The Parish of Saint Catherine & Saint James with Saint Audoen
Canon Mark Gardner (Editor) Tel: 01 454 2274 Mobile 087 266 0228
Email: markgardner@eircom.net
Review Distribution: Margery Bell Tel: 01 4542067
Website: cja.dublin.anglican.org
Organist: Derek Moylan

Service times every Sunday
10.00 Eucharist, St Audoen, Cornmarket. (Parking in Francis Street is free on Sundays)
11.30 Eucharist (and Sunday School, in term time) St Catherine & St James, Donore Avenue.
(Family Service and Church Coffee, usually Second Sundays)

While works continue in St Audoen’s Park the only access to the Church will be through the OPW Visitor Centre gate on the High Street.

Holy Baptism
It was a great joy to welcome Margot Elizabeth and her relatives and friends to St Audoen’s on the morning of Christmas Eve. Her mother and father were married there a year or two ago. Her two grandmothers brought lovely Christmas decorations, greenery and bog cotton, bright red berries and variegated foliage, from the gardens and fields of south county Dublin where they live. The window ledges of the Church were richly decorated and a bright Christmas tree provided by Margaret Lawton and Churchwardens Valerie Raitt and Tom Tynan.

Holy Matrimony
On the morning of New Year’s Eve we welcomed Garry Gouldthorpe and Laura Moore to St Audoen’s where they were married. They had initially found St Audoen’s on the internet. Young people seem to like the old Church. They chose to have their photograph taken in the grey ruins of the Portlester Chapel. I thanked them for bringing new life to an ancient place.
Mark Gardner
Concern for the homeless
Dear All, With the numbers of people becoming homeless continuing to rise, I am planning to put together a database on initiatives being undertaken by parishes in Dublin & Glendalough in relation to homelessness. I am aware that numerous parishes, and individuals within parishes, support homelessness projects in many different ways from fundraising to collecting items to give to charities. The information you send will mainly be used for reference and will not be published in a way that identifies individual parishes (unless I contact you separately to discuss it). I hope to write a general piece outlining projects and initiatives which could act as a source of inspiration to others who would like to do something but don’t know where to start. I don’t need reams of information – just what is being done, fundraising carried out, collections contributed, etc. If you are involved in a specific project, a link to a website would be helpful. The problem of homelessness seems so huge and as individuals we can feel powerless to help. I hope that we can show people that many small steps can make a big difference. I look forward to hearing from you. Lynn Glanville, Diocesan Communications Officer, Dublin & Glendalough.
Hi Lynn! In this parish we have Focus Ireland (High Street) and the Night Cafe (Merchants Quay). I support Focus as an individual and the vestry does as well. We make a regular collection of clothing, knitwear, toiletries and dry foodstuffs which Valerie Halford takes to the Night Cafe. The ringers at St Audoen’s are particularly generous in giving to the Night Cafe, from one side of Cook Street to the other. I have visited the Mendicity Institute (Island Street) who are selling the things that the homeless men have been making. This year will be a significant anniversary year for them. I have more than one or two people living in this house who would otherwise be homeless. Happy New Year, Mark.

‘The Mendo’
Among the many files meticulously kept by the late the Revd Canon John Crawford was one relating to the Mendicity Institute in Island Street. I hope to hand this file over to the people now in charge of this institution as it prepares to celebrate its second centenary.
‘The Mendicity Institution was founded in 1818. It’s a name I often have to explain; the word ‘mendicity’ is the same as ‘mendicancy’ (i.e. begging) and the Mendicity Institution was originally founded for ‘the suppression of street begging in Dublin.’
‘A particularly severe winter in 1816 compounded the misery of the poor. A contemporary account paints a horrific picture: ‘The city presented a spectacle, at once afflicting and disgusting to the feelings of its inhabitants, the doors of carriages and shops, were beset by crowds of unfortunate and clamorous beggars, exhibiting misery and decrepitude in a variety of forms, frequently carrying about in their persons and garments the seeds of contagious disease; themselves the victims of idleness, their children taught to depend on begging, the only means of subsistence; every artifice was resorted to by the practiced beggar to extort alms, and refusal was frequently followed by imprecations and threats. Mendicity developed a violent character…. the benevolent were imposed upon – the modest shocked – the reflecting grieved – the timid alarmed. In short, so distressing was the whole scene, and so intolerable was the nuisance, that its suppression became a matter of necessity’. Dublin had been suffering economically by the Act of Union, the standing down of many soldiers and sailors after the Napoleonic Wars and the fragility of Irish cloth manufacturing in the face of the onslaught from the mechanised looms of Manchester.’
Within 6 months of The Mendicity Institution being founded there was a certain shift. An extract from an “eloquent” sermon given by Rev. W. A. Evanson at the Bethesda Chapel on 11 October 1818 gives some idea of the achievements of the Mendicity Institution in such a short time:
“The Mendicity Institution has banished from the city those hordes of beggars who had flocked from the remotest parts of the island, to join the depredators upon public bounty, and to dissipate with still greater rapidity of effect the moral virus of Mendicity. It has purified the highways of our Metropolis from a noisome crowd of importunate and vicious supplicants, and we can now pursue our accustomed occupations without disturbing assaults on our feelings or our purses.”