They are emigrating to the United States so that they can be together. Otherwise they would be condemned to "parallel lives", as the Rev Christopher Halliday put it. He and his wife, the Rev Paula, are leaving for the US tomorrow on their "last great adventure".
They are married 30 years. Their 28-year-old son, Jonathan, is a barrister in Manchester. "We should be settled and sensible," said Paula. And they are. It is not adventure that has set them off on the Pilgrim path. For the past nine years they've had to live separately.
It is canon law in the Church of Ireland that a rector must live in his or her parish. It is also a practice that parishioners in Ireland like, and are unlikely to want to change.
In the US, such geographic strictures do not apply to clergy in the Episcopalian (Anglican) Church. So it will be possible for the Hallidays to live together again while also being priests.
In 1991 Paula Halliday began training for the priesthood. She and her husband were living in Rathdrum, Co Wicklow, where Christopher had succeeded the late Stephen Hilliard as rector in 1990. Both had come from London. Paula, from Belfast, met and married Christopher, who is a Londoner with Irish connections, while both were still students.
She became a curate in Crossmolina, Co Mayo, in 1994. Over the next three years they met for about 12 hours a week. Either would travel the four-and-a-half hours cross-country on a Saturday to meet the other before travelling back the four-and-a-half hours on a Sunday, parish work allowing.
It meant they no longer met friends or colleagues as a couple and that they were so exhausted when they did meet there was little quality time together. In 1997 Paula moved to Tinahely, Co Wicklow, when she became rector of Crosspatrick and Carnew. She was 35 miles away from Rathdrum, but still living apart from her husband, in the rector's house at Tinahely. And it seemed to be their destiny to live like that as long as they served as priests.
About four years ago an American clerical couple were holidaying in Glendalough, one of the three parishes administered by Christopher. "You're ridiculous," they told the Hallidays. "Come to the Episcopal Church and you will be able to live together."
They began to do summer parish duty in the US. They liked what they saw and what it made possible for them. "They literally shop around," said Paula, of the American attitude to religion. Congregations are not geographically defined as here, with members decided by choice rather than location. The American church also has a higher level of participation.
Christopher recalled a Church Times article, based on a University of Lancaster survey, which said that 41 per cent of church members in the US attended services regularly. That compares to an average 19 to 20 per cent figure in Ireland. Both will minister to adjoining parishes in rural Maryland, old Pilgrim territory.