A reflection on how seldom I go to town now obviously, but I was taken completely aback when, getting off the Luas from Saggart recently in Lower Abbey Street, I saw no familiar
Veritas sign winking at me, as it were, on my arrival in the city. Yes, I knew about the closure of their branch in Tallaght Square Shopping Centre on the 17th May last year (see
here) and now here I was seeing (and believing as best I could) their HQ in Dublin gone for ever. In fact, it has been closed a good while, since Friday, 10th January. It opened in 1928 (read its history
here). How many times over how many years was I inside, browsing away and buying too, of course! A lectionary was my last big purchase (for a certain church). So what a shock!
Round the corner, as you know, brings you up Marlborough Street to the Pro-Cathedral. Dublin's seminary, Clonliffe College, closed in 1999. Last Sunday a 'Lay Ministry Appeal' was publicized by the diocese. Signs of the times -- times changing so fast. But, in this Jubilee Year of Hope, we try to remain hopeful that change, finally, is for the better. After all, "To live is to change," said St John Henry Newman -- who knew Dublin well from living here in the 1850s.
