Next week the General Synod will meet from Tuesday to Thursday in the new venue of the O'Reilly Hall in University College Dublin. Although the synod has, in recent years, met in both Cork and Belfast, Dublin remains the most popular and convenient place to meet.
The difficulty in finding an entirely appropriate meeting place may occupy the minds of members of the synod on Tuesday when they consider a bill which has emerged from the work of the Synodical Structures Working Group. If accepted this bill will substantially reduce the size of the General Synod and improve its representative nature.
There will also be bills to improve clerical pensions and on the establishment of provincial mediation panels in the context of pastoral breakdown. However, the legislative programme will be dominated by liturgical reform with bills on Holy Communion, the calendar, the collects and post-communion prayers, and the canticles. There will also be resolutions to initiate legislation on initiation, marriage, burial and sentences of scripture.
As always, the reports of the Representative Church Body and the standing committee and their various boards and committees provide opportunities to discuss almost every aspect of the church's life and witness. One matter, which seems certain to command attention, is the continuing controversy over the fate of the Palace in Kilkenny.
The synod will be preceded by evensong in St Patrick's Cathedral on Monday, when the preacher will be the editor of the Church of Ireland Gazette, Canon Cecil Cooper. On Tuesday evening, the Bishop of Tuam will be the preacher at the General Synod Eucharist in St Patrick's. On Wednesday morning in the Conservatory of the O'Reilly Hall there will be a synod week breakfast, hosted by the Council for the Church Overseas and the Council for Mission in Ireland, at which the Rev Charles Irwin will speak on "Preparing for Mission in Ireland Today".
Today in Dublin there will be fetes and sales in the parishes of All Saints, Blackrock, White church and Zion while in St Andrew's Church, Lucan, a Festival of Flowers will continue until tomorrow. The choir of St Peter's Church, Belfast, will sing at Mass in the Cathedral of St Patrick and St Felim, Cavan, tonight and at the Eucharist in St Fethlimidh's Cathedral tomorrow morning, when the preacher will be the Rector of St Peter's, the Rev Charles McCollum.
Tomorrow morning in the Chapel of Trinity College Dublin, the Rev John McCann, organist and composer, will play a series of improvisations on the Missa Orbis Factor. The preacher, the Rev Dr Benjamin Quash, Dean of Peterhouse, Cambridge, will comment theologically on "improvisation". The Bishop of Cashel and Ossory, will preside at a Thanksgiving Eucharist for the reopening of Killurin Church, Co Wexford, where the preacher will be the Rev Patrick Comer ford.
In the evening, in Crinken Church, Co Dublin, the preacher will be the new Bishop of Kilmore, the Right Rev Ken Clarke, who was the incumbent there in the 1980s.
In Trinity College Dublin, on Monday the preacher at the Order of Commemoration and Thanksgiving for Trinity Monday in the college chapel will be the Moderator of the General Assembly, the Right Rev Dr Trevor Morrow, and the lesson will be read by the outgoing Provost, Dr Thomas Mitchell.
The a.g.m. of Crosslinks will be held at 7.30 p.m. on Wednesday in the Church of Ireland Theological College, where the speaker will be the Rev Andy Lines, general secretary, London.