Short notices

January 12, 2010 in General, News
  • pmcv_spirit_01Peter McVerry appeared on Joe Duffy’s Spirit Level on RTE 1, one of three guests invited to present a “20-20 vision for Ireland” coming into the new year. He spoke of how Ireland is going through ont only an economic crisis but also a ‘crisis of values’. See programme on RTE Player (go to 21:30).
  • Your prayers are asked for the six first-year novices in Birmingham (Hennie Barnard from South Africa; Jos Moons from the Netherlands; Bart Baele from Flanders; and Niall Leahy, Ronan McCoy, and Joe Keegan from Ireland), who start the Spiritual Exercises at Loyola Hall on 8 January.  Meanwhile the second-years have left for their Long Experiments until Easter. Shane Daly (HIB) is working in a children’s home on the outskirts of Lusaka in Zambia. Mick O’Connor (BRI) and Samuel Overloop (BSE) are bound for Guyana but are, at the time of writing, stranded in Brixton as all flights have been cancelled by the snow.
  • The annual week of Prayer for Christian Unity begins on Monday, January 18. The theme for 2010 is ‘You are witnesses to these things’ ( Luke 24:48). Helpful resource materials can be downloaded from www.ctbi.org.uk. This year the centenary of the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910 is being celebrated – an event that is often said to mark the beginning of the modern ecumenical movement.
  • ‘Into the Desert: The Contemplative Face of New Monasticism’ by Douglas Burton-Christie – an event organized by New Monasticism Ireland and held in All Hallows College, Dublin, on January 16. For booking details, contact Michael O’Sullivan SJ at: [email protected]
  • Manresa is repeating the ‘Movies that Matter’ programme, which was hugely popular last year. Again this year Sr. Avril O’Regan RLR will explore with the participants issues of faith and meaning through the medium of film. The series starts at 7.30pm on Wednesday, 13 January, and continues for six evenings – at fortnightly intervals – until 24 March. Payment is at attendants’ discretion.
  • The doctoral thesis of Dalibor Renic SJ was approved at a viva on 5 January. The title of the dissertation is “Ethical Elements in Epistemic Normativity: Lonergan and Virtue Epistemology.”