Believe it or Not

Patrick Semple was born into the minority Church of Ireland community in Wexford at the beginning of the second world war. 'These were the days of Catholic triumphalism when ecumenism in provincial Ireland was non-existent. Relations between individuals and families were good but at a parish level there was no contact...Canon Hazley would have had no contact with the Catholic clergy and if they met in public they would simply have exchanged polite greetings and passed on.'This is a very straight-talking, honest and often humorous insider account of growing up in such a church in such a society. Religion was also a factor in getting his first job in Brittain's motor assemblers in Rathmines, but did not interfere with the lively social life of his late teens. From there, the development of a sense of vocation, education at Trinity College, entry into the ministry and a first parish appointment in Belfast. Again, he chronicles the culture-clash between the world in which he grew up and the very different circumstances of religiously-divided Belfast. In a very full life in the ministry, Patrick Semple talks of ecumenism at parish level, of the idiosyncracies of aspects of the life of the Church of Ireland, and about difficulties with various aspects of Christian faith itself. As well as serving in parishes in Belfast, Laois, Wicklow and Dublin, he has been Church of Ireland Adult Education Officer and a chaplain to Mountjoy prison.