VENUE: Armagh Cathedral, Co Down, Northern Ireland

DEAN: The Very Rev Herbert Cassidy

SERMON: The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, called the primates to think on their priestly vocations. It is too early to say whether his determination to equate truth with unity in the debate over gays will go down in history as merit or handicap

ARCHITECTURE: A church has stood here for 1,500 years; through all Ireland’s troubles it has been destroyed and rebuilt 17 times.

MUSIC: Choir led by organist Theo Saunders and service intoned by vicar choral Canon Michael Kennedy

LITURGY: Book of Common Prayer according to the Church of Ireland

SPIRITUAL HIGH: Mood of quiet sadness

AFTER-SERVICE CARE: For some reason, every primate I approached for a nice chat looked like he wanted to run away

WHEN he welcomed us to choral evensong at Armagh cathedral to mark the meeting of the worldwide Anglican primates, the Anglican Primate of All Ireland, Dr Robin Eames, said he hoped they would be aided in their discussions by his country’s spirit of Celtic Christianity. Few places embody this spirit better than St Patrick’s, which glowed snugly while blizzards swirled around the armed guards outside the strong wooden doors. But given Ireland’s history of Christian set against Christian, his remark did make me wonder exactly what Celtic spirit inhabits this beautiful place.

Fortunately, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams — who bears the burden of leading the world’s 77 million Anglicans in trying to resolve the battles over homosexuality that are taking the Anglican Communion to the brink of schism — has more than something of the Celt about him.

We had been told to arrive early because of the crowds expected for a service at which dignitaries included the Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Paul Murphy, and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, the Most Rev Sean Brady. But the number of people in the procession seemed almost to outnumber the congregation. This small cathedral was by no means full, and this was yet another Anglican service where I was among the youngest present. A sense of sad decline hung over the affair, the gloomy prelates perhaps realising at last how this all looks to the wider world.

The liturgy, chosen by a cleric with a sense of irony, was hardly cheering. “Behold how good and joyful a thing it is brethren to dwell together in unity!” sang the choir, from Psalm 133. Our second hymn, O Christ the same, was sung to the tune of Danny Boy. I couldn’t help but hum along: “The flowers all are dying, if I am dead, as dead I well may be.” This being an Anglican service, there was no “Ave”, although by the end of Danny Boy we were in the mood to sing one for the Church. To get us in the mood for the sermon, we sang a hymn where we invoked the Trinity against “the demon snares of sin . . . the natural lusts that wage within”. We pleaded for Christ’s protection against Satan’s spells, heresy, the knowledge that defiles, the heart’s idolatry, the wizard’s evil craft, the death-wound and the burning.

One of the remarkable things about the Archbishop of Canterbury is that, although his speeches and sermons can seem impenetrable when printed on the page, when heard direct from the pulpit or lectern there is no mistaking their meaning. In the flesh, he rarely disappoints. In our doubting world, this is a quality we must learn to value.

“So what is required of us who are called into this fellowship?” he said. “We are required first of all to know that it is Christ who has made peace. In other words, we are not to be anxious. A doomed piece of advice it may be for any Church, not least for the Anglican Communion at the moment, and yet that is what Christ says to us. He has made peace and our life rests on what he has done and on nothing else. So our own efforts at peacemaking and witnessing to peace in world and Church alike must not be characterised by anxious striving, by desperate activism, by the passion to get it all sorted and all right, now.”

Great sermon, we thought, but the final procession had barely finished when we ran out into the darkened snow.