ACP leadership to meet diocesan reps
A meeting between the the ACP Leadership and representatives of each diocese will take place on Tuesday, February 25th at 2.30pm in the Hodson Bay Hotel. Two priests have been invited from each diocese. If there is anyone else who would really like to attend, please feel free to come.
The Leadership is proposing the following agenda for the meeting:
1. … to explore how we might develop better means of communication between the Diocesan member in the parishes and the ACP Leadership.
2. …to give the Doicesan Reps an opportunity to report to the Leadership on the various attitudes of the Diocesan priests to the ACP and to explore the possibility of addressing some of the issues that may arise.
3. … to see if there are any issues that Diocesan Priests feel are not being addressed by the ACP Leadership
4. … to inform the Diocesan Reps of what issues the Leadership is currently working on.
5. … and of course to give time for any other issues that people wish to bring up.
A welcome Spring Initiative, surely. Let’s hope all 26 dioceses will be represented. A meeting of 50 or 60 genuine parish priests from all four provinces should be just right to thresh out those and other issues in a relaxed but businesslike way.
As for “anyone else who would really like to attend”, have the courage for once to tell us members of the Laity (I just love that word!) to stay at home for a change and say our prayers for the rest of you.
Talking of threshing, I’m a divil for real porridge. I go down to the corner shop here in North London and pick up a tin of McCann’s steel-cut oats from Meath & Kildare or a package of Flahavan’s from Waterford – none of your Scotts’ or Quaker rubbish. I’d be leppin mad if I opened it in the morning only to find it full of Kellogg’s Rice Krispies. It’s what it says on the tin: “An Association for Catholic Priests – steel-cut, naturally”.
Which is why I’m full of admiration for my friends in the Irish Confraternity of Catholic Clergy: full membership for diocesan parish priests and deacons; associate membership for those in religious and secular institutes, personal prelatures etc. End of.
Now if the Hodson Bay would just ban Kellogg’s Rice Krispies too, and not leave a chap standing at their Octagon breakfast bar for twenty minutes waiting for a minimalist bowl of mediocre ‘rolled oats’ porridge . . . .!
It has been my experience that “transparency” is not a strong point with the Church anywhere and at any time.