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Bishop William Crean

12 September 2024

Sunday 8th September, Mass was celebrated for the Indian Community in St. Mary’s Church, Carrigtwohill to celebrate the Birthday of Our Lady, followed by a Procession to Our Lady's Grotto and a celebration.

Munster Konkans, a community of families originating from Mangalore in South West India, and currently living in and around the Munster region, gathered together for the celebration of ‘Monthi Fest’ (Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary) on Sunday, 8th September.

This is the biggest family feast of the year in the Konkan culture, and is also celebrated as a harvest festival, where the first fruits, vegetables, and grains of the season are offered to God in a gratitude for His blessings.

Carrigtwohill Parish - Mass celebrated for the Indian Community

Bringing Lourdes to the Faithful

September 15^th - 16^th 2024

The visitation of the holy relics is an opportunity to have Lourdes come to our diocese so that we can all experience the pilgrimage in Lourdes at home in Cloyne.

Petitions

There will be an opportunity for pilgrims to leave petitions and personal intentions to Our Lady of Lourdes and St Bernadette.

Petitions should be written at home and brought to the churches. A petition box will be located at the Marian shrines in the churches.

Veneration of the relics ends at 9pm each evening in both churches.

Our Lady of Lourdes help our faith!

Visit of the Relics of St. Bernadette to the Diocese of Cloyne

23 August 2024

September 2024

Bishop William Crean, Bishop of Cloyne, has made the following new appointments which will come into effect on Saturday September 14th 2024.

V. Rev Jeremiah O’Riordan P.P. Donoughmore to retire and become Pastor Emeritus (P.E.)
Rev. Fr. Eamonn McCarthy, Spiritual Director, Radio Maria, Dublin, to become P.P. Donoughmore. Fr. Eamonn will also serve as Diocesan Co-ordinator of our celebration of the Jubilee Year 2025 with its theme “Spes non confundit” Hope does not disappoint.
Rev. Fr. Andrew Carvill C.C Mallow to be Administrator of Mourneabbey Parish while continuing to reside in Mallow
Rev. Fr. Brendan Mallon, Chaplain to Pobalscoil na Tríonóide, Youghal to serve as C.C. in the parish of Cloyne
V. Rev Michael Dorgan P.E. C.C. to retire and continue to reside in Ballycotton as Assistant Priest.
Rev. John Keane C.C. Macroom to serve as Assistant Priest in Youghal.
Mrs. Maureen Walsh, Sec. of the Diocese of Cloyne Safeguarding Committee to become Chairperson in succession to Mr. Willie Keane who has served in the role for 11yrs and for whose sterling leadership and commitment we are deeply indebted.

I, as Bishop, and the people of the Diocese are deeply grateful to our priests for their generosity of spirit and commitment.

I’m grateful to those involved in these new appointments. Change always involves uprooting from the familiar to new and less known people and situations. We are indebted to all for their generous spirit of service to the people of God entrusted to them.

Their ministry is a sharing in the commitment of so many people, priests, religious and lay women and men who quietly, yet so effectively, nurture faith and life in our parishes.

The Jubilee Year 2025 (Holy Year) has been designated a celebration of Hope – which never disappoints. Sadly, the lives of too many are marked by despair and darkness. Our faith enables us to be people of light. But we need each other to nurture that hope in and for one another.

We, in the Diocese of Cloyne, are blessed with the ministry of so many priests still. It is important that parish communities who have witnessed the decline in attendance wake up to loss of purpose and meaning that is taking place in and among us.

Let this Year of Jubilee be a graced time for us to put fresh heart into our families, schools and parishes.

Let us pray for those taking on new assignments. We pray the blessing of contentment upon them.

+ William Crean

Bishop of Cloyne

Further information: Contact Fr Jim Moore

22 August 2024

The Season of Creation is a time to renew our relationship with our Creator and all of creation through celebration, conversion, and commitment together

The season starts on 1 September, the World Day of Prayer for Creation, and ends 4 October, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of ecology beloved by many Christian denominations.

During the Season of Creation, we join our sisters and brothers in the ecumenical family in prayer and action as the world’s 2.2 billion Christians come together to care for our common home.

Season of Creation: 1 September to 4 October 2024

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Coram Fratribus

Bellarmine

Homily given during a meeting of the clergy of the Prelature of Tromsø
Robert Bellarmine, who died in 1621, was known as a learned cardinal and a holy man in his lifetime; but was canonised only in 1930. That is striking. Read More

Coram Fratribus

24. Sunday B

Isaiah 50:5-9: The Lord God has opened my ear.
James 2:14-18: If good works do not go with faith, it is quite dead.
Mark 8:27-35: Anyone who wants to save his life will lose it.
Yesterday we kept the feast of the Read More

Coram Fratribus

Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Numbers 21.4-9: Make a fiery serpent and put it on a standard.
John 3.13-17: The Son of Man must be lifted up.
Historically speaking, today’s feast has a twofold reference. The Byzantine Church keeps it to recall how the Emperor Heraclius rescued Read More

Coram Fratribus

In His Totality In a retreat talk given to the clergy of Tromsø this week, Sr Pauline Bürling OP reminded us of the example of Father Alfred Delp, executed by Hitler’s regime in 1945 at the age of 37 for his staunch, active resistance to Nazism. She cited the notorious public prosecutor Roland Freisler, who remarked to Delp’s friend Count von Moltke: ‘Christians and we national socialists have this in common: we make a claim to man in his totality.’
There is a categorical distinction, though. The claim of Christianity liberates, broadening human personhood immeasurably, enabling communion; whereas secular totalitarianisms restrict life, suffocating it in fearful isolation. It is good to be recalled to the stakes involved, to be reminded of courageous exemplars.

Coram Fratribus

To Be Free In a note posted yesterday, reflecting on a recent encounter with President Zelenskyi, Timothy Snyder develops what he calls ‘the Zelenskyi paradox’. It is his shorthand for the insight that ‘a free person can sometimes only do one thing. If we think of freedom as just our momentary impulses, then we can always try to run. But if we think of freedom as the state in which we can make our own moral choices and thereby create our own character, we might reach a point where, given who we have chosen to become, we have only one real choice. That was how Zelenskyi described his decision to stay in Kyiv: as not really a decision, but as the only thing he could have done and still remained true to himself. It was not only about defending freedom, although of course it was, but about remaining a free person.’ In fact this insight corresponds perfectly to Augustine’s, to which I regularly refer, that to be truly free is to have no choice to make, being fully configured to the good, true, and beautiful.

Coram Fratribus

Bellarmine Homily given during a meeting of the clergy of the Prelature of Tromsø
Robert Bellarmine, who died in 1621, was known as a learned cardinal and a holy man in his lifetime; but was canonised only in 1930. That is striking. The Church rediscovered his example, so to speak, in the painful years after the First World War, which we now regard as a prelude to the Second, even more terrible.
The thirties were a time of revival for the Church. Much that was wise was written and said during that decade. Europe, deeply wounded, was in need of repair. People sought, in the past as well as in the present, authorities that could be trusted.
What was it about Bellarmine that made him relevant just then? What can we learn from him now? We could say much in response. I shall limit myself to two brief points.
First of all, Bellarmine was a man who believed utterly in God’s gift to mankind through the Catholic Church. In the trauma caused by the Reformation, he saw how vital it was to communicate the Catholic faith in fullness, without compromise. He was a great controversialist and apologist; but above all he was a wise priest who knew how to expound the faith reasonably, understandably, and integrally. It was Bellarmine who, with Peter Canisius, prepared the Catechism of the Council of Trent, convinced that Catholics must understand their faith in order to ‘render an account of the hope’ that inhabits them (1 Peter 3.15). The catechism of Trent enabled a great flourishing of Catholic life within the movement we think of as the Counter-Reformation. We live now in the wake of another great council. One of the Second Vatican Council’s choicest fruits is the catechism published in 1992. It received much attention when it came out, but do we read it now? Do we use, and communicate, the fantastic resource the catechism constitutes? If not, let’s get on with it!
Another aspect of Bellarmine that makes him a guiding star for the Church is his resolute theocentrism. God is his constant focus. He does not reduce the Church’s essence and message to human measures. In his treatise on the Ascent of the Soul to God he exhorts his readers with words that have kept their relevance:
Realise that you have been created for the glory of God and for your own eternal salvation; this is your end, this is the object of your soul and the treasure of your heart.
Everything that brings us near this goal, he says, is a blessing; whatever removes us from it is a distraction at best, at worst a real evil. Here we find criteria by which to construct our own Christian existence day by day. Amen.

Coram Fratribus

24. Sunday B Isaiah 50:5-9: The Lord God has opened my ear.
James 2:14-18: If good works do not go with faith, it is quite dead.
Mark 8:27-35: Anyone who wants to save his life will lose it.
Yesterday we kept the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, venerating the saving sign of our redemption. In today’s readings we are likewise faced, by liturgical coincidence, with resonances of Holy Week. It is as if, at this time of the year, when autumn sets in, winter nears, the Church wants us to focus on essentials. We are drawn into the heart of the mystery of faith. Now, at harvest time, we are to be mindful of the seed that fell into the earth to die, to bear fruit in plenty.
The reading from Isaiah is infinitely moving. For the Church it is a word-icon of Christ mocked, traduced, abused. The image of the suffering servant challenges. What stands out is his non-resistance. Listen again to his resolve: ‘I was not rebellious. I turned not backward. I gave my back to the smiters.’
Does this not go against our deepest instincts? Do we not, even now, in a climate of high political pragmatism, recoil at the idea of innocent suffering? And is there not something deranged about a mute surrender to maltreatment? Our human sensibility militates against the perspective of faith. Of course: there is no glorification of suffering as such in Judaeo-Christian tradition. Pain is an anomaly in our world, a pay-off of the wages of sin. Our faith does not ask us to seek out pain. What it does teach is that, sometimes, pursuit of a higher purpose will mean embracing suffering freely. That is what goes on in the passage from Isaiah. If the suffering servant gives himself up to the smiters, it is because the Lord God has ‘opened his ear’. He is answering a call. He is trying to be faithful. And he enters his travail certain that God is at hand. Twice our passage repeats, ‘God helps me’.
What’s the point of his suffering, though? Isaiah offers a sublime answer. It emerges as a conviction in the final crescendo of his prophecy. God’s chosen one, he tells us, is called upon to bear the grief and pain of others. He gives his life that others may live. It is a matter of one man dying ‘for the people’. In the wake of Jesus’s death on the cross, the early Church re-read the Isaian texts with astonishment. These ancient prophecies electrified new believers, opening their eyes. When in the Gospels we read that Jesus’s Passion took place ‘as it was written’, these are the texts referred to, and with good reason, for we know Christ had them in mind when seeking to make sense of his Passion.
Take the unsettling firmness of the affirmation: ‘The Son of man must suffer’. Christ knew that from the illumination of the Spirit. He knew it, too, from Isaiah’s prediction. Again, let’s be cautious. This ‘must’ does not spell attachment to suffering for its own sake. It is bound up with the nature of his mission from the outset, identified by John. Christ came to ‘take away the sins of the world’. He came to bear them in his body, a body to be broken and sacrificed. Nothing Christ did was for himself; all was for us. His every deed and word, even his silences, were means to effect our redemption. That is why he ‘had to’ suffer. The world as we experience it is a painful place. To be human is to suffer. We ascertain this daily in encounters with sickness, death, fear, broken promises. The world is lovely, too, of course. Its beauty alleviates pain, but does not take it away. Only the cross does, by assuming what hurts, raising it up, transforming it, enlightening in darkness.
The wonder of our faith is this: it enables us to look life squarely in the face, as it is, without need for evasion; it lets us embrace life in and with its pain without losing hope, for we know that an all-powerful grace bears all things, even death’s darkness, even the wounds and tangles of sin. We know that Christ, having borne our sin, having been crucified by it, rose again. Death is dead. Life lives. The promise of redemption is sure. It is not, however, automatic.
We have heard the Lord’s solemn words: ‘If anyone would come after me, let him take up his cross. Whoever would save his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.’ The figure of the suffering servant overshadows our lives, too, as it did Christ’s. Like him, we ’must’ suffer. And we must do so, not for our own sake only, but for the sake of the saving of the world.
The cross, for being ‘ours’, must not shut us in. It must break us open, making of our lives a source of consolation for others. This consolation must be evident in deeds. St James tells us there is no point in uttering pious phrases if we don’t act on our stated intention. Such action cannot but come at a cost. Like Isaiah’s servant we may be tempted to rebel, to turn back. Will we? Is our faith alive or dead? Our charity in action will tell. These days, when the world is in flames and masses of poor people pour into our continent hungry for food and friendship, we have ample occasion to test our Christian authenticity. By Christ’s grace, may we not be found wanting. Amen.

Coram Fratribus

Exaltation of the Holy Cross Numbers 21.4-9: Make a fiery serpent and put it on a standard.
John 3.13-17: The Son of Man must be lifted up.
Historically speaking, today’s feast has a twofold reference. The Byzantine Church keeps it to recall how the Emperor Heraclius rescued the relic of the Cross from Persian invaders in the seventh century. Already 300 years earlier, however, a related feast commemorated the dedication of Jerusalem’s Sepulchre Church, in which the Cross was displayed for veneration. This earlier event was likewise based on a rescue mission; not from unbelievers but from oblivion. The story is told in many versions, but its substance is solid.
Everyone knows how the Christian faith’s fortunes changed with the conversion of Constantine, son of a veteran of Rome’s campaign in Britain. When Constantine ascended to the throne, the Church emerged from underground. It began to leave its mark, even monumentally. The age of Constantine is the age of the first Christian basilicas. The faith is suddenly visible throughout the empire.
People were anxious to see and touch proofs of the Gospel. Constantine therefore gathered relics. He built churches to house them. That is how he came up with St Peter’s in Rome, built on the Fisherman’s Tomb. The mortal remains of Apostles were wonderful and precious. But what of relics connected with Christ himself, defined by the Church as true Man and true God.
A dizzying thought: there might be material objects around that were physically touched by God Almighty!
It is small wonder that Constantine set out to search for the greatest relic of all: the Cross on which Christ died. He entrusted the mission to a formidable agent, his mother Helena. Dispatched to Jerusalem, Helena searched high and low. The Cross had been in hiding. No one knew exactly where it was. Eventually a likely find was made. But there was a difficulty. Helena found not just one cross, but three. How could she know which was the true Cross, which were crosses of mere criminals? While she weighed her option, a paralytic was brought. He was placed on the first cross. Nothing happened. He was placed on the second cross. Again, nothing. Attendants lifted him, then, onto the third. No sooner had his body touched this Cross than his lameness was healed.
God had set his seal on the saving wood. That Cross was raised up and adored. It became at once Christianity’s central relic: a talisman of power, yes; but more essentially, a concrete sign that the Gospel claim is real, that Christ did nail sin and death to the Cross, and that the Cross retains its saving power.
That is the chief message given us today. On this feast, we encounter the themes of Passiontide, but with a difference: we surround them with cries of Alleluia. When we venerate the Cross today, we give thanks for what the Cross has done for us. We rejoice in being freed, raised up, redeemed; we rejoice that Christ’s power to save is undiminished.
That said, we, too, live in times that tend to put the Cross out of view—considering it variously an irrelevance, an outrage, an embarrassment. All the more reason then, for us, now, to raise the Cross as our personal standard, to glory in it, to prove by our lives that it still heals. We do this by fundamental choices affirmed by simple gestures: by wearing a cross round our neck, perhaps; by making the sign of the cross before we eat, also when we’re in a smart restaurant.
In venerating the Cross, we worship God’s power, made perfect in weakness. We make an offering of our lives, that they may bear out the truth of the refrain the Church sings on Good Friday: ‘By your Cross, O Christ, joy entered the world!’
Mosaic from Sant’Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna.

𝐀 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐑𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭
October is the month of the Rosary.
Our troubled country and the world badly needs prayer.
In Fatima Our Lady told us about the power of the rosary, she said "𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐨𝐬𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐫 𝐨𝐟 Read More 2 Likes

Posted: 16 hours ago

Today we remember St. Andrew Kim Taegon - the first Korean-born Catholic priest.
He was born into a rich family who became Catholics at a time when the religion was heavily prosecuted. His father was martyred in 1839, shortly after which Read More 5 Likes

Posted: 19 hours ago

📅 Save the date: October 7, 2024, at 7 PM local time.
World Rosary Day: United in Prayer for the Jubilee of Hope
Join Catholics worldwide on October 7, 2024, for World Rosary Day, as we pray the Holy Rosary for the Read More 1 Likes

Posted: Yesterday

Today is the feast day of St. Januarius - bishop and martyr 🙏
Januarius was born in Italy in the late third century, and rushed through his holy studies - being ordained at 15 and named Bishop at 20.
He helped hide Read More 3 Likes

Posted: Yesterday

Join us for our #SeasonOfCreation Lecture: "Developing an Eco-Spirituality - To hope and act in creation"
Xavier de Bénazé SJ will explore eco-spirituality and #LaudatoSi through different perspectives which reflect on the current environmental crises and how eco-spirituality is part of Read More 1 Likes

Posted: 2 days ago

Carrigtwohill Parish - Mass celebrated for the Indian Community

Sunday 8th September, Mass was celebrated for the Indian Community in St. Mary’s Church, Carrigtwohill to celebrate the Birthday of Our Lady, followed by a Procession to Our Lady's Grotto and a celebration.

Visit of the Relics of St. Bernadette to the Diocese of Cloyne