ACP events for Autumn 2013 announced
This is an update for ACP members on events planned for the autumn.
1. September 25th: An open meeting for priests from the Northern Dioceses. It will be held in Ballygawley, and attended by members of the Leadership Team. We will be glad of assistance from our members in the Northern Dioceses to spread the word about this meeting.
2. October 12th: A meeting organised by the Western branch of the ACI. It will take place in Tuam. The main speakers will be Pat Donnellan and Monica Morley. It will be open to all.
3. October 29th: AGM of the ACP. This will be held in Athlone. It will be a particularly important meeting, confined to clergy. It will mark three years of the existence of the Association. We will need to look to the future, and see where we need to go from here. The question of leadership will also feature prominently at this meeting, since three of the current leaders will already have served three years, and we feel that change would be important at this stage.
4. November 15th: A joint gathering, at a Dublin venue, organised by the ACP and the ACI. The main speaker at this event, which will be on a Friday evening, will be Robert Mickens, Vatican correspondent of the Tablet. This, of course, will be open to all.
Further notice of these events will be given closer to the time, but we suggest that you put them in your diary at this point. And in the meantime, we hope that you are able to enjoy the warm summer.
Sincerely,
ACP Leadership Team
“Te Deum laudamus, te Dominum confitemur . . .”
If Pope Innocent XI thought a Te Deum in St Peter’s appropriate in July 1690, and if the Hapsburg Leopold VI saw fit to order Vienna’s Bishop Ernst von Trautson zu Falkenstein to intone a second one from the high altar of Stephansdom, all because the Prince of Orange had crossed Boyne water going south for a properly Protestant Te Deum in the Lady Chapel of St Patrick’s Cathedral, may we take it that Seán Cardinal von Brádaigh and Coadjutor Eamon von Derry zu Tullysaran are already planning to sing their Canticum Novum in Armagh Cathedral to praise and thank the Almighty for the successful breaching of the border by the ACP Vanguard on 25th September next?
We know that the Northern Bishops have long been praying for the advance of this Soiscéalachas Nua from the West, South, Athlone and Regency areas. They will be surprised that even now the ACP Van is reluctant to push forward into the Armagh or Ulster Heartlands. Following their Clogher Spring Offensive which seems to have been little more than a scouting or reconnaissance operation around Clones, the ACP General Staff have now settled for an Autumn mini-bridgehead – no more than a toe-hold really – between Ballygawley and the Border, basically little more than the parish of Errigal Ciarán, still safely within the Barony of Clogher. It is, however, solid Mickey Harte country and I’m sure the local Parish Priest, my old classmate Mick Seery, will welcome the strangers. But can his fellow priests from Dundalk and Drumshanbo to Donegal, Derry and Donaghadee be persuaded that Ballygawley should be their Mecca on the last Wednesday of September?
Maybe Seán and Eamon can put their Tedeums and thuribles back on the back burner for another wee while.
Thank you for the calendar of events….You never know, maybe, I’ll be able to attend a meeting of the ACI…I shall be on Tattyreagh Glebe sometime in the afternoon on Saturday, July 20th….