|
| January Update to All Our Members
Association of Catholic Priests
January 14, 2012
http://www.associationofcatholicpriests.ie/2012/01/january-update-to-all-our-members/
1. Assembly: We are working on our plans for an assembly in late April/early May. On January 26th we are having a meeting in Marianella, Dublin at 7.30pm. This meeting is for anyone who wishes to be involved in the preparation of the event. Lay, clergy and religious are welcome to come. We see this as a joint venture between ourselves and others who share our objectives and hopes for the Church.
2. Our membership has increased greatly. We now have 650 members. We had some very successful regional meeting during the Autumn. We would encourage the various diocesan groups to look at the possibility of coming together for a meeting. Some have done so. All it needs is for one or two to organise it. If anyone wishes to know who the members are in your diocese, please get on to us.
3. Membership fee for 2012: The fee of €20 for this year is now due. Those who have already paid in the last couple of month of the past year can consider themselves paid for this year. For the rest you can pay by using the paypal facility on the website, or send a cheque, payable to the ACP, to Tony Flannery at Redemptorists, Esker, Athenry, Co. Galway.
4. Priests out of Ministry: We received the following from this group. If you know of anyone in this situation you might acquaint them with it:
A small number of us priests who are out of ministry because of boundary issues realise that we can get through the sense of isolation and exclusion by being companions to each other.
This group is well on the way to organising a viable support group. They are in a fruitful dialogue with the Irish Episcopal Conference, CORI and the IMU. They are in the process of establishing and Advisory Board.
If you experience a need for support or companionship, we invite you to contact the ACP leadership to express your interest, so that you too may share in developing further a model of support that meets our needs.
5. About a dozen priests have so far availed of our legal services, and we are very grateful for the generous service these people are giving us, most noticeably in one recent very public case.
We wish you all the blessings of God during this coming year.
The Leadership Team
|