Church of Ireland General Synod: There were heartfelt expressions of praise and gratitude to all who helped bring peace to Northern Ireland at the Church of Ireland General Synod, which ended in Kilkenny yesterday. Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent, reports.
Referring to events at Stormont this week, the Bishop of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh, Right Rev Ken Clarke, said "it is always easy to knock politicians and public figures, but surely a message of gratitude must go out from this synod to all the politicians who have brought us to this point: DUP and Sinn Féin, Unionist, SDLP and Alliance, the smaller parties, British, Irish and American leaders, civil servants and negotiators, all of whom have brought us to this historybreaking moment.
"They deserve our thanks for sticking at it and getting there."
He continued: "Let the message go out loud and clear from this synod that we are fully and unreservedly behind the ongoing new paths of peace, the new patterns of political relationships, the DUP First Minister and the Sinn Féin Deputy First Minister, indeed every Minister.
"With their views we may not agree. But in our pews and prayer desks we will pray for them. But far more than that, we will do everything we can to actively support every initiative, political social and economic, which will deepen trust, strengthen new ways of doing things, and establish a fair and just society where loyalist and republican, Protestant and Catholic, people of other faiths and no faith, will live together with respect and in peace."
Speaking on the nurses' dispute, Dean Leslie Forrest (of Ferns) said they were being treated "almost as Mrs Thatcher treated the miners". The HSE was "clearly hiding their incompetence behind the nurses' current action, as if an hour out in selected hospitals was the main cause of trolleys in corridors or deferred appointments", he said. The threat to cut the nurses' pay by 13 per cent could "only exacerbate the situation".
Nurses did "a wonderful job", he added. "As someone who was a hospital chaplain for 15 years [ in Galway] I maintain you could not pay them enough for the work they do," he said.
The synod passed a bill yesterday calling for the removal of the words " . . . or had committed suicide . . ." from its canon listing circumstances where church burial could be denied. It was proposed by the Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross, Right Rev Paul Colton, out of "pastoral concern for the bereaved family". There were also "the modern multidisciplinary developments in understanding suicide".
In a rare decision yesterday, the synod decided not to accept a report from one of its boards. At the instigation of the Bishop of Cashel and Ossory, Right Rev Michael Burrows, it voted not to accept the report from the board for social responsibility (Republic of Ireland), as it contained matters that were "self-evidently not true".
The board had proposed a motion that "this Synod does not believe that it is able to engage in a practical way with social action in the Republic of Ireland".
It fell due to a technicality.