| Notices for the Week Beginning 21st June, 2020
Some great news to share with you this week. Many of you will be aware that our Diocesan Reader Mike O’Meara has been studying and training to become an Ordained Local Minister within our Union of Parishes.
He has been told by Bishop Michael this week that he is to be ordained Deacon in November of this year in Cashel Cathedral. Please keep him in your prayers as he continues his training and prepares for this first stage of ordained ministry.
Further to what was included in last week’s Notices about the reopening of churches for public worship, a training afternoon for all diocesan clergy was held via Zoom last week.
This considered the protocols which are to be implemented before any church can reopen. We are now awaiting an update from the Diocesan Office following those meetings, at which point the Dean and Church wardens will find some way to safely meet to consider the implications for each of our churches. It will then require a meeting of the Select Vestry to ratify and implement the plan for a phased reopening of our churches in line with the protocols required by the government and the Representative Church Body of the Church of Ireland.
Also, the House of Bishops have recently issued the protocols to be followed for any Baptisms, Funerals and services of Holy Communion when churches reopen.
The next few weeks are going to be difficult as we move towards whatever will be deemed “normal†in our church worship. It may be that we have to continue as we have for a little while longer in order to get this right and keep each other safe.
As one person wrote to me earlier this week, “Churches are places of worship when people are in them, otherwise they are just buildings, valuable buildings but just buildings.
It's the people in the churches that make them special. People are irreplaceable and I think now
……….let our place of worship be the kitchen table or the back garden for another while. Then when we do return there will only be social distance gaps and not people gaps.â€
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