It was at a book launch 12 years ago. The subject of the book, by former president Mary McAleese, was Catholic Church canon law. Looking around at those present, a well-known “troublesome priest” commented “all the heretics are here”.
It made me wonder what might be the collective noun for heretics. I never did find out, but suggested to myself that it really should be “a question of heretics”. In attendance also were two Church of Ireland archbishops, retired Archbishop of Armagh Alan Harper and retired Archbishop of Dublin Walton Empey.
Both heretics, of course, to all right-thinking Catholic. I asked Archbishop Empey, a favourite prelate of mine, what was the collective now for a group of archbishops. Without a flicker of eyelid, he shot back “.
..a wisdom!” READ MORE In pictures: Summer solstice celebrations at the Hill of Tara Harbour Kitchen review: This is a cracking coastal restaurant Gabor Maté: I began to notice that the people who got chronically ill had trouble saying ‘no’ David Puttnam – The Long Way Home review: Heart-warming exploration of an Englishman’s love affair with Ireland He laughed.
I laughed. I could not disagree for a moment that it was, indeed, a wholly accurate description of archbishops, wherever two or three are gathered. More recently this curiosity about collective nouns brought me to the edge of destruction, or so it felt.
It was at the Terenure synagogue in Dublin last May, following the appointment of Yoni Wieder as .
