social media, a Tory MP has warned.
Claire Perry, MP for Devizes, said “sexting”, which included young boys sending images of their genitalia to girls, was increasingly commonplace in schools.
The problem cuts across the social divide, she said during a debate in the Commons about the need to end violence against women, telling MPs she had heard of a serious case of sexual abuse at a leading independent school. More at:
http://www.newsletter.co.uk/children-as-young-as-11-sexting-on-social-media-1-4788754