06.10.2022
Social Action Committee seeks news of parish initiatives
The Diocesan Committee for Social Action is seeking to highlight activities being undertaken by parishes at local level. The committee’s chairman, David Whyte, asked members of Diocesan Synod meeting in Taney on Tuesday evening (October 4) to get in touch with the committee with short articles on social action initiatives in their parishes.
Mr Whyte said that social action was one of the Five Marks of Mission and that there were many actions that could be undertaken by parishes. He said that since Covid–19 it had become very important to look out for our neighbours and have our neighbours looking out for us.
He commended two initiatives highlighted at Synod – a report by the Revd Prof Anne Lodge on the experiences of international people in these dioceses and outreach from St Mary’s Howth to people coming from Ukraine. “These two initiatives come under social action. Although many of the actions of the church are social action,” he noted.
He also commended the Cost of Living initiative which was being spearheaded by the Archbishop through the Church and Society Commission and the work of Mothers’ Union in highlighting issues around gender based violence.
During discussion on the report, the Revd Robert Kingston, Chaplain to The Mageough, thanked parishes who supported The Mageough annually and all who remembered them in the Cycle of Prayer. He said The Mageough was set up in 1878 by Archbishop Trench and was an example of practical Church of Ireland social engagement in the 1800s as well as part of the response to the depression around Disestablishment. He said that the ethos of The Mageough had had to change and in the early 2000s the word ‘home’ was dropped from the name and he asked members to disengage the word ‘home’ from The Mageough as it had legal connotations that they could not meet. He noted that The Mageough had never taken Lottery money or State funding. It was an independent and architecturally important retirement complex for older people who valued independent living, he said.