28 September 2025
By Tom Collins
tom@TheCork.ie
Below is his speech
United Dioceses of Cork, Cloyne and Ross Diocesan Synod Address by The Right Rev. Dr Paul Colton, Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross on 27th September 2025 in Bandon Grammar School, Bandon, Co Cork.
We meet again, as a Diocesan Synod, in this 27th year of my episcopate, in the name of God, the Holy Trinity, who has called us to be the Church in this place: Cork, Cloyne and Ross. As you know, this will be my last time presiding at this Synod as your Bishop.
Bishop’s Bell
I have immense gratitude for each and every volunteer in the Church and, indeed, in society. Among church volunteers, I’ve a particular affection for musicians and bellringers.. Why bellringers? Well, bellringers are rarely seen and I wasn’t a great one myself.
The bell calls us together in God’s name to be the worshipping people that God asks us to be. In the same way, of old, the children of Israel were called together by silver trumpets, especially for worship:
‘The Lord said to Moses: “Make two trumpets of hammered silver, and use them for calling the community together and for having the camps set out. When both are sounded, the whole community is to assemble before you at the entrance to the tent of meeting.’ (Numbers 10.1-3)
In the early Celtic Church it was common practice to give a bell to bishops as symbols of their office at their consecration, again, to be used to call the people together. In some parts of Anglicanism, a new rector rings the bell of the church at his or her institution as a sign of this same responsibility to call the people together.
To mark this 27th Diocesan Synod, my family and I have commissioned a bell from Matthew Higby and Co Ltd (who among other places ‘did’ the bells in St Fin Barre’s Cathedral, in Rosscarbery Cathedral, in Doneraile and installed the bells in Abbeystrewry). My family and I wish to make this parting gift to this Diocesan Synod and to the Diocesan Council and to your future counsels.
Matthew Higby, Director of the firm, from Bath, in Somerset has sourced this bell for me – for us – to give to you, as a thankoffering for our years of mission and ministry together, to use in your proceedings henceforth. The link with Bath seems appropriate too given that Bishop Isaac Mann, bishop here from 1772 to 1788 who built the current Bishop’s Palace, died in Bath. His body was brought back to Cork and was eventually buried in St fin Barre’s Cathedral in 1861.
Continuing Precarious Times
Last year, I referred to the precarious times in which we live and in which we walk the pilgrim way as disciples of Jesus Christ. ‘Precarious’ is hardly even an adequate word to describe some of the horrors and trends we are witnessing. Another year on, little has changed and, if anything, many of the situations I described then, Ukraine, the Middle East, in particular Gaza, the West Bank and Israel, have, to our great distress, horror and disbelief, got far worse. And some of the hostages from the Hamas attack on 7th October 2023 are still held in captivity. My own overriding emotions in all of this are of impotence and helplessness. Finding a way forward – specifically towards enduring peace and reconciliation, yet alone ceasefire – appears even to elude the most powerful people and entities on the planet. On Monday, speaking at the special conference at the United Nations, An Taoiseach, described the prospects as ‘bleak’. He said:
‘The situation on the ground has rarely looked so bleak – a just and lasting peace seems further away than it ever has.’
It is a reality too that our preoccupation with some horrors pushes other human catastrophes to the margins. This is one of the challenges that aid and relief organisations such as our own Bishops’ Appeal face. We also want to keep our own special project Liloma in people’s minds here.
We hear less, for example, about the civil war in Sudan, conflict in Myanmar, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Syria and in countless other places around the world. Indeed, deciding what to include on a list of conflicts worldwide is a complex and subjective exercise. Nonetheless, The Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights sets out 45 armed conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa alone; a further 35 on the remainder of the African Continent, 21 in Asia, 7 in Europe, 6 in Latin American,
Most of these seldom make the news now. As to the present trajectory of the world, I was impressed by the speech at the United Nations by the Prime Minister of Finland, Alex Stubb. He said:
‘Most of the speeches that we have heard here today have highlighted the fact that the world order, balance and dynamics are changing much like they did after World War II when the UN was founded. I actually think the post-Cold War order is over. But we do not know what the new order is going to look like. It will take at least five to ten years for things to settle … ‘
Meanwhile the focus of media and our own capacity to engage is curtailed by human limitations and by dint of choice. It even seems, at times, that the Climate Crisis has been marginalised or put out of mind. Never far from our minds, however, are the housing crisis at home, as well as the raging culture wars now prevalent on our own island, with immigrants and asylum seekers, in particular, being targeted, often mercilessly, and without empathy or compassion..
As I’ve observed countless times – it is a mere accident of birth that we were born here rather than there, that we we born this side of the fence rather than that side, that we are not the ones looking across an expanse of water and crowding into a boat to get to the other side, that it is not, in this instance, ours or our children’s hands stretched out in anguish looking for food or help, or that we were not born into one of those places of horror in the world.
Of course we, and every nation, need an asylum system and immigration programme that is fit for purpose. No one is talking about a free for all or open borders. But, we also need humanity and compassion. I despair, therefore, when I hear people who own for themselves, the love and salvation of Christ, but who themselves draw a line at showing compassion and mercy to others. Jesus was quite clear: ‘Love God; love your neighbour.’ Our neighbour was not the person in the same neighbourhood watch scheme as us or the same residents’ association that we belong to – we know that from the story of the Good Samaritan. That, and the many challenges of Jesus must confront our prejudices every day..
Knowing truth
Much of the discourse in the public forum is now being stoked into a frenzy by misinformation and the deliberate harnessing to that end of social media. One of the greatest challenges of our time is, I believe, knowing what is true and what is not true; what is authentic and what is fake. One candidate in the presidential election here has put this firmly on the news arising from their own experience in the past week.
People’s inability to sift fact from truth, as well as the deliberate exploitation by malign forces – some of them not even humans at all, but artificial intelligence – of this fickle dynamic, is, to my mind, one of the greatest risks of our time. It can lead to riots, injury and deaths. It polarises, marginalises, stigmatises and dehumanises people in a way that was all too common in earlier periods of history, notably in Europe in the 1930s: ‘them and us’. To use our sadly out of fashion words from the ninth of the Ten Commandments many seem effortlessly and without conscience ‘to bear false witness’. Many of us in public life or indeed, not so public, have been victims of this.
It was the ancient Greek soldier and dramatist – the father of tragedy – Aeschylus, who said ‘’[i]n war, truth is the first casualty.’ This concept was not unknown to others. The Chinese strategist and general, Sun Tzu, in The Art of War, said that one of the most fundamental principles for the conduct of war is that ‘[a]ll warfare is based on deception’. In more recent times, Senator Hiram Johnson used the phrase in the United States Senate in 1918: ‘The first casualty when war comes is truth.’
So we find ourselves in a tug o’war era – conflicts, actual and cultural, a crucible where free speech, censorship, hate crime, incitement are all in the mix, and one often wonders where truth lies. As we scroll through social media we face the most basic of questions every time: ‘Is this even true?’
One of the heroes of twentieth century Anglicanism was Archbishop William Temple. He said:
‘The first ingredient in conversation is truth, the next good sense, the third good humour, and the fourth wit.’
And by wit, I am assuming he meant what we call ‘a titer of wit’’, even a modicum of intelligence often all too absent in what we see and hear around us.
Possible Strike at Saint Luke’s Home
When I rose to deliver my first ever presidential address as your bishop, on Thursday, 14th October 1999, in the Baltimore Room of the then Jury’s Hotel, Western Road, Cork. I spoke up that day in support of Irish Nurses who were about to go on strike, and they did, five days later, for nine days. RTE sent a television crew to our Diocesan Synod that year to record my support for the nurses, and we were all on the main evening news bulletins: very different times.
As I stand for my final address, our wonderful staff at our own Saint Luke’s Home have voted in favour of industrial and strike action.. And I want today to speak up, yet again, this time in support of them. Our staff at the Home were excluded from an agreement concluded last March at the WRC (Workplace Relations Commission). Ours is a voluntary, not for profit, care home with a record of 153 years of dedicated service in the care of older people and people living with dementia. Our staff deserve the same conditions of service as those doing identical work who received increases at the WRC. We in the Charity, however, do not have the money to pay them unless the Government gives us more realistic financial support. Something has to change to make St Luke’s Home work for the future.
This Address
It would be all too tempting to devote the rest of this year’s presidential address looking back and to rehearse the shared experiences we’ve had over the last 27 years. Indeed, my son, visiting with his wife and our grandson from London last weekend, said to me, as I sat down to write this, ‘Why don’t you just throw all of the addresses you’ve given in the last 26 years into ChatGPT and ask it ‘what are the main points?’
That’s not the plan, however, We all need to look to the future. We are here today to look to our future as a Diocese under God, mindful, as ever, of the lessons and wisdom of the past, and also of the realities of the current time.
Here today, as I have done every year in my addresses to you, I want to encourage you to continue to be the most faithful disciples we each can be, in our time, collectively in our communities, be they parishes or chaplaincies, together as a diocesan family and, in our shared common goals of pursuing the Five Marks of Mission, to keep our focus on the main things as Christians. As we receive the freely given love of God, may we, in turn, be outward looking and inclusive as we share that love with others in Christ’s Name.
For me, love is the test of all things. As we hear from the First letter of Saint John
‘God is love and those who live in love live in God and God lives in them.’
1 John 4.16
Archive
Since I indicated to Diocesan Council in the early summer that my mind was turning towards retirement, an immense amount of work has had to be done on a GDPR check and purge of decades and decades of files. We have been wading through, not only my own nearly 27 years, but also the decades of files of some previous bishops for whom GDPR would have been a foreign concept.
Significant work has also been necessary on the archive of materials relating to my tenure as bishop and all of this will be lodged, according to archiving standards and protocols, in due course in the RCB Library in Dublin. Some materials, such as speeches and sermons, which were already delivered publicly will be immediately accessible. Other materials will have, according to their status, embargos of either 40 years or 100 years. The really nosey will have to wait and outlive everyone else. One upside of this is that my successor will inherit, I hope, a pristine, and fully uptodate and well-ordered set of files in both the bishop’s and diocesan offices.
The Lessons of the Past
While working on that archive I came across all sorts of interesting things going back a long way.
I was greatly amused by a letter a fellow ordinand and I received in 1982 from the then Bishop of Tuam, John Coote Duggan. (Bishop Duggan’s first curacy was, incidentally, here in Cork, in Saint Luke’s). We were due to spend the summer as ordinands on Achill Island, taking services and doing pastoral work. The Bishop’s letter gives you an idea of the expectations of students at the Theological College at the time, and perhaps even hints at where I got some of my own formation and emphases (and some of it is still useful stuff):
‘On return from Synod I received your letter re. Achill in June … I enclose a list of parishioners – please send me a better copy when you have completed your time there. I wish you to conduct the Services each Sunday … I hope you may visit the homes, and especially people on holidays in hotels, guest houses, caravans and see that the Service times are known in these places and in Tourist offices. Non-churchgoers might be rustled out, and the names of possible parishioners who have not been heard of put on our lists. Anyone who is not a Roman Catholic should be on the list.’
‘In addition I wish you to do what you think is fitting and necessary to have the churches in the best possible condition, with the agreement of the people, of course. Look at the Communion linen and vessels, and have them cleaned and ironed, if they need it. Try to tidy, and keep neat, the vestry room – these things are often overlooked and neglected by the locals. Tell me if the roof or gutters etc need work done, and outside do what weeding, scuffling and general tidying occurs to you etc as being essential. Keep the rectory clean and leave it as good, or better, than when you went in. Do wear black shoes when robed … the country folk don’t like brown shoes peeping out from under cassocks – and they will mention this to me and others later – they have in the past.. Give them the full Prayer Book Services … Bring the Preachers’ Book up to date and keep it neatly signed.’
I also found this – the report for the year 1943, presented to Diocesan Synod on Thursday, 26th October 1944. Robert Thomas Hearn was bishop. In 1943, Douglas Hyde was President and Eamon de Valera was Taoiseach. World War II was still raging. At the start of 1943 the Soviet Army had encircled 22 German divisions at Stalingrad. The horror of the Holocaust continued to unfold. There was an uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. Already by the start of 1943, about 300,000 Jews had been sent from that ghetto to the extermination camp at Treblinka. The horrors and suffering of humanity in the events and accounts of that period confound my efforts today at any meaningful summary in a wide-ranging address of this kind.
By the time of the Diocesan Synod in October 1944 when the 1943 report was being considered, the D-Day landings had happened. The month before the Synod that year first Brussels, then Antwerp and then Luxembourg were liberated. The pace of the Holocaust was accelerating, however.
The previous August, the family of the Amsterdam based spice merchant, Otto and Edith Frank were betrayed and deported. Four days after that year’s report was considered in this Diocese Anne and Margot Frank were deported from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen where they died early the next year.
So what of Cork, Cloyne and Ross back then?
In the midst of it all, in March 1944, much more mundane, the first Dunnes Stores opened, on Patrick Street, here in Cork. And what did I learn from studying that report and does that scrutiny have anything to say to us here and now 81 years later?
Well I learnt a few important things:
- There were signs of commitment and faithfulness much as we see in our Diocese today.
- The Diocesan Council was composed entirely of men. Thankfully, not so today.
- The diocesan treasurers were even then warning parochial treasurers that amounts that came in after the year end could not be shown in the accounts. Some things never change.
- The stipend reserve fund had £21,088 in it – or the equivalent today of nearly €1.4 million.
- Parishes were in arrears in their payments by about €74,000 in today’s values.
- There was, even then, a considerable reliance on investment income and bequests.
- The amounts given by individuals in every parish were listed by name and amount!
As to churches, parishes and clergy:
- There were 91 churches then. Today there are 68 churches and 5 private chapels.
- Then they were grouped into 76 parishes. Today there are just 22 parishes and 6 chaplaincies
- There were 80 clergy, 77 in parishes and 3 with general licences No auxiliaries. Today there are 34 serving clergy of different kinds, including 26 wholetime stipendiary.
Change has happened. Change can happen. We have shown that we can cope with and live with change.
William Temple
When they met that day they had no one to text or whatsapp them and there was no email. So they may not immediately have received the news of the death, on that very day, of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend and Right Honorable William Temple. He suffered all his life from gout which got steadily worse under the burden of his energetic travels and workload. Earlier that October he was brought by ambulance from Canterbury to rest at a hotel on Westgate-on-Sea but he had a heart attack there on 26th October and died. It is no accident that I have already quoted him once – a taster – in relation to truth.
The great William Temple (1881–1944) is not to be confused with the 16th Century puritan and academic, and later Provost of Trinity College – Sir William Temple – who gave his name to the Temple Bar area of Dublin. William Temple, the Archbishop, was born in Devon, served as a parish priest in London and then became successively bishop of Manchester, Archbishop of York and Archbishop of Canterbury before dying on this day 81 years ago at the age of 63. Indeed, the previous year, 1943 – the year covered by the report I found for this Diocese – Temple spoke out forcefully in the House of Lords about the atrocities being committed by Nazi Germany.
William Temple is considered a hero of Anglicanism due to his profound theological scholarship, influential social activism, and significant leadership in the ecumenical movement. His powerful advocacy for the poor and working class, which helped shape the post-World War II welfare state in Britain, and his efforts to bridge divides between Christian denominations solidified his legacy.
Many of his aphorisms have endured such as this one:
‘When I pray coincidences happen. When I don’t, they don’t.’
And this:
‘It is a great mistake to think that God is chiefly concerned with our being religious.’
One humorous remark attributed to him, that I like, concerns cricket:
‘Personally, I have always looked on cricket as organised loafing’.
‘The Founder’. McDonald’s
I recently watched the 2016 film The Founder which tells the story of Ray Kroc whose persistence, ambition and ruthlessness took the two McDonalds’ brothers idea and transformed it into the McDonalds fast food chain and global empire we know today.
In the movie the character says
‘I drove through a lot of towns. Small towns. They all had two things in common. … They had a church and on the church there was a cross. They had a court house and on the court house they had a flag. … crosses … flags … I just cannot stop thinking about this tremendous restaurant … Forgive me. Those arches have a lot in common with those buildings … A building with a cross on top. What is that? A gathering place where decent, wholesome people come together. They share values protected by that American flag.’
‘It could be said … that those arches signify more or less the same thing. It doesn’t just say “delicious hamburgers inside.’” They signify family. They signify community. It’s a place where Americans come together to break bread… McDonalds can be the new American Church … feeding values, feeding souls … and it ain’t just open on Sundays, boys.’
There is so much to cogitate on here, if we had time, on the trends of the times in which we live; and indeed, on how we, in turn, see ourselves as the Church.
In 1993, the sociologist George Ritzer wrote an article for the Journal of American Culture called The McDonaldization of Society. This was a society – including in education, healthcare, the workplace and even in culture – where the characteristics of a fast-food restaurant have been adopted – efficiency, calculability, predictability and control. The concept has been applied since then to countless organisations, including the Church
In 2000, the Scottish theologian, John Drane, wrote a book called The McDonaldization of the Church critiquing how churches have become too much like fast-food restaurants. He criticised particularly how people are treated like consumers seeking quick spiritual satisfaction, and the loss of spiritual depth – packaged spirituality. He opens up a very real discussion about the nature of the Church.
Being Church of Ireland Unashamedly in the Future
And so, when it comes to the future, One thing is for sure, we are not McDonalds … people break bread together in all sorts of ways in all sorts of places – some of those times are precious and probably even verge on the holy, but when we break bread we are doing it because Jesus told us to do it in remembrance of him. That’s distinctive.
I would suggest that there is no future in trying to be something we are not. We are a religion. We are Christians. We are disciples of Jesus Christ. We are his gathered community, called together as a Church. When we meet together it is for worship of God.
Locally, we are members of the Church of Ireland, a church in communion with the Church of England and through that communion with the See of Canterbury, with others who are also in that Communion. We embrace the Anglican way. There are many ways of being Christian and of being a church. We learn a lot from each other. But, in my view, nothing is to be gained by trying to be something other than a church or by not being true to our Anglican/Episcopal identity.
That Anglican identity is set out in the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, resolution 11 of the Lambeth Conference in 1888 which put down the four cornerstones of who we are:
- The Holy Scriptures, as containing all things necessary to salvation;
- The creeds (specifically, the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds), as the sufficient statement of Christian faith;
- The dominical sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion;
- The historic episcopate, locally adapted.
Engaging with circumstances and with change
This is our framework for being who we are today. Of course, we encounter new and demanding realities and challenges all the time. I have set these out extensively over the years for you. I have alluded again and again to how our forebears managed in other demanding and even tempestuous eras of our history; how they not only remained faithful but found inventive and creative ways to move forward.
Even last year, I told you that in the course of my Episcopal Visitation in 2024 I referred regularly to the Visitation undertaken by Bishop Dive Downes between 1699 and 1702. In particular I drew attention to the fact that of the approximately 96 church buildings he specifically refers to, not one of them continues in use today as we currently know it Indeed, 47 of those buildings were already in ruins in his day and we have since moved on from the rest. In spite of the perilous state of things, worship, teaching and pastoral care was happening faithfully. I am not suggesting that neglect or abandonment of our buildings is a prudent strategy, but I am saying what I have said every year here – our primary focus must be on worship, ministry and mission.
Episcopal Visitation Report 2024
Referring to that visitation last year, prompts me now, with pleasure, therefore, to present to the Diocese, the report of my Episcopal Visitation in 2024 – the fifth and last of my formal, traditional Episopcal Visitations of these United Dioceses of Cork, Cloyne and Ross. All of these are lodged, incidentally, also in the RCB Library in Dublin.
Intentionality
Ray Kroc of McDonalds’ fame had persistence in advancing his vision. Even if we do not share the same vision, persistence is a useful quality. I preferred, however, the idea and strategy commended to us by Bishop Deon Johnson, Bishop of Missouri, in his address to us during this past summer: intentionality.
Sometimes we sit back too much and expect things just to happen as they used to in the past – people coming to church; people supporting our work financially, people volunteering, children and family ministry, youth work, Christian Stewardship, people getting involved and so on.
Often that is no longer the case. We have to go out and invite and ask people – to put the suggestion or idea on their agenda and to commend something to them. Intentionality – we have to go about achieving our purposes set out in the Five Marks of Mission – wilfully, purposefully, consciously and deliberately.
Swedish Church on the move
Yes, things can move slowly in the life of the Church. Goodness knows, in the last 27 years some things in the Church of Ireland appear hardly to have moved at all.
I was enthralled by the news report about the Church at Kiruna in the northernmost part of Sweden, about 200 km north of the Arctic Circle. The whole town, including its church, is on the move because the local underground iron ore mine has weakened the ground. So this church, built in 1912 and weighing 672 tons, was literally lifted and moved, on a remote controlled trailer with 240 wheels, to a new site 5 km away at the rate of 500 m an hour – a slow work in progress.
Slow progress is, nonetheless, progress and both Saint Augustine and William Temple commended to us the calling to be faithful stewards in even the smallest ways:
‘Little things are little things; but faithfulness in little things is a very great thing.’
Road Shows – Charting a Future
Some of you may think that Charting a Future with Confidence is a slow process. So it is, because it is not a magic wand or quick fix. It is a way of encouraging all of you in parishes and chaplaincies to engage with our calling in these times.
It was back in 2003 that I first asked people to think locally about all that we are trying, to reflect on whether or not we are trying to do too much; to engage with the reality and to plan for the future. Charting a Future with Confidence flowed from that and now, after the disruption of the Coronavirus Pandemic, we are trying, through our roadshows, to encourage everyone to engage yet again.
Change is coming and the hypothetical questions being put out there for consideration by you may not be vague and tentative for long:
- What if we can’t get a Rector next time around?
- How do we discern the various gifts for ministry among all people in the parish?
- Are there ways in which we can share ministry with our neighbouring parishes?
- How many church services do we need on a Sunday or during the week?
- Is there a minimum attendance needed to make worship viable?
- What makes for meaningful worship?
- Are there new and creative ways to generate more income?
- What are our financial priorities?
- Are we using planned giving schemes enough?
- The ministry of all God’s people? What does that mean? What could it look like in 2050?
- What are the missional opportunities in our area?
- How do we encourage those who see themselves as members of the Church of Ireland but have little connection with the life of the parish? How do we help them reconnect?
And in all of this let us recall another challenge from the wisdom of Archbishop William Temple:
‘The Church exists primarily for the sake of those who are still outside it.’
Children
As a child growing up in Douglas in the 1960s, little did I imagine, playing on the streets of Maryborough Estate where we lived, or coming to Saint Luke’s Church to play while my mother arranged flowers, or to Sunday School, that I would receive God’s call through you to become the second longest serving Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross. I had no idea what God had in mind for me then.
Vocation to ordination was suggested to me by older and wiser disciples. So I began to test it. That was a long and circuitous route, but it became what it did and was nurtured in childhood and youth also by the community of faith.
That’s why I set such store by the ministry we have alongside children and families.
William Temple yet again:
“The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child’s home.”
– William Temple
Our Children and Family Ministry Group in the Diocese has been working hard, with intentionality, to keep this ministry to the fore and, I hope that, before the current phase – the learning process, concludes in November that every parish will avail of the opportunity to engage and reflect about the opportunities for ministry to children and families.
Two Other Tasks for our focus in the coming year: Charities and New Safeguarding
In the coming months there will be a new and updated version of the Church of Ireland Safeguarding policy.
At last we have signs that we will soon be in a position to register individual parishes as charities. Parishes already have to adhere to the standards of the Charities Governance Code and legal framework, of course. All Select Vestry members are trustees of a charity. Members of Diocesan Council, likewise, are trustees of a charity. I am very pleased, therefore, that Canon Janet Maxwell has agreed to spend three days in the Diocese at the start of November to deliver the first essential step for all trustees – Charity Induction Training.
New bishop
So my final months of oversight here as your bishop will be far from idle. We are taking a belated summer holiday starting on Monday. My diary is more or less already full for the time that remains. My last Confirmation Services will be in February and from 1st March on I will hand over to a commissary or commissaries, so that I and you can focus on the final preparation for handover to a new bishop when that time comes.
As soon as someone announces a retirement, human nature kicks in and the dominant question becomes ‘I wonder who we will get?’ Who will be your new bishop is not my business but let me state the obvious. You are not looking for a saviour. Jesus is already the Saviour. I say this genuinely. Don’t expect any Church leader to be anything other than a fellow disciple, a learner walking alongside you on the journey of faith. Bishops are not magicians either. No human being has all the gifts. Alongside our gifts, we all have flaws.
The task is mighty. I am reminded of the Greek myth of Sisyphus. His punishment in the underworld was that the gods forced him to roll an immense boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down every time it neared the top, and he had to repeat this action for all eternity. Ministry can feel like that some of the time.
However, Jesus is Saviour and Lord. Let’s live and work together as if that’s what we truly believe.
Parting words
For my part I direct my mind towards retirement. The first play of William Shakespeare to be introduced to me and my year group at Ashton School in 1973 was As you Like it. Perhaps the play is most famous for the words ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances …’ (the seven ages of man). I don’t think I am quite yet at the ‘Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.’ stage.
For me now, as I prepare for my exit, some different words from the play come to mind. One character, Duke Senior and his followers find refuge in the Forest of Arden, a simple, rustic setting away from the complexities of court life.
The quotation captures the idea of leaving behind a busy, demanding career for a quieter, more personal life.
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
I would not change it.
As you Like it Act 2.Scene 1
Thank you.
I have relied on William Temple in large measure in my address this year. He also said:
‘The greatest medicine is a true friend’.
In this ministry I have been able to count on my wife and family, and on so many of you and countless others who have indeed been true friends: ‘the greatest medicine’.
‘In ministry, in discipleship one’s work is never done. The journey and pilgrimage continue.
There is always something or someone else.
As I prepare now to take my leave of you there are many things I could say and look back on. As I said today’s address is not about that. There will be many of you who would have done things differently if you had been the bishop in my time, or you might have preferred that, in some instances, I had taken a different course. Alongside achievements, of course, there have, in the nature of humanity, been mistakes, but all under God and in good faith.
So as I take my leave I say ‘thank you’ to each and everyone of you and to countless others who are not present here today.
Farewell
I watched the US Open tennis final recently between Carlos Alcaraz who was the victor and Janek Sinner who was the runner up. Being the second longest serving bishop here is a bit like being runner up, but unlike Bishop William Lyon, who according to some accounts only ever preached once, I have preached many, many times.
As I conclude, I embrace and take to myself Sinner’s words in his post-match interview that day at Flushing Meadows, Long Island, New York. He simply said, and I say now to you as well, as I conclude this last address:
‘I tried my best … I couldn’t do more.’
May God bless you all!
+Paul Cork:
27th September 2025