02.10.2023
Traditional Michaelmas Law Term Service Marks Start of Legal Year
The new legal year got underway this morning (Monday October 2) with the traditional Michaelmas Law Term services taking place in St Michan’s Church of Ireland and Catholic churches in Dublin.
This year in addition to the traditional church services to mark the start of the term, a new secular ceremony took place in the Four Courts with addresses by the Chief Justice, the chief executive of the Courts Service and the Attorney General as well as a performance of the Courts Service choir.
Back in St Michan’s, Archbishop Michael Jackson presided at the service with other participants including the Vicar of the Christ Church Cathedral Group of Parishes, Archdeacon David Pierpoint; the Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, the Very Revd William Morton; the Precentor of St Patrick’s and chaplain to the King’s Hospital School, Canon Peter Campion; and the Revd Alan Rufli, prison chaplain. The preacher was the Revd Robert Marshall, Diocesan and Provincial Registrar and solicitor.
As has been tradition for over a century, the choir of the King’s Hospital, under the direction of Ciaran Kelly, led the music at the service. The service gathers people from the legal world including solicitors, barristers, members of the judiciary, representatives of An Garda Síochána, the Defence Forces and the Diplomatic Corps to pray for those involved in the justice system at the start of the Michaelmas Term.
In his address, the Revd Robert Marshall focused on contested space and contested heritage. He said that contested space was where historic objects, structures, buildings, places and their associated meaning had become challenged. Similarly contested heritage referred to an association with individuals from the past whose conduct was considered abhorrent and inimical to contemporary values.
“At one level this is about memory and how different people with different perspectives view a particular place. At another level, it is the management of change: pastoral change to remove a contest that causes hurt, disconnection and dissention. At rock bottom, this management of change raises straightforward if complex issues within civil society. A spiritual perspective changes the level so that in a civil context, resolution ceases to be straightforward,” he stated.
Mr Marshall said that different churches had different issues in managing their sacred spaces and noted that the older the building, the more intricate and complex its relationship with the faith community and wider culture became.
He referenced a number of contested spaces in the UK and Ireland, including the Collison statue in Bristol and the Rustat memorial in the chapel of Jesus College, Cambridge and the name of the ‘new library’ at Trinity College Dublin.
When a contested space was identified, he said that often people and institutions were not conscious of how events resonated from the past. Consequently, the responsibility of society for past events went undebated. “Memorials of the past endorse participants and events which were then legal but are now reprehensible by modern standards. Retaining those memorials continues that endorsement but the neighbour principle requires that if a memorial gives genuine offence to people who resort to the church, some action must be taken,” he stated.
Historians and those who preserve culture would prefer to ‘retain and explain’ the contested space but Mr Marshall wondered how the explanation could be communicated within an ecclesiastical heritage building. He outlined other approaches: ‘remove and forget’ – eg rolling the Collison statue into the dock in Bristol; or ‘remove and explain’ – removing it to a museum, which he suggested left the current consequences of past events unaddressed. He proposed the ‘live with and redeem’ concept – accept responsibility and refuse to endorse the past. “The past cannot be changed. It has to be understood, lived with and atoned for, however uncomfortable that may be,” he commented.
You can read the full address here.
