AJ Goes Riding

Our Lady of the Round Table Marianist Retreat

From Isabella R. Moyer:

“I belong to a ‘cyber’ Marianist Lay Community called Our Lady of the Round Table. The original members met online in May 2005, during the North American Center for Marianist Studies (NACMS) online course on Marianist Community, facilitated by Carol Ramey. We felt a strong bond of community through our online discussions and wanted to build on the experience…We wondered if this format would work for our new community. Well, almost five years later, we can say that it’s working rather well!

Tomorrow I’m travelling to Ireland for our first OLRT retreat! Some of us have met before, but this will be the first time we will all be together. (Pati is unable to be with us, but we’re planning to have a Skype call on Wednesday.) It’s going to be a grand reunion!

…What do you call the first ” in person” gathering of a community that has been meeting daily online for five years? Is it a reunion? But, technically, don’t we have to meet first to have a reunion? We already know each other face’s from photos, voices from phone calls, and spirits from the daily sharing of our prayers and life. But this was our first ‘in the flesh’ visit….an incarnational moment. And what a moment it was! Maybe one day I’ll be able to put this moment into words, but all I can do right now is savor it.

We were given an incredible welcome by the the Marianist Brothers of Ballybrack. They have wined us, and dined us, and even provided us with some local Irish talent, Sean Frayne, for an evening of song and laughter. Sean is an alumnus of St. Laurence school. And, thanks to Susan, our days are packed with sight-seeing and fun.”

International Organization of Marianist Lay Communities
- NEWS AND VIEWS by Isabella R. Moyer – MLC President

Lambing Season in Ireland

It is March, which means it is lambing season in Ireland.

Bloody Sunday Memorial Lecture

Bloody Sunday Memorial Lecture 2010

Human Rights Lawyer Gareth Peirce Delivered the Lecture









The Bloody Sunday Weekend Committee is honoured to host esteemed campaigner for justice and human rights, English Solicitor,Gareth Pierce to deliver this year’s Bloody Sunday Memorial Lecture.

Gareth was invited by the weekend committee to deliver this year’s lecture because of her long history of representing those who have been at the receiving end of human rights abuses and miscarriages of justice. Some of the many people she has represented down through the years include: the ‘Birmingham Six’, the ‘Guildford Four’, former Guantanamo Bay internee Moazzam Begg and more recently the family of Jean Charles da Menezes (the young Brazilian man who was shot dead by police officers in the London underground after they wrongly identified him of being a suicide bomber).

The Bloody Sunday Weekend Committee invites all those concerned for justice and human rights everywhere to come to the Guildhall in Derry city for 8pm on Saturday March 20th to here Gareth Peirce deliver this year’s Bloody Sunday Memorial Lecture, ‘Set the Truth Free’!

Venue: Guildhall, Derry City
Date: Saturday, March 20th 2010
Time: 8pm

Queen's University Lecture

The MacDermott Lecture

Lady Hale, Justice of the UK's Supreme Court








The Great Hall
Lanyon Building
The School of Law
Queen's University
Belfast, Northern Ireland
18 March 2010
5.30pm

ISE Seminar

This week was dominated by an international, ecumenical seminar on the future of Christianity, which was held at our campus in Belfast.


Phyllis Tickle





Beki Bateson (left)


Dave Tomlinson



Kester Brewin


Peter Rollins and Kester Brewin


Three Americans: one living in Germany, one living in England, and one living in Brooklyn (left to right)


The BBC was on-hand to interview participants!

The Long Way to Glencree

I had a chance over the weekend to visit the The Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation, which is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation that is devoted "to peacebuilding and reconciliation in Ireland, North and South, Britain and beyond. The programme work builds peace and fosters reconciliation by facilitating dialogues, creating peace education resources, and much more."


I went with my friend and fellow lay Marianst, Susan Mason Buckley, and we stopped at Glendalough, to visit the 6th century monastic site and round tower.


We also passed through the snowline in the Wicklow Mountain National Park.

But we did finally make it out to Glencree, and it was worth the long drive!

UCD Seminar

Breaking the Patterns of Conflict: The Irish State, the British Dimension and the Northern Ireland Conflict

Institute for British-Irish Studies
School of Politics & International Relations
University College Dublin
Theatre R, Newman (Arts) Building
Belfield, Dublin 4

Friday, 12 March 2010

This conference was initiated to build on findings from the ‘Breaking Patterns’ research project, which aims to assess how British and Irish policy promoted and instigated change in the patterns of conflict in Northern Ireland.

The project documents key turning points in British and Irish relations and strategy towards Northern Ireland since the 1960s, through a series of 'witness seminars' and long interviews which are taped, transcribed and deposited in the UCD Archives department.

The conference was designed to situate the results in comparative perspective.
The project is funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences.

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PROGRAMME

I. The British-Irish Process

Negotiating Settlements (10:00 - 11:15)

(1) Developing intergovernmental approaches: evidence from the politicians
Susan McDermott, University College Dublin

(2) Institutional change and conflict regulation: the Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985) and the mechanisms of change in Northern Ireland
Jennifer Todd, University College Dublin

**********Tea/Coffee**********

Post Settlement (11:45 - 1:00)

(3) Adapting consociation to Northern Ireland
John Coakley, University College Dublin

(4) Sri Lanka after the end of the war
Stanley Samarasinghe, Tulane University

**********Lunch Break**********

II. After Peace: Parties, Paramilitaries and Populations - Northern Ireland in Comparative Perspective (2:00 - 4:30)

(5) Loyalists: Including the 'Awkwards'
Michael Anderson, University College Dublin

(6) Civil society in Northern Ireland changing the narrative in the interests of peace-building
Avila Kilmurray, Community Foundation for Northern Ireland

**********Tea/Coffee**********

(7) The spectre of history: Northern nationalism and the peace process
Cillian McGrattan, University College Dublin

(8) New Sinn Fein and old ('dissident') republicanism: Ideological and demographic trends
Jonathan Tonge, University of Liverpool