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Few of the members of our congregation have given more community service or been more active in their lives than Jan Bartlett. There were close links with the Girl Guides and charity organisations as well as with the theological college and the cathedral. After a mercifully short stay in hospital Jan died peacefully on Wednesday 25 November. She will be buried from the cathedral on Monday 30th at 11 a.m. Our deepest sympathy to Canon John and the family. A fuller tribute to Jan will appear in our January notes.
Trinity Cathedral in the city of San Jose, California will be twinned with Christ Church Cathedral, beginning on Advent Sunday, 29 November 1998. Each Sunday at the 11 a.m. Sung Eucharist we shall remember their people and their needs as they serve God – and they will remember us and ours. San Jose is a city of the computer world – very much a city for the third millennium – utterly transformed from the farming and fruit-growing area it was thirty years ago into "Silicon Valley". We hope to keep in regular contact and, in time, perhaps having linking visits. Ian Delinger, a member of the San Jose vestry was here in August. He had been a youth delegate at the Lambeth Conference and there carried the Church of Ireland Banner at the opening service.
Mrs Simms, who died earlier in the year, has left a legacy of £2,000 to the cathedral. Mrs Simms was a member of the Gwynn family – for so long associated with Trinity College – and we hope her legacy will be used for a purpose of which she would have approved. Those who were at the Eucharist on Sunday 15 November will have heard her archbishop husband, George, remembered in the memorials. It was his seventh anniversary.
Two gifts are being received in connection with the late Archdeacon Jenkins. The Revd Mark Gardner, his close friend, has given a solid Irish silver ciborium made in 1914, for use at the Eucharist, to the cathedral. Underneath it is inscribed AMDG remember RGF Jenkins (Priest) 1898-1998. It is a beautifully balanced piece and, like all good silver, a joy to hold as well as behold.
The other gift is directly from the archdeacon. After all personal legacies are paid the remainder of his estate is to be divided between named institutions, of which Christ Church is one. In death, as in life, Archdeacon Jenkins always had affection for this place.
There will be two services on Friday 25 December, Christmas Day. At 12 midnight the archbishop will celebrate the Eucharist and the dean will preach a short homily. At 11 a.m. on Christmas morning the roles will be reversed – though there is no restriction on the length of the archbishop’s sermon! Following this the two choirs will be in recess until Sunday 3 January 1999 earning a well-deserved rest from their labours.
The Sundays of Advent will all be observed as such – with the exception of Sunday afternoon at 3.30 p.m. on 20 December when the European Broadcasting Union plan a live broadcast of Christmas music to continental Europe from the cathedral. Other weekday pre-Christmas events will include:
The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on Monday 21 December at 8 p.m. Tickets are required for the centre nave seats only. Tickets will be available - to members of the Friends and to regular members of the congregation only - up to 11 December. Tickets for visitors will be available from 11 December. Please send a stamped addressed envelope now to The Administrator, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin 8. No tickets are required for aisle seats.
The Charity Carols on Thursday 17 December from 1.15-1.50 p.m. will be sung by the Cathedral Girls’ Choir. The recipient this year will be the Cheshire Foundation of Ireland whose 50th anniversary service was held in the cathedral earlier in the year. All are welcome.
Amnesty International has planned its annual Christmas concert for Saturday 12 December at 8 p.m. Full details may be obtained from Amnesty.
RTÉ One television will record a Christmas carol concert for showing on Christmas Eve. This will be videoed mainly on Thursday 10 December – probably about 7.30 p.m. Do come and be a part of the recording.
For the first time ever the cathedral will have a Crib for Christmas – and not just an ordinary crib but a moving crib! It will be displayed at the west door from early December. Visitors will be requested to put donations into a box and these will be distributed to organisations that look after the poor and the homeless. It will not be used liturgically until Christmas Eve!
The acts governing Christ Church Cathedral lay down that an Easter General Vestry with elections to board membership, both by the chapter and the lay registered, shall take place every third year. This third year will 1999.
The general vestry register will be revised at the board meeting on Thursday 14 January. To ensure that the list is accurate all who feel entitled to be included in the register should fill in the appropriate form and send it to the administrator at the cathedral.
Those (members of the Friends) whose completed forms will have been received by 11 January (and who will have paid their current subscription before Easter 1999) will automatically be included in the revision. This follows a legal opinion that Friends subscriptions - which monies are ultimately controlled by the board - may be counted for the purposes of registration.
Others, worshipping members of the congregation of not less than six months, must have a receipted subscription from the Hon. Treasurer for not less than £1 (paid before 31 December). Application forms, which must be received by the administrator not later than Monday 11 January, are available in the cathedral.
A date for the Easter general vestry will be announced in January.
The Mothers’ Union and Christ Church Cathedral have been living together longer than most people can remember. Now we have had a very amicable divorce! The Mothers’ Union office was in the old Synod Hall until it closed in 1982(?). The office then shared the music room in the cathedral. In those days the choir sang in the cathedral and used the music room only on Sundays and Thursdays – the MU office did not open on either day. With the increasing number of sung services and the arrival of the girls’ choir it became apparent that the choir needed the use of the entire music room. The MU generously moved to what had been the dean’s office. Pressure on space has again caused us to ask MU Ireland if they could find accommodation elsewhere. Very graciously they took no umbrage but were willing to examine alternative space at Saint Michan’s church – space which they are now delighted to occupy since it gives them more room for other events and a better office with garden views. The dean would wish to say thank you to the president, Mrs Mehaffey, and to the secretary, Mrs Mahon for their co-operation. We shall particularly miss Margaret who was a real daily part of our cathedral family.
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| Thank you to all who came to the cathedral to assist with the extra cleaning in preparation for the annual Citizenship Service. The floors had previously been made to glow but the woodwork was given the full cleaning treatment on Saturday 24 October. All who helped agreed that a similar spring-cleaning day might be undertaken in preparation for Easter. | ||
The cathedral has one of the best sets of Victorian stained glass in Ireland. Its main importance lies in its consecutive telling of the biblical story from Genesis to the early Church of the Acts of the Apostles. The Old Testament scenes are in the nave; the New Testament (starting in the north ambulatory) brings us through the eastern chapels and into the south transept.
The glass succeeds brilliantly in the context of George Edmund Street’s 1870 restoration of the cathedral, offering fine but distant images across a vista, yet each panel, when viewed close-up, is an inspiring work of art. A walk around the cathedral with a pair of binoculars will both support this argument and enable the detail to be viewed more easily, particularly in the higher windows.
The nave glass is the work of Hardman and Company of Birmingham. However, because of his dissatisfaction with their timekeeping and their designs Street decided to entrust the second part of the contract to Clayton and Bell of London. Visitors may decide for themselves if they agree with Street.
All this work was done more than one hundred and twenty years ago and the air pollution for which Dublin has been notorious is taking its effect on both the glass and especially on the leading. Thus, out of the sum of some £3.8m required for the total restoration of the cathedral, not less than £870,000 will be needed to remove each window, clean the glass and renew the lead.
(The above information is based on the draft version of a planned colour leaflet being designed and prepared by Mrs Lesley Whiteside).
Material for the January Church Review must reach the dean by 12th December.
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