AMY FACES BACKLASH AFTER TRYING TO CUT CLERGY SALARIES BY 25%.

Amy communicated with the Armagh clergy together in recent days to ask them to accept a 25% cut in wages.

There was all out war and the Armagh clergy told Amy to put his pay cut where the monkey put his nuts.

Amy was left with her tail between her legs.

One senior Armagh cleric was heard saying:

“What credibility Amy had – and that was precious little – is now gone”.

Oops!

I wonder what Amy’s wages and expenses amount to?

In 1983 Cackle Daly asked for £ 120.000 a year to support himself and two auxiliaries.

£120,000 in 1983 is £ 407,607.29 today.

So if three bishops get £ 407,607.29 then one bishop gets £ 135,869.

Does Amy and other bishops get £ 135,869 between salary and expenses?

If they do then they get about £110,000 per annum more than priests.

Or do bishops, like in the past, have a free hand with diocesan funds?

Bishop Michael Brown of Galway used to have a cigarette box in his study with special cigarettes with His Lordship the Bishop of Galway printed in gold on each cigarette!

Brown also liked champagne every afternoon at 4 pm with his afternoon tea.

We know Diarmuid Martin’s extravagance is business class flights.

Eaton Casey liked cars, women and cognac laced with milk.

Mc Quaid liked his black limousin with darkened windows and a Citroen DS for informal driving with his chauffeur.

Presumably, bishop’s salaries come from public donations?

Why are their wages and expenses not published?

FATHER PADDY MC WILLUAMS – DOWN AND CONNOR – ILL.

News in – the PP of Toomebridge is ill.

FROM 2017

Duneane parish priest Fr Patrick McWilliams marks ordination golden jubilee 10 August, 2017 01:00

Fr Patrick McWilliams, parish priest of Duneane in Down and Connor, has marked the golden jubilee of his ordination to the priesthood.

Fr McWilliams was born in The Moorings, Creagh in Toomebridge – right beside his current parish – and returned to the area just over 20 years ago.

He attended Anahorish school until the age of nine, when his family moved to Portstewart, and from a young age he developed a love of animals and the outdoors – he still enjoys these today, as the community learned when they gathered for Mass to celebrate the anniversary in Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Moneyglass.

Bishop Farquhar and Fr Luke McWilliams celebrated Mass, which had been organised by the Duneane parish pastoral council.

Stories were shared of Fr McWilliams’s time in Belfast, where the greater part of his formative years as a young curate and as a parish priest were spent in Turf Lodge and in Polegate.

These were difficult times; Turf Lodge was a parish starting from scratch – it wasn’t only a church, schools, and youth facilities that had to be built; a community had to be gathered, as the people had been uprooted from their homes and were feeling isolated.

Fr McWilliams’s first move to parish priest came at an unusual time. He remembers that his phone rang in the early hours of the morning, and he expected it to be a sick call. It was, in fact, Bishop William Philbin, asking him to take on the role of PP of the newly established parish of Poleglass.

He agreed to take the job but lay awake wondering had it been a prank call – surely a Bishop wouldn’t ring at 4am?

He celebrated his silver jubilee in Poleglass and shortly after that he was transferred to Duneane, and Moneyglass and Toome.

The crowds assembled in Our Lady of Lourdes Church were a testament that in Duneane, just like in his earlier parishes, Fr Paddy has the support of the community.

He was congratulated on his golden jubilee – a night of nostalgia and for reminiscing, but also a night to look forward.