descamps
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Cobh Town Council pays attention to ongoing repairs at Cobh Cathedral. Long discussions take place about reparis. Nothing happens and the collapse continues:
Minute Book, 10 May 2010:
1. Report by Mona hallihan, Conservation officer, Cork County Council.
The Conservation officer gave a report to Cobh Town Council on ongoing remedial works at Cobh Cathedral. In response to a question from Cllr Sean O’Connor regarding the erection of netting, the Conservation Officer stated that due to sugaring of the Bath stone and its decaying the netting had to be erected as a health & safety measure. She stated that the stonework would have to be re-pointed due to damage from salt-water and all water had to be eliminated from the building both inside and outside. Cllr O’Connor in response expressed the view that the pointing works were responsible for the seepage of water into the joints and buttresses. Ms Hallihan stated that the stonework had been rectified but that it along with the lead flashings, pipes etc needed ongoing maintenance and a plan for such was being drawn up. She added that the Bath stone was difficult to maintain such was its composition.
Did anyone notice what went on in the Cathedral in Cobh last Monday? The sight was something and the high altar was back in action. Cardinal Pell from Sydney turned up for mass. The choir was just out of this world.
Word has it in Cobh that the FOSCC, aka The Friends of St. Colman’s Cathedral, is preparing to put a big spanner in the political machinery of the Town Council in the run up to the June local elections. Election candidates can expect some pretty tough questioning from FOSCC which still has one or two outstanding matters of business with the Town Council.
So far, the Labour Party has announced that it is fielding John Mullvihill jnr, Hughie O Rielly, Jim Quinlan, Finbarr O’Driscoll.
The Fianna Fail position is confused. nitially it was touting Domhnall MacCarthaigh, Jack Gilmartin,Ger Curley,Mick Martin, a female school teacher, and another. Jack Gilmartin Ger Curley have withdrawn. So they are busy trying to find replacements.
Fine Gael is still unclear wht it’s going to do.
Sinn Fein also has an interest and then an array of independents.
At this stage, the Ballincollig Conference must be something Cork County wishes it hadn’t become involved with. The first part of the Conference, provided by Bishop Magee, was an embarrassment to many of the council officials and irritated the participants: sermonizing and talking down just don’t work in this kind of forum.
Although the first part was given over to the Cloyne Historic Churches Committee, none of its three speakers had anything to say about cherishing historic churches. The departure point of all three was that everything was up for grabs. Richard Hurley summed up the attitude by comparing the renovation of a 19th century church with clearing out the clutter of a Victorian bathroom!!
The Council people just did not have enough education to engage this argumant at all. Their reaction was similar to their counterparts in post-colonial Africa: sit, say nothing, roll the white of the eye, and eventually go along with anything siad for we don’t know any better and we havn’t the cultural baggage to employ what minimal education we might have.
Press reports about this conference in the Irish Examiner, the Echo, and the Irish Catholic, should already have been sufficient to cause the PA to take notice. Since no specific planning application was involved, it was not obliged to take advice at this level only from the Cloyne Historic Churches Advisory Committee alone and it should, therefore, have been a bit more open to other points of view- I would include among those the Church of Ireland, Methodists etc., who were appallingly treated and basically regarded as hangers-on. A wider discussion of this problem just didn’t happen.
More worrying, however, was the circulation of the list of registered participants at the conference among persons who had no right to have such information. Presumably, in accepting registrations Cork County Council had a duty under the Data Protection Acts (1989, 2003) to use the information only for the purposes for which it was supplied to them. In a quite unprofessional turn of events, registration lists were supplied to persons other than the Council and approaches were made concerning the participation of specific persons who had registered for the conference. Just notice that one contributor on this thread is able to say that a specific number of persons attended the conference to represent a particular organisation – yet, on the day in Ballincollig, there were no lists of participants available to anyone who turned up and no information was available on the participants to anyone there other than to the organisers. How come one contributor to this thread knows all? A complaint should be made to the Govenment Ombudsman asking her to investigate this obvious lack of professionalism and the exposure of persons to the unwelcome attention of cranks simply because they supplied personal data to the Cork County Council.
Monday’s meeting of Cobh Town Council brought to light some developments on the Cathedral saga. Replying to questions on the works now going on in the Cathedral, Town Council officials confirmed that they had received a letter from the Church authorities saying that the services of architect Professor Cathal O’Neill had been dispensed with. A local firm of architects have been hired by the Steering committee to look at the maintenance questions facing the Cathedral fabric.
The long awaited second move on Cobh Cathedral is coming up on the horizon. At last Monday’s meeting of Cobh Town Council, P. Lynch, the Town Clerk, blandly announced that the Cathedral Trustees had requested a meeting with theTC planning officials. Cathal O’Neill is back on the ball. He is devising a very interesting solution for the porches at the Cathedral’s main doors – which will more than likely involve removing much of the present wooden screens and doors. Just how is Cobh TC going to manage this one? I wonder will they be as willing and fast to grant planning permission for this project or will they simply shove it under the carpet with a declaration of exemption. Watch this space!
News from Cobh tonight is not good as far as St. Colman’s Cathedral is concerened.
After months of warnings about the state and condition f the building due to lack of mantenance and a complete lack of concern on the part of the Cathedral Restoration Fund and the Town Council, the inevitable happened – part of the groining of the South Aisle collapsed and hit someone. This was an accident waiting to happen.
Most of the South side of the Cathedral has been cordoned off and is no longer accessible to the public.
Less than half of the Cathedral seating capacity can now be used at one of the busiest times of the year. The only solution has been to put on extra masses.
When the dust -literally – settles on this one, a number of people will just have to walk the plank. There are clear issues of negligence at stake here in allowing the general public to be exposed to such danger for so long and not to take any kind of action.
Another thing that has to be borne in mind: this latest should not in any way distract from the usual planning process and that that the negligent will not now use this latest twist to evade the law on planning.
Over the psat number of months, the FOSCC has offered every possible help to speed up the planning process by ironing out difficulties before the planning application was made. The Steering Committee has consistently refused to talk to the FOSCC about Cathedral repairs. If further delays now arise because of inadequate plans or because of furter destructive plans, the FOSCC will not be to blame and the Town Council and Health and Safety Inspectorate should seek to close the building pending the carrying out of proper repairs.
Monsignor Denis Reidy resigned from the Steerinmg Committee of the Cobh Cathedral Restoration yesterday. He has resigned both as Secretary and as a member making a complete break with the Steering Committee after nearly 16 years. Originally seen by all as a pair of safe hands to be trusted with restoration work in the cathedral, as time went on, it became more and more obvious that he was the main pusher of a very radical plan to wreck the interior of St. Colman’s. His obstinacy and total contempt for the local opposition -especially as embodied in the FOSCC and for particular members of its committee-ensured that Bishop Magee stayed firm-footed on a road leading to public strife, parochial division, massive squandering of restoration funds, and to his gigantic humiliation at the hands of An Bord Pleanala. T. Cavanagh realized the consequences of this early on and resigned from the Steering Committee two months after An Bord Pleanala’s decision was confirmed. It has taken Msgr. Reidy two years to arrive at the same conclusion.
His departure can only be a positive development. By removing the obstinacy and contempt elements from the Steering Committee it has some chace of coming to grips with reality and of doing something to recover miles of lost ground as far as public confidence is concerned in Cobh. Moderate figures such as Canon Denis O’Callaghan should now be able to come to the fore.
His replacement is Fr. Robin Morrissey. He is a wholly non-descript element in the equation. Bishop Magee explained that Fr. Morrissey was chosen for the task of Secretary of the Steering Committee because he had been in charge of all the buildings that the Carmelites had in Ireland – before he abandoned them and they him. Probably closer the mark, however, is the bishop’s belief that he has a willing -and ablebodied- pot bearer in Fr. Morrissey who will be only too willing to go along with any old nonsense simply to keep the bishop happy. We await with baited breath to see how this one will play itself out!!!
Sorry to interrupt the tour of English perpendicular Gothic but a NEWS FLASH form Cobh:
After months of stillness, the Trustees of Cobh Cathedral, headed up by the bold bishop, are back on the attack on St. Colman’s Cathedral.
Work of the top secret operation got out as a result of rumblings at the last meeting of the Cobh Town Council. Under a bit of pressure, the trusty Town Clerk, P. Lynch, admitted he he had received correspondence from the Trustees that the great Professor O’Neill was back on the job and is preparing a new plan for Cobh Cathedral.
The FOSCC swung immediately into action and slapped a freedom of information act on P. Lynch about correspondence from the Trustees re further plans for the Cathedral. Word in town has it that P. Lynch has confirmed to the FOSCC that O’Neill is indeed working on more plans for the interior of Cobh Cathedral and, that McCutcheon Mulcahy are still acting as planning consultants for Magee.
It seems that Magee and his pals are not getting the message and fail to accept last year’s decision by An Bord Pleanala.
Rumour has it that McCutcheon Mulachy have been trying to get this latest past Cobh Town Council by a section 59 Declaration. Over the past few months, several Parish Priests have been busy laying the ground for this by initiating a whole series of works to protected structures throughout County Cork without any reference to the planning authority. Indeed, all sorts of things have happened, including demolitions of protected structures, in an effort to undermine an Bord Pleanala.
However, neither McCutcheon Mulcahy nor the great Professor O’Neill seem to have learne a lesson from the last hammering doled out to them by the FOSCC. That is truly a pity. If it becomes necessary, the FOSCC are likely to dole out an even more severe clouting to these two brazen things.
As for Cobh Town Council, well we shall see whether they are going to be a bit more responsible and a good bit more honest in their dealings with the people of Cobh this time around! After all, they still owe 110 people Euro 20 each for submissions they did not bothered to read – that is generally called fraud! When it comes to putting in objections to any of the great Professor’s objectionable plans, these people should DEMAND that their second round of objections be ADMITTED FREE OF CHARGE in compensation for the dishonesty of the Town Council.
@Praxiteles wrote:
The idea strikes me that we could run an opinion poll and let the the viewers, all 200,000 of them, decide the issue and it might cause the HACK to muster up the courage to go.
The question that could be put is a simple one:
Do you think that the Cloyne HACK should resign in the wake of their recommendation to wreck the interior of St. Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh, Co. Cork?
Answers should also be kept simple: Yes or NO.
Perhaps the administrator could set it up on the front page with all the poll gagets!
and one for the missus
Yes
@Praxiteles wrote:
The idea strikes me that we could run an opinion poll and let the the viewers, all 200,000 of them, decide the issue and it might cause the HACK to muster up the courage to go.
The question that could be put is a simple one:
Do you think that the Cloyne HACK should resign in the wake of their recommendation to wreck the interior of St. Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh, Co. Cork?
Answers should also be kept simple: Yes or NO.
Perhaps the administrator could set it up on the front page with all the poll gagets!
yes
Gianlorenzo wrote:Hi Prax,Been away on a working holiday, missed you all. 😀 Some interesting development with the churches in Co. Cork.
Visited the Cathedral the other day and the crib has finally been taken down, though not removed from the Pieta Chapel. I suppose the ADM. thinks it is easier ,at this stage, to leave it, so as to be ready for next Christmas. The Cathedral is still in a disgraceful condition.:eek: They should be ashamed of themselves.
I don’t know whether the Steering Cmmtte]I would not be too sure that the Cobh Town Council is not a standing joke as well with the people of Cobh.
@Praxiteles wrote:
A very sharp comment Chris and dead spot on!!
Here are a couple of more to show the thing right side up -the lfeties woz obviously at it here!!
Is is not that just a stunning piece of Gothick!! A pity the ESB box has not a pointed arch – it would lend street cred to it.
The look of that door could be enhanced were someone to put a pointed paper border over it. It does rather look a bit hungry without any cresting.
@Praxiteles wrote:
La Guerre de Troie…and all that…but, where is the face that launched the thousand ships that hid in the statio mala fide carinis ?
That kisser is over in Carrigtwohill.
Bishop Magee will be in a stronger position to encourage Greencore to honour its committments to its workforce at Mallow factory when he honours his very own committements and solemn promises to the people of Cobh concerning St. Colman’s Cathedral – otherwise, he runs the risk of sounding HOLLOW and it certainly is a bit rye for one of the most pig headed men in the country to call Greencore “intransigent”:
“Bishop intervenes on behalf of redundant sugar workers
Wednesday, December 6thThe Bishop of Cloyne, Dr John Magee, has called on Greencore to pay redundancy to its former workers according to the agreement it entered into in 2004.
In a statement issued from the Cloyne Diocesan Office yesterday, Bishop Magee said that he had recently met with a delegation of former workers from the Irish Sugar factory in Mallow, and had fully understood the facts of the case.
“I strongly endorse the Taoiseach’s statement in the D
Bishop held another meeting last Friday with the canons of the cathedral. It went on for a long time but they were not discussing the cathedral. When bishop did get to talk about it he had some interesting things to say about his recent (short) meeting with BXVI, by what the birdies in Cobh are singing. He gave away one vital piece of information: he did not bring up the subject of the cathedral with BXVI — BXVI BROUGHT IT UP WITH HIM and said that he knew Cobh and the view over the harbour from the cathedral, he knew the beautiful cathedral, he had been having LOTS and LOTS of letters of complaint from the troops on the ground in Cobh. Bish. also told the canons that BXVI had asked him about the high altar, the tabernacle, the reredos, and more importantly, the ALTAR RAILS, and the schoold boy had to answer his questions as best he could from an unprepared text and without the help of Brian McCutcheon and Denny Reidy. Sounds like he was up the creek without the proverbial…. It does not take much to figure out that a bishop would not want to be attracting notice or attention for himself when the one noticing and attending is BXVI. The message in all of that to anyone with eyes and ears in their head is to leave well enough alone.
@Praxiteles wrote:
Gianlorenzo!
It strikes me that we will have to revise that figure again. I forgot to reckon going/coming for 7 people. Thus the figure now is :
120 divided by (7 x 5), all divided by 7
So, that should be 85 minutes divided by 7 which now leaves everybod with an average maximum of 12.14 minutes with the Pope.
I have also checked the Vatican Gazzette for the following two weeks and no further Audience was granted to our bold bishop. So, after nearly a month in Rome he had the Pope’s ear for all of 12.14 minutes max. That, I suppose, was generous when you consider that Prime Ministers get a max of 30 minutes.
The point is clear from the Gazzette of the Audience of 30 October 2006 when the Pope received the Prime Minister of East Timor who would have had 30 minutes.
Then he received the Ambassador of Pakistan who would have had 15 minutes.
Then he received only 4 Irish bishops that morning, each getting circa. 10 minutes.
That adds up to 85 minutes. The remaining time was spent greeting a group.
So, clearly, there was no long term conversation with the Pope about St. Colman’s Cathedral.
http://212.77.1.245/news_services/bulletin/news/19118.php?index=19118&po_date=27.10.2006&lang=en
Does that mean we are lying again?
Descamps was in Cork to-day and quite unexpectedly ran into a group of clergy from the diocese of Cloyne who were having a liturgy meeting with Fr. Danny Murphy, Fr. Sean Terry, Fr. Denis Reidy and architect Alex White. Bishop Magee was also there and spoke to the group.
He told them that he had been to Rome and had spoken to the Pope. He said that he had shown a new set of plans and photographs for Cobh Cathedral to the Pope. He insinuated that the Pope told him to go ahead with them – though he allowed himself sufficient room to back out of this should awkward questions be asked at a later date (Readers will remember that at the Midleton hearing he was badly caught telling fibbs on a similar heading).
More interestingly, he said that when he had spoken to the Local Planning Authority (Cobh Town Council) and he was given to understand that they would be “cooperative” and try to help in any way possible with whatever he might want to do. They told him to bring back a new set of plans to them, he said.
The driving force in this initiative seems to be Fr. Denny Reidy of Carrigtwohill. Curiously, there was no sign of Tom Cavanagh from Fermoy who was a staunch supporter of the last project.
The bold bishop announced that he was going ahead with another reordering scheme to gut the interior of Cobh Cathedral no matter what the people of Cobh or the diocese of Cloyne think.
Has the FOSCC heard of this?
Good point Pete-
If you did not see it, here’s the link:
@archangel wrote:
This is an excellent thread, inspiring, informative and has given ordinary parishioners the courage to question what is happening to some of our beautiful churches in Ireland today. Our Parish church St.Gabriels Dollymount is due for ‘reordering’ of the sanctuary in early January. This entails,inter alia, removing exquisite marble and brass altar rails. St. Gabriels was opened in 1956and at the time considered one of the finest churches in the diocese.The architect we believe was Louis Peppard and any information on his work would be welcome. St. Gabriels is not a listed building so any dissension to the plans does not carry the weight of the Cobh cathedral case. The reordering is going ahead, with diocesan approval, despite the wishes of a substantial number of parishioners. A survey of a representative sample in the parish found that 72% of parishioners did not agree with the removal of the present altar rails. Will St. Gabriels be just another casualty in the reorganisation and destruction of Irish Catholic churches?
Hi Archangel and welcome to the thread.
Just because St. Gabriel’s is not a listed building does not mean that you have no options to prevent an unwanted and and unwelcome redevelopment of its interior. Not being listed mearly means that you have not the same range of options available to you as the Friends of St. Colman’s had.
1. An ecclesiastical recourse should be taken by the parishioners or a group of parishioners against the parish priest and Archbishop Martin at the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline fo the Sacraments in Rome. The procedure is straight forward enough but would be more securely followed had you the guidance and expertise of a canonist available to you. Simply write to the parish priest and Archbishop Martin asking them to rescind or amend the decrees that were issued (if issued at all) authorising the development of the interior of the church. If they agree to do so well and good. If not, and you do not hear from them within 28 days (and register your letters with a form of registration requiring signature for delivery) then you can place your case directly before the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments as a recourse and ask him to decide the merits of the case. Of course, while this is going on no work can or should take place.
2. Just as a precautionary measure, while your recopurse is going on you could approach the High Court seeking an order to prohibit development of the interior of the church until a decision is given in the ecclesiastical forum i.e. by the Congregation for Divine Worship adn the Discipline of the Sacraments.
3. It would also be useful to engage the services of a good company of solicitors. The Friends of St. Colman’s Cathedral were very well served by Arthur Cox and Co., Earlsford Terrace, Dublin 2.
Is it true that the great open minded Dirmuid Martin shafted the local curate when he came out in support of the parishioners opposed to the development of the church interior?
