The Republic of Ireland has voted overwhelmingly to overturn the abortion ban by 66.4% to 33.6%.
A referendum held on Friday resulted in a landslide win for the repeal side.
Currently, abortion is only allowed when a woman’s life is at risk, but not in cases of rape, incest or fatal foetal abnormality.
The Eighth Amendment, which grants an equal right to life to the mother and unborn, will be replaced.
The declaration was made at Dublin Castle at 18:13 local time.
History was made in St Anne’s Cathedral on Sunday January 15 when the Cathedral’s first Lay Canons were installed.
Mrs Myrtle Kerr and Mr Robert Kay were presented by the Archdeacons of Belfast and Down respectively and after the reading of the Mandate by the Cathedral Registrar, the Dean of Belfast, the Very Rev John Mann, led each new Canon to their designated seat.
The appointment of Lay Canons to Church of Ireland Cathedrals only became possible in 2010. The Constitution allows St Anne’s Cathedral to appoint up to three Lay Canons from Connor Diocese and up to three from Down & Dromore Diocese. Mrs Kerr and Mr Kay are the first to be appointed.
Read it all and nejpy the picture.
Irish priests’ ever-increasing workload is threatening to turn this aging, demoralized and declining group into “sacrament-dispensing machines” who find pastoral work less and less satisfying, a co-founder of Ireland’s Association of Catholic Priests has warned.
In his address to the association’s annual general meeting in Athlone Nov. 16, Fr. Brendan Hoban highlighted how suicide is on the rise among Irish priests, a group he said was also increasingly prone to depression.
With the vast majority of Irish priests now age 70 or over, elderly diocesan priests are living increasingly isolated and lonely lives and are constantly “reminded that we no longer really matter, that at best we’re now little more than a ceremonial presence on the sidelines of life,” he said.
On the wider scene, the issue of same-sex relationships has been a dominant one within the Anglican Communion throughout my time as editor.
While maintaining a traditional view of the matter from an editorial perspective, the Gazette has been keen to give space to all points of view and, hopefully, to be a place of both communication and debate within Church circles on what is a very sensitive issue. I suppose because of the editorial independence of the Gazette, it is not always popular in certain quarters of the church but, then again, I have frequently pointed out that the vast majority of the items that we cover are hugely supportive of the church. It is just that, at times, difficult matters cannot be avoided if the Gazette is to be truly independent.
We live in very challenging times for Christians in the West. There are cultural forces that unsettle and disturb the Church, and at times threaten to engulf it.
The tragedy is that many Christians and many church leaders are swept away by many developments that are at odds with our faith. They are lost or missing in action and have become victims of cultural struggles and differences that have always been with us since the very beginnings of Christianity. Others have changed sides and actively campaign against faith positions they once held dear.
There are several developments which I find appalling and which I will loosely group around issues to do with Christianity and western law which have long themselves been linked.
1. It is absolutely chilling that Ashers Bakery in Northern Ireland have lost their case in the Court of Appeal. The original ruling was that Ashers had discriminated against a gay man because they refused to bake a cake that carried a pro-gay marriage slogan. Let’s not forget that Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that retains the previous perfectly serviceable and Christian definition of marriage. The Ashers Bakery contended that they are happy to bake cakes for anyone but would have refused to bake a cake supporting gay marriage even if a heterosexual had asked them to do so….
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Ashers Baking is owned by the McArthur family. It offered to bake cakes iced with a graphic of the customer’s own design. Gareth Lee is gay; and to mark the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, in May 2014 he ordered a cake from Ashers bearing the slogan “Support Gay Marriage” and a picture of the Sesame Street puppets Bert and Ernie. Ashers initially accepted his order but Mrs Karen McArthur subsequently telephoned him to say that his order could not be fulfilled because Ashers was a Christian business and that, with hindsight, she should not have taken the order in the first place. She apologised and refunded his money.
Before Belfast County Court, in Lee v Ashers Baking Co Ltd & Anor [2015] NICty 2 Mr Lee had claimed that he had been discriminated against contrary to the provisions of the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2006 and/or the Fair Employment and Treatment (Northern Ireland) Order 1998. District Judge Brownlie found for Mr Lee, concluding that Ashers Baking was liable under the 2006 Regulations for the unlawful acts of its two directors, Mr and Mrs McArthur, and that they, in turn, were liable under Regulation 24 for aiding Ashers Baking to act unlawfully. As a result of their actions, the company had discriminated unlawfully against Mr Lee. They appealed and the matter came before the Court of Appeal in Belfast by way of case stated.
Ashers managing director Daniel McArthur said he and his family were “extremely disappointed” with the ruling .
“If equality law means people can be punished for politely refusing to support other people’s causes then equality law needs to change. This ruling undermines democratic freedom, it undermines religious freedom, and it undermines free speech,” he said.
Gay rights activist Peter Tatchell said the “verdict is a defeat for freedom of expression” and could set a “dangerous, authoritarian precedent”.
“Although I strongly disagree with Ashers’ opposition to marriage equality, in a free society neither they nor anyone else should be compelled to facilitate a political idea that they oppose,” he said.
Read it all from the Irish Times.
The bishop noted some of the changes in society, but more particularly, in ministry and leadership, which had occurred since his consecration in 1997.
He compared figures from 1997”“2016 and encouraged Synod that the diocese was well positioned for the future with 300 people commissioned and licensed for the work of ministry on a diocesan level.
There continued to be opportunities for curates and a desire in the diocese to invest in fresh new ministries. This year the number of presbyters ordained was the second largest in 20 years and six individuals were likely to begin the Foundation year at CITI ”“ three in their twenties, two in their thirties, and one in their forties.
On the fifth mark of mission I was very pleased to hear Archbishop say this,
“Care of the creation and our responsibility for it was something that became very real to me in Lusaka, where I heard of formerly inhabited islands in the dioceses of the southern Pacific that have disappeared beneath the ocean because of global warming.”
He encourages parishioners to act in simple ways for future and present generations.
But how does the Church of Ireland itself measure up to his call for an audit? How should it act in regards to climate justice and global warming? The Bishops’ Appeal does and excellent job but it is where the church’s money is invested that raises questions.
In The Irish Times, expatriates described how the liberal abortion laws of their adopted homes made Ireland appear regressive in comparison, motivating them to hold their own demonstrations calling for repeal.
One woman, a television producer based in Vancouver, described how living in such a “progressive and liberal society as Canada has made it apparent to me how far Ireland has to go in terms of women’s rights and politics in general”.What was left unsaid ”“ as has become routine in these discussions ”“ is just how extreme the abortion laws are in some of the supposedly more civilised countries we are being asked to look up to.
In Canada, there are no legal restrictions on abortion whatsoever, allowing terminations up until birth for any reason that doctors are comfortable with.
Contrary to its liberal image, the country is apparently uninterested in transparency when it comes to this legal regime, refusing to collect statistics on the number of late-term abortions….
From here:
In response to the news that an agreement has been reached in North Belfast in relation to contested parades, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, joined with the Archbishop of Armagh, Dr Richard Clarke, to express their support for this significant initiative:
“We have been aware that various people and groups have been working hard to reach an agreement which would bring to an end the parading stand-off in North Belfast, a part of the city which has borne economic hardship and carries a heavy legacy from the Troubles. The news of this agreement is to be warmly welcomed and we commend all who have taken risks and found a way to serve the common good in the journey towards a peaceful and reconciled future. Our prayers and continued support are with those who now carry responsibility for making it work.”
Catholic priest Fr Edward O’Donnell has been installed as an ecumenical canon at St Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast.
He is one of three ecumenical canons appointed at the cathedral.
In his role at St Anne’s he can preach, lead prayers and read scripture. He can also assist at the cathedral’s traditional Black Santa Christmas collection for charity.
It is the first time in St Anne’s history that a Catholic priest has been appointed to such a role.
Fr [Edward] O’Donnell will join Methodist Minister the Rev Ruth E Patterson, and Presbyterian Minister, the Rev Dr Ruth Patterson, to complete the Cathedral’s complement of three Ecumenical Canons.
Fr O’Donnell said he was surprised to learn from the Dean of Belfast, the Very Rev John Mann, that the Cathedral Chapter had elected him as an Ecumenical Canon, adding that he was ”˜very pleased and happy to accept.’
“While this is a personal privilege for me, the honour is shared with all those who work quietly but persistently to improve and strengthen inter”“church relationships,” Fr O’Donnell said.
“I recognise that for St Anne’s Cathedral community, and for the Catholic community of Belfast, that this is a significant step, perhaps even historic, but more so, I recognise the generosity of the Dean and Chapter in inviting me, as a representative of the Roman Catholic Church, to be an Ecumenical Canon.
St Anne’s Cathedral has appointed a Roman Catholic priest as one of its canons for the first time.
Father Edward O’Donnell, parish priest of St Brigid’s in south Belfast, is now one of three “ecumenical canons” at the Church of Ireland cathedral.
The goal is to unwind Britain’s 43-year membership of the bloc, disentangle and sever the legacy of shared sovereignty, and then reshape the biggest single market on earth.
Three fundamental issues arise.
On substance, what political and commercial arrangements will Brexit Britain demand and will the EU accept them?
In execution, will the exit deal ”” the divorce and breaking of old obligations ”” be struck at the same time as a trade agreement covering post-Brexit trade? And if no, is a transition possible to ensure a soft landing?
Great cover pic.twitter.com/YC3s9BAg3q
— Alex White (@AlexWhite1812) June 24, 2016
First, we might well offer a prayer of thanksgiving that we live in a democratic society, where our vote really counts, and where we can freely and safely exercise it. A vote is a valuable commodity!
Second, we might well offer a prayer for wisdom, as we make our decision. This is the kind of decision usually delegated to Parliament alone. The referendum gives us a sense of the vital and life”“changing decisions with which we entrust our politicians, and on which we often comment from the safe distance of not having to make them ourselves. Now it is our turn.
Third, we might intercede with God that his sovereignty would reign above all other sovereignties in this knife”“edge of a vote.
Patrick was 16 years old in about the year 405, when he was captured in a raid and became a slave in what was still radically pagan Ireland. Far from home, he clung to the religion he had ignored as a teenager. Even though his grandfather had been a priest, and his father a town councilor, Patrick “knew not the true God.” But forced to tend his master’s sheep in Ireland, he spent his six years of bondage mainly in prayer. He escaped at the suggestion of a dream and returned home.
Patrick was in his mid-40s when he returned to Ireland.
Read it all and for the ambitious there is a lot more there.
Almighty God, who in thy providence didst choose thy servant Patrick to be the apostle of the Irish people, to bring those who were wandering in darkness and error to the true light and knowledge of thee: Grant us so to walk in that light, that we may come at last to the light of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and ever.
Happy Saint Patrick's day! If you really want to honour our national Saint today, go to Mass! pic.twitter.com/bTpjBKsj8S
— Prayer For Priests (@PrayerForPriest) March 17, 2016
“The welcome of reconciliation confronts us with our own differences and our own failures, confronts the Other with the gap between us, and at the same time offers us a way of beginning to narrow that gap and of going forward together,” he said.
“This great story of the woman at the well can be interpreted in so many ways and at so many levels. Yet at its heart is the process of change, of the change that comes from a meeting with Jesus Christ.
“There is no substitute for that ”“ and all of us, including Corrymeela, must hold on to that sense that the welcome of reconciliation is not surrendering what we are, but rather encountering definitive truth together in the person of Jesus so that we are changed and enabled to love and see the deep differences which mean that past tensions, conflicts and even murderous outrages can find true reconciliation in the arms and presence of God.”
The importance of communion within this inter”“relationship of communication and community is that it is itself a relationship whose quality transcends both division and negativity. This is the greatest gift of the Spirit throughout history and the hardest to accept in our individualized and competitive culture where celebrity is given an almost ridiculous prominence.
Increasingly, each and every one of us wants the ground in front of us for ourselves. Ever more reluctantly, we make space for others with whom we agree and disagree; it hardly seems to matter; they are where we have decided that we want privacy, freedom, headspace, whatever we like to call it. More and more today people to whom I talk find that others are in their way. Communion not only transcends division and negativity and prejudice; it also binds us into a relationship with one another, with the whole of the Trinity and therefore with the whole of creation.
Communion pulls it all together. It is more than a federation and it is more than a club. It has to do with being part of something and someone larger than ourselves, not controlling this: belonging to God the Father and through God to our neighbour. It has to do with remembering and with forgetting, in a spirit of reconciliation of divisive differences, and with having the wisdom to know the difference between differences that are destructive and differences that are creative: belonging to God the Son and through God to our enemy.
A video of a “moving and beautiful” ceremony of a deaf couple who wed in Limerick city last weekend is touching the hearts of thousands of people online.
The wedding of Tara Long, 26, from Kileely in Limerick, and Timmy Doona, from Killorglin in Kerry, who are both deaf, left the congregation in tears of joy in St John’s Cathedral in Limerick on Saturday last.
A video of part of the ceremony ”“ where the bride surprised her husband-to-be with a special song performed in sign language ”“ has been posted online by Tara’s brother and has now counted more than 6,000 views to date on YouTube.
Read it all and follow the link to the video.
As Christians we have a responsibility, not only to give generously to address immediate social need, but to work with political leaders and the wider community to change the structures that are trapping people in cycles of poverty.
”˜Local communities are ready to be active partners in tackling the root causes of social exclusion and are best placed to inform and shape this work. In community and faith”“based organisations, volunteers are working quietly and effectively to provide a safety net for the most vulnerable and marginalised, including the basic necessities of food, shelter and much”“needed emotional and psychological support. As demands continue to rise, charities are stretched beyond capacity and facing difficult decisions about the future.
”˜The unacceptable level of child poverty, affecting over 100,000 children, roughly 6% of Northern Ireland’s population, constitutes a real crisis. Supports that have proved to be effective in recent years in addressing inequality and closing the gap in crucial areas such as educational disadvantage are now being withdrawn through lack of funding. The failure to invest adequately in the future leaders of our society is a cause of deep frustration among young people, leaving many feeling disconnected from political processes.
The Rector of Faughanvale Parish has condemned those responsible for a break-in at the home of an elderly parishioner, which took place while she was attending a religious service in her local church.
The incident happened on Friday evening, while the victim was in St Canice’s Church in Eglinton, attending the institution of the parish’s new Rector, Rev Paul Hoey. Thieves broke into the woman’s home in the village and ransacked every room.
The break-in was discovered when the woman returned home after the service. She was extremely shaken by the incident and was comforted by parishioners.
Christian preacher Pastor James McConnell has said he wants to be “exonerated, liberated and set free” after he pleaded not guilty at a Belfast court in connection with charges he faces over a sermon where he branded Islam as “satanic”.
At Laganside court on Thursday, the north Belfast preacher’s solicitor Joe Rice said his client would be pleading not guilty to the case prosecutors have taken under the 2003 Communications Act.
Supporters, including DUP MP Sammy Wilson, gathered outside the court holding placards to protest what they described as the pastor’s right to free speech.
People of Irish Catholic ancestry will be able to trace their origins back almost 300 years online from Wednesday.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Heather Humphreys will officially launch online the entire collection of Catholic parish register microfilms held by the National Library of Ireland (NLI).
Involved are more than 370,000 digital images of the microfilm reels on which the parish registers are recorded and which will be accessible free of charge.
A meeting of church leaders from across Ireland has been challenged to remain biblically faithful but to ”˜dare to do new things’ in the face of a ”˜new spiritual darkness’ in the west.
The General Secretary of the Global Anglican Future Conference, Dr Peter Jensen, who addressed the event at Belfast’s Willowfield Church, told the story of GAFCON’s beginnings in the landmark conference of Bishops, clergy and lay leaders in Jerusalem in 2008, through to the Nairobi meeting in 2013 and the movement’s unifying work today across the Anglican world.
“Out of the Conference emerged an historic and noble document, the Jerusalem Statement and Declaration. It made clear that we would not reject the world to live like hermits. It made clear that we wished still to win the world. But it also made clear that the way to do that was not to abandon historic, biblical Christianity but to be true to it and flexible in the ways of promoting it.” Dr Jensen said.
“Christianity is a missionary religion and those who have embraced the secular culture have done so in the belief that thus they can ”˜make a difference’, Christianise the social order and bring people back to church. On such projects they will spend money and buy influence. Ironically, much of their time and effort is devoted to persuading their fellow believers to become like them.”
I ask now that grace be extended mutually between those who disagree on this issue. It is clear that prejudice, largely born out of ignorance and fear, exists against members of the LGBT community, but this does not mean that those who voted No in the referendum want to endorse inequality, restrict freedom or maintain intolerance. I strongly urge Methodist families, small groups and larger fellowships to be safe places where LGBT people feel accepted and loved, able to share their stories freely and be involved in the life of the church.
At the same time the referendum result is not compatible with what the Methodist Church in Ireland recognises as the basis of Christian marriage. Our understanding is that marriage is between a man and a woman and so in the context of weddings within Methodist churches our practice remains that no minister has the authority to conduct the marriage of same-sex partners.
As the government of the Republic of Ireland seeks to frame legislation in response to the result of the referendum I call on it to ensure that church and other faith bodies will not be compelled by law to act contrary to their definition of marriage and I expect the government to engage with the Methodist Church and other churches and faith communities to this end.
Professor Louise richardson looks set to become Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University ”“ the first woman ever to hold the crucial position.
A political scientist originally from Tramore, Co Waterford, Richardson was today nominated to the position, which involves overseeing the nearly 1000-year-old institution.
The 56-year-old academic is currently Principal and Vice Chancellor at St Andrew’s University in Fife.
Where do Irish Christians go from here? Ireland is spiritually and morally bankrupt, at war with itself, and Hell-bent, detesting the idea of Christianity – at least the version of it that has been presented to it by the Roman Catholic church. But in one sense, nothing has changed. We know already from the Scriptures that Jesus said: ”˜wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. (Matthew 7:13-14). This is and will always remain true no matter what decisions nations and individuals take.
So, where do we go from here? Well, like the Apostle Paul, our ambition in Ireland is simply to preach the Gospel where Christ is not known (Romans 15:20). In Ireland, the vast majority ”˜know’ Christ as only a swear word, or as a distant, cold stone statue figure at best. But our ambition, as Irish Christians, as Evangelicals, is to bring the Gospel afresh to this generation of Irish to know Him as their loving Lord and Saviour. To preach the Gospel, was ”˜always’ Paul’s ambition in life, and this ambition should grip every Evangelical and every Evangelical church in Ireland.