The Parish of Saint Catherine & Saint James with Saint Audoen, Dublin
Canon Mark Gardner (Editor) Tel: 01 454 2274 Mobile 087 266 0228
The Revd Martha Waller (Curate-Assistant) Tel: 01 868 1655
Email: markgardner300@gmail.com
Review Distribution: Doris Brooks Tel: 01 453 0887
Website: cja.dublin.anglican.org
Service times every Sunday
10.00 Eucharist, St Audoen, Cornmarket. (Parking in Francis Street is free on Sundays).
The Church and Visitor Centre are kept open to the public free of charge by the Office of Public Works until about 17.30 daily.
11.30 Eucharist, St Catherine & St James, Donore Avenue. (Service of the Word, Second and Fourth Sundays)
Holy Baptism
Daniel Kieran and Alannah Catherine twin son and daughter of Patricia and Ken Garrett were baptised in St Catherine & St James’ Church on Saturday 23 August 2014. Emily Evelyn Porter, the daughter of Liza (neé Jones) and Seamus Porter was baptised in St Catherine & St James’ Church on Sunday 7 September 2014. Emily’s godparents are also her grandparents, Robert and Adelaide Porter and Michael and Terry Jones. Her Mum, Liza did a reading at the service and her brother, Benjamin assisted with the candle and poured the water into the font. We wish Daniel, Alannah and Emily every blessing on their journeys of faith.
Martha Waller
Diary Dates
Sunday morning 19 October, 11.30 Harvest Thanksgiving, St Catherine & St James’ Church.
Sunday 26 October, Holy Baptism. Saturday 1 November, Blessing of a Civil Marriage.
New Neighbours
There has been a change of personnel at both of our neighbouring Churches. Fr Fergal McDonagh, curate of Ringsend Parish, has been appointed to Dolphin’s Barn, where he will live, moving away from the house on St Anthony’s Road where the previous Administrator was assaulted and injured. Bishop Fiachra O’Ceallaigh is also moving away from there, to retirement in the Franciscan house at Gormanston. Fr Cormac McNamara has joined the Parish team at Donore Avenue, where he has already had his Anglican clerical neighbours to lunch.
The ancient Parish of St Catherine
On Wednesday 8 October, the quarterly meeting of the Trustees of the ancient Parish of St Catherine, chaired by the Archbishop, will be held in the Parish Room. Over a hundred years ago, the Trustees built a new Rectory for the Parish on the corner of Donore Avenue, next to the red-brick Chapel of Ease which had also just been built, later called St Victor’s, now the Parish Church. The Rectory joins the small number of historic Dublin houses which have never been on the market and are still used for the purpose for which they were built, like the Provost’s House in Grafton St and St Patrick’s Cathedral Deanery. The Trustees continue to use their funds and income from properties to support the life of the modern Parish with its new name, the Parish of St Catherine & St James with St Audoen.
Player’s Square and St Catherine’s National School
The School staff are coping magnificently with a greatly increased number of pupils but without the planned prefabs, which await installation. Searching for century-old documents relating to the ownership of the School building has been one cause for the delay. It’s remarkably difficult to prove that you own what has been in your undisputed possession for a century. It seems to me likely that the School was built by the Trustees of the Ancient Parish (at a time when the original School still stood in Thomas Court) as part of the development of Donore Avenue and St Catherine’s Avenue.
A stone memorial brought to the Church of St Catherine & St James from St Catherine’s Thomas St reads, ‘To the glory of God and in affectionate remembrance of Mary Ann Mills born 26th March 1843 died 26th October 1925 whose long life was spent as child, pupil, teacher, and secretary of St Catherine’s School Board in the Parochial Schools, Thomas Court, where her father Alexander Mills was Schoolmaster from 1840 to 1876. This tablet was erected by the parishioners of St Catherine’s Parish, Dublin. “The memory of the just is blessed” Proverbs X.7.’ So father and daughter contributed to the life of the School over a period of more than eighty years.
Lisbon
I had never visited Portugal before, and gained a very good impression of life there while enjoying ten days in Lisbon and its surroundings. Steep hills, cobble stones, old houses, rattling trams and lots of little shops occupy one third of the old city. Many historic Churches and verdant parks and gardens offer shade and tranquillity. The central part was rebuilt in straight lines and boulevards after the earthquake of 1755. The devastation caused by falling buildings, the fire that followed, and the tidal waves that swept over the shore where so many had fled to escape the flames, caused the deaths of thousands of people and was so widely reported that the philosophers of the time disputed the very existence of providence.
Centenary plus ten
I have happened upon a hundred and ten year old Irish Hymnal with Tunes, one of many books I have inherited from my Father. I have been puzzled by the seven Litanies at the back of it, of which I had never heard before. Repetitive refrains and simple tunes are laid out for congregational singing. One Litany incorporates all of the Seven Words from the Cross, in twenty-one verses, each one ending ‘Hear us, holy Jesu’. All the more remarkable is that in another of the Litanies ‘of Penitence’ is a setting by Sir Arthur Sullivan, who has also contributed about fifteen hymn tunes. He has only three in the current Church Hymnal. Evidently, the Litany is a form of singing which has all but disappeared, like the Metrical Psalter. There are about fifty metrical Psalms included in the book. Its successor in 1919, inherited from my Father’s cousin Nora Lever, adds three sections after the Litanies, ‘Chiefly for Personal Use’, ‘Mission Services’, and sixteen ‘Christmas Carols’, in addition to fifteen Christmas Hymns.
Mark Gardner
