Saints, seekers and many more stories of religious life and lives in Limerick

‘Of Limerick Saints and Seekers’, edited by David Bracken … I have two contributions in this new book

Patrick Comerford

A new book is on its way in the post, I hope. I am one of the contributors to Of Limerick Saints and Seekers, edited by David Bracken and published in Dublin last month by Veritas.

In this new book, David Bracken invites readers to journey with him and over 50 other scholars through a millennium and a half of Limerick church history with saints and scribes, poets and preachers, martyrs and missionaries, and founders of churches, monasteries and religious communities.

The book spans the whole period of Church History in Co Limerick and the Diocese of Limerick, from early Ireland to present day, with a collection of the lives and stories of extraordinary people from a variety of faith traditions and backgrounds, from well-known saints to unknown and unsung religious. There are Jesuit and Methodist missionaries, martyrs and mundane saints who lived a good life.

The book is introduced by Bishop Brendan Leahy of Limerick, who in the past collaborated with Professor Salvador Ryan and their other colleagues in Maynooth on similar books, to which I have also contributed.

The contributors include academics and archaeologists, editors and archivists, bishops and poets, theologians and pastoral workers, priests and lay people, drawn from a wide range of academic institutions and backgrounds on both sides of the Atlantic.

These are 50 or more fast-moving papers, each a concise, compact and focussed contribution that seeks to get beyond myth and legend to present the real lives of their subjects. This book illuminates the diverse richness of Limerick’s story by highlighting the saints and seekers who have shaped its history.

The early saints include Saint Íte or Ita, described by Maeve Callan as the foster mother of the saints, Munchin, the ‘ little monk’ (Elva Johnston), Nessan of Mungret (Elizabeth Boyle), and Gille, who was Limerick’s first bishop and ‘the architect of the Mediaeval Church’ (John Fleming).

The dedication of the cathedral in Limerick to Saint Mary is discussed by Catherine Swift, and Pádraig Ó Macháin looks at the Black Book of Limerick and its unknown scribe.

The story of the mediaeval Askeaton Madonna is told by Colleen Thomas, and her ‘homecoming’ to the Askeaton by the parish priest Seán Ó Longaigh, who was my colleague in Askeaton for many years.

The stories of these Co Limerick saints stray across the diocesan boundaries in David Bracken’s own contribution, telling of Terence O’Brien, Bishop of Emly, and his confrontation with Cromwell’s General Ireton. Thady Lee, a Vincentian from Tough near Adare, had his skull smashed by Cromwell’s troops (Alison Forrestal).

My friend and colleague Professor Salvador Ryan of Maynooth tells the story of Archbishop Dermot O’Hurley, and Margo Griffin-Wilson writes about the poet Dáibhí Ó Bruadair, the bard who lived at Springfield Castle.

We are brought on a whistle-stop from the US and Peru, to Soviet-era Ukraine and war-torn Iraq, to India, China, Japan and Korea, and to Australia and New Zealand.

Father Timothy Leonard (1893-1929), a Columban priest from Ballysimon, was killed by Communists in China after they invaded his Church and scattered the Blessed Sacrament to the ground, prompting him to berate them: ‘You are bad men; you are bandits who have insulted and desecrated my Lord.’ Neil Collins tells how he was promptly ran a sword through his back when he refused to kneel to his assailants, telling them, ‘I kneel only to Our Lord Jesus Christ.’

The book also honours the contribution of women to the life of the Church in Limerick. Eileen Lenihan paints portraits of the seven Cotter sisters of Killeady, daughters of Ellen McCarthy and John Cotter. All joined religious orders between 1920 and 1987, and all seven ended up as nuns in Australia and New Zealand.

Sister Angela Fitzgerald (1890-1980) was once a nun in Drishane Castle, Millstreet, Co Cork, later tutored the future Empress of Japan, Michiko, wife of Akihito, in 1938 using the chant ‘Brian, Betty and Bunny on the beach of Ballybunion’ to teach the letter B. Later, Maurice Egan writes, she survived earthquakes, war and internment in Japan.

Mother Elizabeth Moore and her Sisters of Mercy set up soup kitchens for the poor and orphanages across Limerick, while treating people in the cholera outbreak in the 1830s that killed tens of thousands across Ireland (Sharon Slater).

Mother Francis Bridgeman almost attained the fame given to Florence Nightingale: Marianne Cosgrave tells how together they provided care to the dying and wounded in the Crimean War, but later had their differences.

Mother Mary McKillop founded the Sisters of Saint Joseph, a congregation that brought 800 Irish missionaries to Australia and New Zealand, including 76 from Limerick (Clare Ahern).

The story of the Little Company of Mary, told by Niamh Lenahan, is an example of the contribution of religious to advancing and providing healthcare in Ireland, from hospitals to nursing homes and hospice provision in the 19th century.

The late Father Gerry Reynolds, was a pioneering ecumenist and Redemptorist priest who crossed many traditional sectarian boundaries. He claimed we were related on my mother’s side of the family, and he is hailed as the ‘Unity Pilgrim’ by Tríona Doherty, editor of Reality, the Redemptorist magazine to which I have also contributed.

Doubtless, Gerry would have been pleased with the ecumenical scope and breadth of this book, including not only Catholics, Anglicans and Methodists, but Jews and Sikhs too.

The contributions from the Church of Ireland include the life of Bishop John Jebb, told by Niall Sloane, Dean of Limerick, Mother Harriet Monsell of Clewer (Timothy Collins), and the poet Aubrey Vere, who is buried in Saint Mary’s Churchyard, Askeaton (Chris Morash).

The Methodist historian Robin Roddie, who hosted my student placement with Shankill Road Methodist Church in Belfast in the 1980s, looks at John Wesley and Limerick’s Methodists.

Rabbi Elias Bernard Levin (1863-1936) came to Limerick from Lithuania, and brought together the Jewish community in the Colooney Street or Wolfe Tone Street area. But, Seán William Gannon tells readers, the Limerick ‘pogrom’ eventually forced him to leave and settle in Leeds, where he died.

Max Arthur Macauliffe (1838-1913), from Templeglantine in rural West Limerick, was first introduced to the Sikh religion through a colonial posting to Amritsar. Patricia Kieran tells how he became a renowned scholar of Sikh theology and scriptures, and produced a massive six volume work, The Sikh Religion: Its Gurus, Sacred Writings and Authors in 1909.

Nor does this book shy away from the present controversies besetting the Church in Ireland. Daithí Ó Corráin recalls the grim story of young Gerard Fogarty in Glin Industrial School. And how Councillor Martin McGuire sought to hold the state accountable for the young child’s flogging only to be rebuffed at every turn.

My two contributions to this book look at Barbara Heck and Philip Embury from Rathkeale, the founders of American Methodism, and the Anglican nun Sister Mary Clare Whitty, who grew up on the Crescent in Limerick and was martyred in Korea during the ‘Long March.’ But more about these stories at another time.

The editor, David Bracken, is the archivist for the Diocese of Limerick and edited The End of All Things Earthly: Faith Profiles of the 1916 Leaders (Dublin: Veritas, 2016). Now he offers a journey through Limerick’s rich tapestry of history. In his acknowledgements, he thanks me ‘for his suggestions which expanded the scope of the project.’

• Of Limerick Saints and Seekers, edited by David Bracken (Dublin: Veritas Books, September 2022), 266 pp, ISBN 9781800970311.

Prayers for peace on Saint Patrick’s Day and in Lent 2022

Saint Patrick … the image on the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship Facebook page promoting this evening’s Monthly Prayer, with a focus on Ireland

Patrick Comerford

It seems everyone in Ireland – and almost everyone of Irish ancestry – has been celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day today. Some of my plans for Saint Patrick’s Day this year have been cancelled, but for many people the lifting of Covid restrictions means this has been their first truly joyful and public celebration of Saint Patrick’s Day.

Three pre-planned contributions, prepared some months ago, remain in circulation to mark Saint Patrick’s Day this week.

Reality, the monthly magazine produced by Redemptorist Publications and edited by Triona Doherty, published my five-page feature on Saint Patrick, as the cover-story for March 2022. And I am also featuring in a monthly service being recorded for this evening by the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship to mark Saint Patrick’s Day.

As today is Saint Patrick’s Day, Ireland is the focus of the monthly prayers of the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship. This month’s online prayers this evening will include a special contribution from Mairead Maguire, the Northern Ireland Nobel Peace Laureate. Mairead will reflect on the growing arms trade in Ireland.

My contribution this evening was originally recorded last August in the cloisters of the ruined Franciscan Abbey in Askeaton, Co Limerick, to accompany my contribution to this year’s Lenten Study programme of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), ‘Living Stones, Living Hope.’

As the war in Ukraine continues, this evening’s prayers with the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship will also involve praying for the people of Ukraine and Russia.

APF’s Monthly Prayers this evening (17 March 2022) begin at 8 pm (GMT and Irish time), 9 pm (Central European) 3 pm (Atlantic Daylight) 4 pm (Eastern Daylight) and 18 March 9 am (New Zealand).

This Zoom Meeting can be joined through links on the website and Facebook page of the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship.

My third prepared contribution to this year’s Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations is also available online. I wrote the introduction to this week’s prayers in the current USPG Prayer Diary, drawing on my experience of working to break down community differences in Rathkeale, Co Limerick.

The current USPG Prayer Diary is available HERE.

Saint Patrick: the myths, the legends and his relevance to Ireland today

The cover of the March 2022 edition of Reality

With St Patrick’s Day festivities expected to return to form this year, what do we really know about the ‘Apostle of Ireland’? Can we separate the man from the myth and discover a new relevance for Ireland today?

Patrick Comerford


The promise of an extra public holiday next year to celebrate the life of Saint Brigid brings some balance not only to the celebrations of St Patrick but also an opportunity to ask who Saint Patrick is for us today and to ask about his significance. Is it possible to remove the saint from both popular celebrations and popular mythology and to ask whether his mission to Ireland was unique and what is his place in Irish Church History?

During the extended St Patrick’s Day festivities this year, there will be little if any mention of St Patrick, his spiritual message, or the unique experience of Christianity in Ireland and the Church in the centuries afterwards.

With the lifting of pandemic restrictions, most of the fun will be at parades and at fun fairs rather than in churches and cathedrals. It seems inevitable that we are going to be inundated with reports on public buildings and monuments around the world floodlit with fluorescent green.

In Ireland, Easter Day is hijacked by the 1916 centenary; St Patrick’s Day is hijacked by parades and pints; and Celtic Spirituality is relegated to the ‘New Age Spirituality’ shelves in our bookshops, or the glossy souvenirs in Dublin Airport’s duty-free ‘shopping experience.’ But what do we know about St Patrick, his life, his teaching, his writings, and his spirituality?

St Patrick … a stained glass window in Saint Edan’s Cathedral, Ferns, Co Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Early Christianity In Ireland

Traditionally and romantically, St Patrick is said to have converted the entire population of Ireland from paganism in a very short period between 432 and 461, less than the span of one generation. These dates are of significance in the history of the wider Church: Saint Augustine died in 430, the Council of Ephesus met in 431, and the Council of Chalcedon met in 451.

But putting aside myth and romance, it is important to recognise that there were Christians in Ireland before Saint Patrick arrived and that Irish mythology was long anxious to claim Irish connections with the Christian story before Patrick. These include the stories of Altus, said to have been an Irish witness to the passion and death of Christ; Conor Mac Nessa, King of Ireland, who died of a broken heart when he heard of Christ’s crucifixion; Cormac Mac Airt, who converted to Christianity in the third century; and Mansuetus, said to have been an Irish bishop in fourth century France.

But there is a realistic medium between these legends and the concept of a sudden conversion to Christianity at the hands of a single missionary. Tacitus (ca 55-120 AD) tells us that British or Gallic merchants had a reasonably good knowledge of Ireland’s ‘harbours and approaches.’ The ‘Celtic’ people in Ireland were traders, raiders and plunderers, and there is evidence of Roman traders reaching Irish harbours and beyond them up rivers such as the Nore and the Barrow, trading in wine, oil and wheat. The Irish imported pottery, metal-work and bric-a-brac from Roman Gaul and Britain, and exported copper, gold, slaves, hides, cattle and wolfhounds.

By the end of the third century, people from Ireland were establishing colonies in Wales, Cornwall and Scotland. By the third or fourth century, there was regular commercial, mercantile and social contact with Roman communities in Britain and Gaul. There have been abundant finds of looted Roman coins all along the north and east coasts of Ireland, and Roman silver ingots with similar Christian provenance have been found in Kent and Limerick.

Catherine Swift argues convincingly that many among the ruling class in Ireland adopted the cultural habits and social customs of Roman Britons. What is now Cathedral Hill in Armagh is an example of one of their temple sites.

Christianity probably arrived in Ireland in the fourth and early fifth centuries by a slow and gradual process from Britain and from Continental Europe, probably from Gaul and what we now know as Germany, and perhaps even from the Iberian peninsula, including present-day Spain and Portugal.

Niall of the Nine Hostages commanded several raiding expeditions across the Irish Sea. British captives carried off by Irish raiders may be yet another way of Christianity coming to have a presence on this island. Some educated continental Christians may also have sought refuge in Ireland during the barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire at the start of the fourth century, bringing their Christianity with them.

Other points of contact include the contacts made by the Irish migrants in Britain, and trade links with Roman Britain, Gaul and Spain. A gravestone for a fifth century Irish Christian has been found in a Christian cemetery in Trier, and fifth century Christians, some with Latin names, are commemorated on ogham stones in Carlow, Waterford, Cork and Kerry.

In other words, many factors indicate the arrival of Christianity in Ireland long before Patrick was captured as a slave, and there was a considerable Christian presence on this island before Patrick began his mission in 432.

Saint Patrick seen in a window in Saint Bartholomew’s Church, Ballsbridge, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick’s life and mission

The traditional account of the life of St Patrick says he was born about 372 in Roman Britain in Bannavem Taburniae, perhaps in Cumbria or at a Roman outpost at Dumbarton in Scotland. He says his father Calpornius was a deacon and his grandfather Potitus was a priest; both were from a relatively prosperous class of Romans.

At the age of 16, the young Patrick was captured in a great raid along with ‘many thousands of people’ [Confessio 1]. According to his own account, some of them were lukewarm Christians, and some could also have been committed Christians, perhaps even priests. His account of his escape from slavery at the age of 22 may be evidence of an escape network for fugitive slaves run by concerned Christians, more than 20 years before Patrick began his own mission [Confessio 17 and 18].

After his escape, Patrick had visions in which he heard the cry of the people in Ireland pleading to him to come back. It is an image that may have drawn on Saint Paul’s vision in Troy of a man calling him across the sea to Macedonia (see Acts 16: 9-10). Most of the details we have of his life are from his Confessio, written in reply to the attacks on his character brought against him in England, and from his Letter to Coroticus.

Patrick arrived back in Ireland from Britain around 432. According to JB Bury, he landed in Wicklow, at the mouth of the River Vartry. Traditions associate his early mission with the islands off the Skerries coast, Co Dublin, and Saul, Co Down. But there are traditions too of Irish saints who preceded St Patrick: St Ciaran of Seir Kieran, Co Offaly; St Ibar or Iberius of Begerin, Co Wexford; his nephew, St Abban of Adamstown, Co Wexford; St Declan of Ardmore, Co Waterford; St Declan’s friend, St Ailbe of Emly, Co Tipperary; St Meltioc or Multose of Kinsale, Co Cork; and so on.

Most of these saints are associated with the south and the south-east. Although there is no primary evidence to support these largely unreliable traditions, they underpin a truth that Christianity was in Ireland for generations before Saint Patrick arrived and that he was not the first person to bring Christianity to Ireland.

The background to St Patrick’s mission includes the presence of perhaps three heresies in Ireland – Arianism, Priscillianism and Pelagianism. Palladius was ordained by Pope Celestine, perhaps in 431, and was sent as the ‘first bishop’ on a mission to ‘the Scotti [Irish] who believe in Christ.’ So, from at least the third decade of the fifth century, Irish Christians were numerically large enough to have a bishop sent from Rome, and Palladius is associated with a number of church sites in Leinster. His work was continued, perhaps, by figures such as Secundinus, Auxilius and Iserninus. His mission activities and those of Patrick may have been confused in later writings, so that much of the work and success of Palladius was attributed wrongly to Patrick.

The late Professor Patrick Corish of Maynooth, in The Irish Catholic Experience (1985), links the mission of Palladius in Leinster with, perhaps, three churches in Co Wicklow. The circular letter known as The First Synod of Saint Patrick seems to provide evidence of a second-generation missionary Church in Leinster, and this stream of Christianity in Ireland has been associated with the Church in Kildare.

By the time Patrick began his mission, the foundations had been laid for a Church in Ireland that in the centuries that followed became a vibrant missionary Church. But, while the missions of Palladius and Patrick may have overlapped, Patrick does not refer to Palladius. Patrick was working in fresh territory, while Roman missionaries in Leinster were consolidating the work of Palladius and others who, by 431, had ensured that there were many people in Ireland who were Christians.

Seamus Murphy’s sculpture of Saint Patrick in Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Co Kildare (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick’s writings

Two Latin works survive that are generally accepted to have been written by St Patrick. These are the Declaration or Confession (Confessio), and the Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus (Epistola), from which we have the only generally accepted details of his life.

In his Confessio [51], Patrick shows he is aware of episcopal activity in other parts of Ireland, including baptisms, confirmations and ordinations. But he says he travelled to places in Ireland ‘where no one else had ever penetrated, in order to baptise, or to ordain clergy, or to confirm the people’ – suggesting there were places that had received episcopal ministry from other, earlier sources.

The dates of Patrick’s life are the subject of conflicting traditions. His own writings provide nothing that can be dated more precisely than the fifth century. Although Patrick’s writings quote from the Acts of the Apostles as they are rendered by the early fifth-century Bible translation known as the Vulgate, these quotations may have been added later to replace other quotation from an earlier Bible version and can therefore not be used securely to fix dates for Saint Patrick or his writings. For example, the Letter to Coroticus implies that the Franks were still pagans at the time of writing. Their conversion to Christianity is dated to the period 496-508.

In his writings, Saint Patrick makes no references to the shamrock or snakes being driven out of Ireland, nor does he name of the mountain where he tended animals as a slave.

St Patrick did not teach about the Trinity using the shamrock. If he did use the shamrock, he was perilously close to the heresies of either tritheism, at one extreme, or modalism at the other.

The banning of snakes from Ireland is not mentioned by Saint Patrick in his own writings and does not appear in the stories about him until the 11th century. But, in the building of the nation myths, Saint Patrick was seen to need a legend parallel to Saint George slaying the dragon and Saint Marcel delivering Paris from the monster.

The Hill of Slemish and Croagh Patrick are not named, and Lough Derg is not mentioned either. Nor is there any allusion to the Paschal Fire on the Hill of Tara near Slane, Co Meath. There is no reference to King Laoghaire either, nor to the baptism of his daughters.

All these elements in popular stories about Saint Patrick come from later writing and traditions. Over time, the cult and status of Saint Patrick took on such proportions that we depend less on historical narrative and more on hagiography for these folk tales and legends.

I could go on … St Patrick did not wear a mitre and green liturgical robes – certainly not in Lent – he probably never carried a crozier, he did not turn the people of Skerries into goats, he did not fetch water from a well in Nassau Street, Dublin, and he certainly did not build St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin … nor, for that matter, any St Patrick’s Cathedral.

There is a theory that there were two Patricks, although this may arise from a misreading of ‘the elder Patrick,’ who died in 457, where elder might also be read as bishop or priest. Neither the canons attributed to him nor the Breastplate of St Patrick is his work. Later seventh-century documents speak of Patrick as the successor of Palladius. However, the O Neill dynasty had Tireachan and Muirchu write spurious accounts of Patrick’s life to establish Armagh’s claims to primacy in Ireland.

When Brian Ború became High King ca 1000 AD, he had his secretary write into the Book of Armagh a confirmation of the right of Armagh to all church revenues in Ireland. It was at least another century, however, before Armagh’s claims to primacy were recognised throughout the Irish Church.

St Patrick’s relevance today

Our images of Celtic spirituality are often shaped by Victorian romanticism. Saint Patrick’s Breastplate, as we know it, is based on a manuscript from the late 11th century now in the Library of Trinity College Dublin. But it was only published in 1897 by John Henry Bernard (1860-1927), later Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin (1915-1919) and Provost of Trinity College Dublin (1919-1927).

Sometimes, our images of Celtic Spirituality are intricately linked with the nation-state-building myths created by an Irish nationalism that was often narrow in its vision. But when we consider the long run of Christian history over 2,000 years, St Patrick’s Day is a reasonably late innovation, dating from only the 17th century, and has only been a public holiday since 1903. Indeed, the first St Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin was not held until 1931.

St Patrick’s Day is a good day for parades and parties, for trying to show each other we have a cúpla focal, for singing a few hymns and songs in Irish, and for breaking our Lenten fasts and forgetting our Lenten resolutions.

But St Patrick is more relevant to Irish identity today, and too important to be relegated to revelries on a long bank holiday weekend.

St Patrick was a unifying force for the varying strands of Christianity in Ireland. So often, every one of the Churches in Ireland is so insecure in its identity, that we cling too often to the little things that make us different instead of rejoicing in the truly important things that we have in common. However, St Patrick is a shared figure in our ecumenical endeavours, celebrated not only by all Church traditions, and even revered among Muslims as a pre-Islamic holy figure. He stands out too as a reminder of the benefits of welcoming immigrants, challenge exploitation and celebrating our centuries-old links with our neighbours in Britain and across Europe.

Revd Canon Professor Patrick Comerford is a Church of Ireland priest in the Diocese of Limerick, and a retired adjunct assistant professor in Trinity College Dublin

• This five-page, cover-story feature is published in the current edition of Reality (Redemptorist Communications), March 2022 (Vol 88 No 2 ISSN 0034-0960), pp 12-16.

Saint Patrick with mitre, crozier, Bible and shamrock at the chapel in Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Discussing married priests and clerical celibacy with Ivan Yates on ‘Newstalk’

Pope Francis with Archbishop Justin Welby … is Pope Francis about to soften the rules on clerical celibacy?

Patrick Comerford

I was part of a panel on Newstalk this earlier this afternoon [18 June 2019] being interviewed by Ivan Yates on the topic of clerical celibacy and married priests.

I was invited with Father Tony Flannery, the Redemptorist priest and former editor of Reality onto the Hard Shoulder programme to discuss my experiences as a married Anglican priest with a grown-up family in response proposals this week that many see as a potentially ground-breaking move in the Roman Catholic Church.

A document released by the Vatican this week is seen as having the potential to open a new discussion on ordained married priests, with its invitation to bishops in Latin America to hold a discussion in the Vatican next October on the ordination of elderly men to the priesthood, albeit to meet pastoral needs in remote parts of the Amazon.

The proposal comes as a response to the dearth of priests in many parts of South America. It would involve ordaining viri probati, or ‘men of proven character,’ as they are known in Canon Law.

Some people, obviously, wonder whether conceding this exception would be a step towards ordaining married men in other areas of the world.

The Vatican document published this week affirms celibacy as ‘a gift for the Church, but notes that there have been requests to consider, for the most remote areas of the Amazon, ‘the possibility of conferring priestly ordination on elderly men, preferably indigenous, respected and accepted members of their community.’

Such men, the document says, could be ordained ‘even if they already have an established and stable family.’

Pope Francis has already said that he would consider the possibility of ordaining viri probati in remote areas that are deprived of the sacraments. But he has also made clear that his Church retains its broader commitment to priestly celibacy.

The Vatican proposal was drawn up after consultations with bishops and church leaders in the Amazon region.

Even if this proposal is accepted, these married priests would not be the first within the Roman Catholic tradition. Pope Benedict XVI allowed the ordination of some married Anglican priests who moved across to the Roman Catholic tradition.

Some Eastern-rite Catholic churches that are in communion with Rome, such as the Greek Catholics in Eastern Europe and the Melkites, Maronites and Coptic Catholics in the Middle East, have always had married priests alongside priests who are celibate monks. However, married priests in any of these traditions have never been allowed to become bishops unless they are widowed.

The proposed exception for remote areas of South America would address the extreme shortage of priests that is found in many parts of the world today.

The change is proposed in a working document for a meeting of bishops in Rome in October to discuss the pastoral needs communities in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela, which are known collectively as the Pan-Amazon Region.

The Vatican document also contains a proposal for an ‘official ministry’ for women in the Pan-Amazon region, although it does not specify what type of ministry.

Pope Francis had convened a panel of experts to study the history of women deacons in the early Church, but he said in May that the panel’s findings were inconclusive.

Parishes in the Amazon area often experience frequent and lengthy periods of difficulty in celebrating the Eucharist and of waiting for with Baptisms, Confessions and Church weddings because of the lack of priests.

The working paper was released on Monday by the Synod of Bishops, the Vatican department overseeing the world’s bishops. ‘For this reason, instead of leaving the communities without the Eucharist, the criteria of selection and preparation of the ministers authorised to celebrate it should be changed.’

The document urges the bishops meeting in October to address the pastoral needs of moving the Church from one ‘that visits’ to a ‘Church that remains.’ However, the Vatican insists that the working document of the Amazonian Synod is no more that a working document, and it remains open to being discussed and modified.

The Vatican proposal also suggests that the Church should incorporate indigenous ‘music and dance, in native languages and clothes, in communion with nature and with the community.’

Cardinal Walter Kasper said earlier this month that if bishops from the Amazon together propose that married men should be ordained to the priesthood, Pope Francis would ‘in principle probably accept it.’

In an interview with the German daily Frankfurter Rundschau, the former president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity said the change to the tradition of a celibate priesthood in the Latin Church could come at the Synod on the Amazon in October.

Cardinal Kasper, who is considered one of Pope Francis’s preferred theological advisors, said in the interview that ‘celibacy is not a dogma, it is not an unalterable practice.’

The First and Second Lateran Councils in 1123 and 1139 explicitly forbade priests in the Western Church from marrying, so celibacy has been part of that tradition for almost 1,000 years. Eliminating the prospect of marriage ensured that children or wives of priests did not make claims on property acquired throughout a priest’s life, and this helped to prevent the alienation of land and property belonging to the Church.

However, it took centuries for the practice of priestly celibacy to become widespread. As Tony Flannery pointed out this afternoon, there were married priests, and perhaps even married bishops, in Ireland until as late as the 16th century. But while celibacy eventually became the norm in the Western Catholic Church, it was rejected by many parts of the western Church, and in the East remains a tradition only within monasticism.

Sandro Magister, a Vatican expert at the Italian magazine L’Espresso, said that he was confident that allowing married priests in the Amazon would ‘open the door for other bishops’ conferences all over the world to allow married priests,’ including in the heart of Europe. He said that German bishops plan to hold a synod on this topic next year.

‘Once in Royal David’s City’: celebrating two anniversaries of a favourite Christmas carol

Cecil Frances Alexander

At carol services in cathedrals and churches across the world, the celebrations of Christmas Eve begin with ‘Once in Royal David’s city,’ often with a boy chorister singing the opening stanza as an unaccompanied solo

By Patrick Comerford

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Cecil Frances Alexander (1818-1895) who first wrote this hymn. But her name means many people forget that she was a woman, and few people remember that she was Irish-born and the wife of a Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh.

She wrote many poems and hymns for children, and was the author of more than 400 hymns, including ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful.’ Her most famous collection, Hymns for Little Children, was published in 1848, and included the all-time Christmas favourite, ‘Once in Royal David’s City.’

Cecil Frances Humphreys was born at 25 Eccles Street, Dublin, in April 1818, the second daughter and third child of Major John Humphreys, and his Irish wife Elizabeth Frances (née Reed).

Her father had moved from Norfolk to Ireland as the land agent of the Earl of Wicklow at Shelton Abbey, and she was named after Lady Wicklow, who was born Lady Cecil Frances Hamilton. She was a child when the family moved to Strabane, County Tyrone, in 1833, when her father became the land agent of Lady Wicklow’s brother, the Marquess of Abercorn.

Even as a small girl, Fanny (as she was usually known) wrote poetry in her school journal. Her early work was strongly influenced by the Oxford Movement, and John Keble edited one of her anthologies, Hymns for Little Children. Other early influences included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the Pre-Raphaelite poet and artist, and his sister the poet Christina Rossetti, who was also influenced by the Oxford Movement.

She married the Revd Dr William Alexander (1824-1911) in Strabane in October 1850. She was six years older than her husband, and both families initially opposed their marriage.

William Alexander, the third child of Canon Robert Alexander, was a student at Oxford at the close of the Oxford Movement and came under the influence of both John Henry Newman, who was then still an Anglican, and Edward Bouverie Pusey, then the Regius Professor of Hebrew.

Throughout his life, William Alexander’s theology bore the stamp of the ‘Bisley’ school of Tractarianism, gathered around John Keble’s brother, the Revd Thomas Keble of Bisley, Gloucestershire. He was ordained in 1847, and after a brief curacy he was rector successively of the parishes of Castlederg (1850-1855) Upper Fahan (1855-1860) parishes in the north-west of Ireland, and in 1864 he became the last Dean of Saint Alibeus Cathedral in Emly, County Tipperary, before it was demolished.

He became Bishop of Derry and Raphoe in 1867, and was the last bishop of the Church of Ireland to sit in the House of Lords before disestablishment in 1871. He later become Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland.

Mrs Alexander took her role as an Anglican bishop’s wife seriously, accompanying her husband throughout his travels in Ireland and taking a special interest in children. Some of Cecil Frances Alexander’s hymns are said to have been inspired by the scenery around both Sion Mills and Strabane.

She showed her concern for disadvantaged people by travelling many miles each day to visit the sick and the poor, providing food, warm clothes, and medical supplies. She and her sister also founded a school for the deaf.

Like her husband, Mrs Alexander was strongly influenced by the Oxford Movement and by John Keble’s Christian Year. Her first book of poetry, Verses for Seasons, was a ‘Christian Year’ for children. She wrote hymns based on the Apostles’ Creed, Baptism, the Eucharist, the Ten Commandments and prayer, writing in simple language for children.

A window in Saint Columb’s Cathedral, Derry, refers to three hymns by Cecil Frances Alexander: ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ (left), ‘There is a green hill far away’ (centre) and ‘The Golden Gates Are Lifted Up’ (right) (Photograph: Andreas F Borchett/Wikipedia, Creative Copyright Licence)

Her more than 400 hymn texts were published in Verses from the Holy Scripture (1846), Hymns for Little Children (1848), and Hymns Descriptive and Devotional (1858). She also contributed to the Lyra Anglicana, the SPCK Psalms and Hymns, Hymns Ancient and Modern, and other collections.

Some of her narrative hymns are heavy-going, even dull. But a large number are still popular and well-loved, including ‘Once in Royal David’s city,’ ‘All things bright and beautiful,’ ‘There is a Green Hill Far Away’ and ‘Jesus calls us! O’er the tumult.’

‘Once in Royal David’s city’ is one the many hymns she wrote to provide simple explanations of clauses in the Apostles’ Creed, with this hymn based on the words ‘who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary.’

Stanzas 1 and 2 describe the birth of Christ in simple terms. The city, of course, is Bethlehem, his birthplace and the birthplace of his ancestor, King David. Mary and Joseph were there to be counted in the census, which determined the tax distribution and burden of many communities, and was a real hardship for the poor who had to travel across difficult terrain.

Stanzas 3 and 4 see Christ’s childhood as a pattern and example for children in living their lives.

Stanzas 4 and 5 proclaim the divinity of Christ and point to his heavenly glory, which is in sharp contrast to the humble circumstances of his birth. The Christ Child who was born in humility and poverty is not only our pattern and example but also our Redeemer, seated in glory at God’s right hand in heaven.

This hymn was first published in 1848 in Hymns for Little Children, her most famous collection. A year later, the English composer and organist Henry John Gauntlett (1805-1876) found her poem and set it to music with the tune, ‘Irby,’ named after a village on the Wirral Peninsula.

Over the years, many changes have been made to the wording of this hymn. Some alterations changed her original ‘lowly maiden’ to ‘lowly mother,’ reflecting concern among some Anglicans that the word ‘maiden’ might imply accepting belief in the perpetual virginity of the Virgin Mary. However, the original words have been restored in the fifth edition of the Irish Church Hymnal used by the Church of Ireland.

Her hymn ‘Jesus calls us! O’er the tumult’ is one of the hymns written not for children but for adults, and was originally intended as a mission hymn.

At the request of HH Dickinson, Dean of the Chapel Royal in Dublin Castle, she produced an English version of a Gaelic poem, ‘Saint Patrick’s Breastplate.’ The hymn, also known by its opening words, ‘I bind unto myself today,’ was first used on Saint Patrick’s Day 1889.

She has been criticised for appearing to endorse the class system and social snobbery in the original third verse of her hymn, ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’:

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.

Archbishop William Alexander … a statue in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh, of the former Archbishop of Armagh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

It has been argued she was affirming that all are equal in God’s eyes. But many later hymnals omitted this verse and many schools have banned it.

She died at the Bishop’s Palace in Derry on 12 October 1895 and was buried in the hillside cemetery that inspired her hymn, There is a Green Hill Far Away.

A year later, her husband became Archbishop of Armagh at the age of 72 in 1896. As a bishop, he had retained his academic interests. He was the select preacher at Oxford, Cambridge and Dublin, and delivered the Bampton Lectures in Oxford. He is also mentioned by James Joyce as part of the procession in the ‘Cyclops’ episode in Ulysses.

His concerns for sound theology and good liturgy made him one of the most effective influences on the Church of Ireland after disestablishment. He retired in February 1911 at 87, and lived briefly in Torbay, where he died on 12 September 1911.

The Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge … the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols opens each year with ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ as the processional hymn (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This year also marks another centenary associated with Mrs Alexander’s best-known hymn. It is 100 years since the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, began its Christmas Eve service in 1918 with Dr Arthur Henry Mann’s arrangement of ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ as the processional hymn.

Mann was the Organist and Director of Music at King’s from 1876 until his death in 1929. In his arrangement, the first verse is sung by a boy chorister of the Choir of King’s Chapel as a solo. The second verse is sung by the choir, and the congregation joins in the third verse. Excluding the first verse, the hymn is accompanied by the organ. This carol was the first recording that the King’s College Choir made 70 years ago in 1948.

Now, every year without fail, at 3 p.m. on Christmas Eve, this is the opening carol from the Chapel of King’s College, and it is broadcast live from Cambridge on the BBC Radio 4. For many, this carol is still a reminder that love and goodness are rare and wonderful gifts, and for many to hear it live on BBC Radio 4 marks the true beginning of Christmas.

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is priest-in-charge, the Rathkeale Group of Parishes, Co Limerick, and Precentor of Saint Mary’s Cathedral (Church of Ireland), Limerick

Saint Columb’s Cathedral, Derry … the hymnwriter lived here for 1867 to 1895 and is buried on the ‘green hill’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This feature is published in the December 2018 edition of the Redemptorist magazine ‘Reality’, Vol 83, No 10, pp 24-27

A chapter on a Dublin-born Cambridge theologian in a new book in Maynooth

Patrick Comerford

Professor Salvador Ryan of Maynooth has announced today that a festschrift in honour of Professor Brendan McConvery, is to be launched in a fortnight’s time in Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Co Kildare.

I am one of the many contributors to The Cultural Reception of the Bible: Explorations in Theology, Literature and the Arts, published by Four Courts Press and being launched 5 December in the Pugin Hall in Maynooth, is edited by Dr Salvador Ryan, Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Maynooth, and Dr Liam Tracey, Professor of Liturgy in Maynooth.

Brendan McConvery was my lecturer in Biblical studies over 30 years ago, and I have worked with him again in recent years in his capacity as editor of the Redemptorist publication Reality.

In 30 essays, this wide-ranging volume examines the cultural impact of biblical texts, from the early Middle Ages to the present day, on areas such as theology, philosophy, ethics, ecology, politics, literature, art, music and film.

My chapter looks at the life and work of Fenton John Anthony Hort (1828-1892), the Cambridge theologian who was one of the three members of the ‘Cambridge Triumvirate,’ along with Brooke Westcott and JB Lightfoot. Hort and Westcott edited The New Testament in the Original Greek, which influenced every subsequent translation of the Greek New Testament into England.

Fenton Hort has been called the ‘greatest English theologian of the (19th) century.’ But I was surprised during my times researching in Cambridge to discover that Fenton Hort was in fact Irish-born, spent his early days in Dublin, and always regarded Ireland as his home.

Contributions to this book range from Saadia Gaon’s tenth-century Arabic translation of the Pentateuch to Martin Scorsese’s 1988 film adaptation of The Last Temptation of Christ; from the biblically inspired writings of a late 17th-century French galley slave to Paul Ricoeur’s reading of The Song of Songs; and from the deep biblical culture of fifth-century Rome to the divisions that biblical verses perpetuated in late 20th-century Ulster.

The contributors are: Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, CSsR (Newark); Thomas O’Loughlin (University of Nottingham); Cornelius Casey, CSsR (Trinity College Dblib); Jeremy Corley (Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth); Noel O’Sullivan (SPCM); Michael A Conway (SPCM); Jessie Rogers (SPCM); Martin O’Kane (University Wales, Trinity Saint David’s); Kerry Houston (Dublin Institute of Technology); Michael O’Dwyer (Maynooth University); Brian Cosgrove (Maynooth); Diane Corkery (University of Strathclyde); Raphael Gallagher, CSsR (Alphonsianum, Rome); Terence Kennedy, CSsR (Alphonsianum, Rome); Padraig Corkery (Maynooth); Carol Dempsey, OP (University of Portland, Oregon); Thomas R Whelan, CSSp (National Centre for Liturgy, Maynooth); Liam Tracey, OSM (Maynooth); Penelope Woods (Maynooth); Ruth Whelan (Maynooth); Elochukwu Uzukwu, CSSp (Duquesne University); Hugh Connolly (Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris); John-Paul Sheridan (Maynooth); Helen Cashell-Moran (TCD); Katherine Meyer (TCD); Seamus O’Connell (Maynooth); Jonathan Kearney (DCU); Patrick Comerford (CITI/TCD); Martin Henry (Maynooth); Paul Clogher (Waterford Institute of Technology); and the port John F Deane.

Thomas Cranmer: the Cambridge reformer who shaped the Anglican Reformation

From a student in Cambridge to compiling the first Book of Common Prayer, Cranmer was a central figure in the English Reformation

By Patrick Comerford

This year sees the fifth centenary of the Lutheran Reformation and the five-hundredth anniversary of Martin Luther (1483-1546) setting in process the Reformation when he nailed his 95 theses to the door of the church of Wittenberg on 31 October 1517.

But while Luther influenced the Anglican Reformation in many ways, 1517 does not mark the beginning of the Anglican Reformation, and if Anglicanism has any founding figures, then they must include Thomas Cranmer, but many other key figures too, including Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer, as well as John Jewel, Richard Hooker and Jeremy Taylor, who was Bishop of Connor, Down and Dromore.

Admittedly, the Lutheran Reformation strongly influenced the 16th century Reforms in the Church of England and while Thomas Cranmer was a student there, Cambridge become known as ‘Little Germany’ and the ‘Birthplace of the English Reformation’.

Long before Luther is said to have nailed his theses to the door of the Church in Wittenberg in 1517, Desiderius Erasmus was at Queens’ College, Cambridge. There between 1511 and 1514, Erasmus translated his new Greek and Latin versions of the New Testament that would inspire the kind of Bible study that created an interest in Luther’s writings and theology.

When Luther wrote The Babylonian Captivity of the Church in 1520, challenging the traditional sacramental system, Henry VIII was incensed and published his reply, An Assertion of the Seven Sacraments, in 1521, earned Papal approval and Papal honour as ‘Defender of the Faith.’

Although books were burned in Cambridge in 1520 and 1521 in efforts to suppress sympathies for Wycliffe, the Lollards and Luther, English merchants trading between London and Antwerp became a source for Luther’s writings, which were soon read widely in the universities in Cambridge and Oxford.

Cambridge became the nursery of the English Reformation, and many of the English reformers and some of the early martyrs were students and scholars there.

Cambridge became the nursery of the English Reformation, and many of the English reformers and some of the early martyrs were students and scholars there. The White Horse Inn became the meeting place for these young scholars, and it became known as ‘Little Germany.’

A plaque at King’s College, Cambridge, marking the site of the White House Tavern or ‘Little Germany’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Cambridge scholars who met at the White House from 1521 came to include Thomas Cranmer, future Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Barnes, Prior of the Austin Friars in Cambridge and future martyr, Thomas Bilney, who would change Hugh Latimer’s views about the Reformation, Stephen Gardiner, later Bishop of Winchester, Miles Coverdale, translator of the Bible into English and future Bishop of Exeter, Matthew Parker, later Archbishop of Canterbury, William Tyndale, Bible translator, Nicholas Shaxton, later Bishop of Salisbury, John Bale, later Bishop of Ossory, and the martyr Hugh Latimer.

Jesus College, Cambridge. Thomas Cranmer was a student here and later a fellow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Many of this group were influenced both by the new edition of the New Testament produced by Erasmus and by Luther’s. Many also preached at the Church of Saint Edward King and Martyr, close to King’s College.

At the Midnight Mass in Saint Edward’s in Christmas 1525, Robert Barnes preached what was probably the first openly evangelical sermon in a church in England, and Saint Edward’s became ‘the cradle of the Reformation’ in England.

Finding favour with the king

Throughout the 1520s, Henry VIII and Luther remained estranged, and when Henry sought a divorce Luther concluded the king was bound under pain of eternal damnation to retain the wife he had married. The divorce issue was settled for Henry in 1533 when Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, dissolved his marriage to Catherine of Aragon and declared the king lawfully married to Anne Boleyn.

Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556) was six years Luther’s junior, and was martyred 10 years after Luther’s death. At the age of 14, he was sent to the newly-founded Jesus College, Cambridge, where he may have been strongly influenced by the Benedictines tradition. As a student in Cambridge, Erasmus was one of his favourite authors, but it was Luther who drew his attention to the Bible.

Shortly after receiving MA in 1515, he was elected to Fellowship at Jesus College. Later, Cranmer found favour with the king in 1529, when he suggested that the king’s divorce was a problem to be settled by theologians and not by canon lawyers. The king sent Cranmer as his representative to the Italian universities and to the Emperor. In Germany, he made his Lutheran connections, and married a niece of Andreas Osiander of Nuernberg.

When Cranmer returned to England, he left his wife behind in Germany and became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1533. One of his first acts as archbishop was to declare Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon void and to validate his marriage to Anne Boleyn. After Cranmer’s consecration, Latimer’s fortunes changed, and he became Bishop of Worcester, in succession to four Italian absentee bishops who had been placed in the diocese, one after another.

In 1534, Henry VIII formally repudiated the authority of the Pope. Latimer began to advise Cranmer and Cromwell on legislative measures, and became the royal chaplain to Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. That year, Convocation called for a translation of the Bible into English, and the Ten Articles in 1536 mark the beginning of doctrinal reform. Since Tyndale was still considered a heretic, Myles Coverdale was enlisted as the translator of the Bible, with Cranmer writing the preface for this new translation. Cranmer, however, continued to enjoy Henry’s favour until the king’s death in 1547.

One of his first acts as archbishop was to declare Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon void and to validate his marriage to Anne Boleyn.

Key figures in the Anglican Reformation in a window in Trinity College, Cambridge, from left (top row): Hugh Latimer, Edward VI, Nicholas Ridley, Elizabeth I; (second row): John Wycliffe, Erasmus, William Tyndale and Thomas Cranmer (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Book of Common Prayer

Cranmer drew on Lutheran catechisms, litanies, and liturgies as he compiled the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549. But the Lutheran influence that was dominant in the early Reformation in England diminished during the reign of Edward VI, when England became a haven for religious refugees, including Martin Bucer from Strasburg, who had once tried to bring Luther and Zwingli together and who influenced Calvin’s doctrine of the Lord’s Supper.

When Edward VI died, his sister, Mary I, came to the throne in 1553. She hated Cranmer, who by annulling the marriage of her mother Catherine of Aragon to Henry VIII had declared her illegitimate.

In 1554, papal commissioners began to examine Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley, former Bishop of London. Latimer was burned at the stake in Oxford on 16 October 1555, alongside Nicholas Ridley, outside Balliol College. As the flames rose, Latimer is said to have said to Ridley: ‘Be of good cheer, Master Ridley, and play the man, for we shall this day light such a candle in England as I trust by God’s grace shall never be put out.’ It was said he ‘received the flame as it were embracing it. After he had stroked his face with his hands, and (as it were) bathed them a little in the fire, he soon died (as it appeared) with very little pain or none.’

Cranmer had outlived Luther. In the hope of saving his life, he signed a recantation. But he had been deceived, and he too was also burned at the stake at the same place in Oxford on 21 March 1556. On the day of his burning, he publicly recanted his recantation, confessed his faith, and thrust into the fire the offending hand that he said had ‘written contrary to his heart.’

5, The Martyrs’ Memorial at the south end of Saint Giles’ near Baliol College, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Of almost 300 people burned during Queen Mary’s reign, the most famous are the Oxford martyrs. The Martyrs’ Memorial in the city centre, near the site of their execution, commemorates the ‘faithfulness unto death’ of these three martyrs.

But who was the real Cranmer? And what is his legacy? What did he really believe?

The ‘Prayer of Humble Access’ shows a man of humility, and he seeks to encourage weekly, Sunday Communion. His lasting legacy is often seen as the Daily Office of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, yet these are adaptations of the Benedictine offices, effectively bringing daily prayer out of the cloisters and into the parish church.

Anglicans continue to debate whether he was a Lutheran, or at heart what we might today call an Anglo-Catholic. Because of this paradox, he can be owned by all Anglicans, and is the nearest Anglicanism has when it comes to finding a founding figure.

Revd Canon Professor Patrick Comerford is Canon Precentor of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, Priest-in-Charge of Rathkeale, and a former lecturer at the Church of Ireland Theological Institute.

This feature was published in May 2017 in ‘Reality,’ the Redemptorist magazine (pp 38-40).

The Eucharist or Holy Communion in the Church of Ireland and Anglicanism

The Church of Ireland, as part of the world-wide Anglican church, has a long tradition of Eucharistic theology at the centre of the Church’s life

By Patrick Comerford

The Church of Ireland sees itself, alongside the Roman Catholic Church, as the ancient church of this land, and part of the Anglican Communion, the world’s third largest grouping of Christians.

The historical, foundational documents for Anglican theology are The Book of Common Prayer, the 39 Articles and the Ordinal.

THE EUCHARIST AS A SACRAMENT

In the 39 Articles, Article 19 states clearly that the Church is found where “the pure word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance in all things …”

Article 23 specifies that only priests ordained by bishops may preside at the Eucharist, while Article 25 describes Baptism and the Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper as the two “Sacraments ordained of Christ,” alongside the five other sacraments. Article 28, often seen as the foundational Anglican doctrinal statement on the Eucharist, states: “The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign of the Love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another; … the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ; and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ.”

However, the interpretation of Article 28 varies throughout Anglicanism. In one interpretation, those who receive sacrament of the Holy Communion in faith, receive the spiritual body and blood of Christ. Others say the real objective presence of Christ is in the Eucharist, although the precise nature of that presence is a mystery of faith. Still others identify with the Eucharistic theology of consubstantiation often associated with Martin Luther.

The classical Anglican understanding of the Eucharist as mystery is found in words from the poet-priest John Donne often ascribed to Elizabeth I:

He was the Word that spake it;
He took the bread and brake it;
And what that Word did make it;
I do believe and take it

WHAT’S IN A NAME

The first Book of Common Prayer (1549) referred to “the Supper of the Lorde and the Holy Communion, commonly called the Masse.” Many outside observers are surprised that the word Mass survived the Reformation. Although it was excised from the second Book of Common Prayer (1552), and its use is less frequent in Ireland, it continues among Anglicans with a Catholic tradition and in more popular use for special occasions such as “Midnight Mass” at Christmas Eve.

The term “Lord’s Supper” is derived from Saint Paul (see I Corinthians 11: 20). It was preferred by many Reformers, but is also found in pre-Reformation English texts. The use of the word “Communion” for sacramental celebrations comes from the Vulgate text of I Corinthians 10: 16, and was widely used in pre-Reformation English.

In the Church of Ireland today, the terms used in the Book of Common Prayer (2004) include the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Communion, and the Eucharist. Of these three, the Holy Communion is most frequently used to describe the full rite, although the Eucharist is used increasingly.

THE CENTRAL ACT OF THE CHURCH’S WORSHIP

The Book of Common Prayer (2004) says “the Holy Communion is the central act of worship of the Church” and “it is fitting that the Holy Communion be celebrated in every cathedral and in each parish church” on Sundays and on the principal Holy Days, such as Christmas, Easter, the Epiphany, the Presentation, Maundy Thursday, Ascension Day, Trinity Sunday and All Saints’ Day. There is no provision for celebrating the Eucharist on Good Friday.

The Ordinal clearly sets out that priests (who are both male and female) are ordained both to preach the word and to “minister his holy Sacraments” – the sacramental life is central to any understanding of ordained ministry.

Despite the expectations of the rubrics in the Book of Common Prayer, the frequency of celebrations varies according to the traditions of cathedrals and parish churches. For example, the Eucharist is the main Sunday service in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, and Saint Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast, in Saint Bartholomew’s Ballsbridge, All Saints’, Grangegorman and Saint John’s, Sandymount, all in Dublin, and Saint George’s, Belfast, and, during term time, the Chapel of Trinity College Dublin. Christ Church and Saint Anne’s are alone among Irish cathedrals in having daily celebrations of the Eucharist.

However, in many parishes where there is a weekly Sunday Eucharist, this may take place at an early hour (typically 8.30), with half a dozen or a dozen people present. The main Sunday service in parish churches is usually at 10.30 or 11 a.m., and typically alternates in many parishes between the Eucharist and Morning Prayer. Although the Book of Common Prayer says “Members of the Church should partake of the Lord’s Supper regularly,” in some churches the Holy Communion may be celebrated only once a month, and in those places this is usually on the first Sunday of the month. Celebrations of the Eucharist at Easter and Christmas can see many parish churches packed to capacity, and in the past Easter Communion provided a clear definition of membership of the Church of Ireland.

In the past, Easter Communion
provided a clear definition of
membership of the Church of
Ireland

REFORMING THE LITURGY

Before modern liturgical reforms, it was commonplace to find that on Sundays when Holy Communion was celebrated on a Sunday, it followed an abbreviated form of Morning Prayer. The vast majority of parishioners left the church during the final hymn, and only a handful of people remained for short service of Holy Communion. This practice is dying out, mainly because it is no longer facilitated by the liturgical structures in the Book of Common Prayer. Increasingly, all present receive the sacrament, but few parts of the Church of Ireland have come to the stage of liturgical awareness in the Church of England where, thanks to the Parish Communion Movement and later liturgical reforms, the Eucharist is the normal Sunday morning service.

Communion vessels, Christ Church Cathedral (Patrick Comerford)

The Book of Common Prayer provides for two Eucharistic rites. Holy Communion 1 more-or-less follows the format of Holy Communion in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Holy Communion 2 (pp 201-240) draws on the insights of the modern liturgical movement and its format is immediately recognisable to Christians of other traditions. There are provisions for some variations, with three Eucharistic prayers, and a variety of collects, prefaces, post-communion prayers and blessings that set or develop themes according to the liturgical calendar and seasons.

In some cases, Communion hosts
are used, with one large host for the
celebrant. My own preference is for
one, large, tasty bap

The Book of Common Prayer encourages full Scriptural readings at each celebration (normally Old Testament, Psalm, Epistle and Gospel), followed by a sermon and the Nicene Creed. A westward celebration, with the priest standing behind the altar and facing the people, is increasingly normal, the dominical words are used, and the full, four-fold movement described by Dom Gregory Dix (taking, blessing, breaking and giving the bread; taking, blessing and giving the cup) is regarded as one continuous moment of consecration – in the past, the 1662 Book of Common Payer restricted this understanding to the priest’s use of the dominical words.

BREAD AND WINE

The bread used must be “the best and the purest bread.” In some cases, Communion hosts are used, with one large host for the celebrant; my own preference is for one, large, tasty bap; sadly, in all too many parishes, the bread is often cheap sliced pan, pressed down and already cut into small cubes, so that the breaking or fraction is reduced a token gesture. Care must be taken too with the choice of wine, and one bishop delights in using champagne in his cathedrals on Easter Day!

Generally speaking, everyone present comes forward to receive Holy Communion, usually kneeling at the altar rails, although in cathedrals with large congregations communion may be administered in front of the rails, with people coming forward in single file and receiving standing up. The presiding priest administers the bread of Communion from a paten, and may be assisted by one or two colleagues or lay people administering a chalice.

Everyone is expected to have examined their consciences beforehand. In the past, children waited until Confirmation, around the age 12-14, to receive Communion. Children are invited to come forward to the rails to receive a blessing, but I am among the increasing number of priests who offer Communion to children who have been baptised. Christians of other traditions who are baptised and in good standing in their churches are generally welcomed, but their consciences are respected.

Because of this tradition of Eucharistic hospitality, Anglicans find it difficult to understand the practices of other traditions and we often feel excluded. This is particularly difficult, because of family relationships, in the Roman Catholic Church, and it is of little comfort, to point to similar practices in other traditions, including the Orthodox Churches, and in many evangelical traditions such as the Baptists and the Brethren.

COMMUNAL CELEBRATION

In the Church of Ireland, there can be no celebration of the Holy Communion unless at least one communicant is present. In other words, there are no private masses. But participation in the Eucharist is never taken for granted, and there is an air of reverence and stillness as people approach. It is a tradition that finds expression in the well-loved words of the Prayer of Humble Access:

“We do not presume to come to this your table, merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness but in your manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather the crumbs under your table. But you are the same Lord, whose nature is always to have mercy. Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us. Amen.”

(The Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford lectures in Liturgy and Anglicanism in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute and is a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

The altar at All Saints’, Grangegorman (Patrick Comerford)

This paper was first published in January/February 2016 in ‘Reality’ Volume 81, No 1, pp 14-17 (Dublin: Redemptorist Communications), editor: Brendan McConvery CSsR.