Welcome, Fáilte - Diocese of Cloyne

2:00pm: Rosary
2:30pm: Anointing of the Sick at Knock Basilica
3:00pm: Concelebrated Mass at Knock Basilica followed by Benediction and Rosary Procession

Explore Knock Shrine

Exposition in Blessed Sacrament Chapel
Self-guided Auio Tours available
Guided Prayer Sessions in the Prayer Centre
100 acres of lanscaped gardens to explore
Resources to enrich and inspire at Knock Bookshop

For further information see www.knockshrine.ie

Tel: 094 938 8100

Cloyne Diocesan Knock Pilgrimage 2025

08 May 2025

On 21 June 2025, The Religious Order of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God, Carrigtwohill, (PSMG) wish to invite you to join them in giving thanks to God for their ministry to the local people over the past 150 years.

Mother Magdalen Taylor, now Venerable, arrived by train with 2 Sisters, on 21 June 1875. There will be a re-enactment of this event at the Old Station recalling the welcome the Sisters received from the Parish Priest, Fr R Seymour, and the people of the Parish. We will walk along to the Church where a short Prayers will be said.

Next there will be an extensive and interesting Exhibition in Carrigtwohill Community Centre along with tea and cakes aplenty.

You are all cordially invited to come and enjoy meeting old acquaintances and sharing more stories.

Poor Servants of the Mother of God

30 April 2025

Come to know the Personal Love of the Lord more deeply through an uplifting and inspiring series of talks, prayer and togetherness (Life in the Spirit Seminars)

Facilitated by Mir Ministries
Venue: St. Mary’s Church, Waterloo, Blarney, Co. Cork. T23 A667

Friday nights at 8pm
from Fri 16th May to Friday June 27th 2025

For further information please contact:
Blarney Parish Office: 021 4385105 or Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Life in the Spirit Seminars

Camp Creideamh Knockadoon 8th - 14th June 2025

Camp Creideamh Faith Camps for teenagers, boys and girls, will take place again in Knockadoon (East Cork) over the dates 8th – 14th June. For those who are Post-Primary school age.

Activities will include catechesis, prayer, sports, hillwalking, kayaking, swimming, music, arts and crafts and other activities.

For bookings go to website Camp Creideamh

For more information please ring Fr Eamon Roche on 086 9972539

Camp Creideamh Knockadoon

Search

Email Subscription

Receive diocesan news and announcements direct to your email

Latest Homily

4 May 2025 - “Nature abhors a vacuum”

Latest Articles

May 2025
- Cloyne Diocesan Knock Pilgrimage 2025
- Celebration of 150 years of Ministry - Poor Servants of the Mother of God
April 2025
- Life in the Spirit Seminars - May 16th to June 27th 2025
- Camp Creideamh Knockadoon
February 2025
- Recent picture of St. Colman's Cathedral, Cobh. Co. Cork
January 2025
- Pilgrimages for 2025
- Jubilee Pilgrimage to Assisi & Rome 25 Sep - 2 Oct 2025
October 2024
- Light a Candle at St. Colman's Cathedral
August 2024
- Visit of the Relics of St. Bernadette to the Diocese of Cloyne
- New Appointments In The Diocese Of Cloyne - Sep 2024

Coram Fratribus

Desert Fathers 19

You can find this episode in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here.
Some brothers set out from Read More

Coram Fratribus

3. Sunday of Easter: Confirmation

Acts 5.27-41: Obedience to God comes first.
Revelation 5.11-14: Then I heard all the living things in creation.
John 21.1-19: Simon, do you love me?
Dear candidates,
Well, here you are after a year’s preparation, ready to renounce evil, to profess your faith and Read More

Coram Fratribus

Desert Fathers 18

This week’s episode is shaped in the form of a Q&A in a dialogue between Jamie Baxter and myself. Here are some of the questions we considered:
I’m having a hard time reconciling Moses’s admonition to “stay in your cell” with Read More

Coram Fratribus

Leo XIV ‘I am’, said our Holy Father this evening, addressing us for the first time as pope, ‘a son of St Augustine’ — of Augustine, that supremely intelligent, compassionate, yet uncompromising prober of the human condition, who knew how to orient hearts and minds towards God in such a way that his words resound still with undiminished power. Prosper of Aquitaine held Augustine forth, too, as an example of those ‘strong figures who could tame the unjust powers of the world and protect otherwise helpless communities from the ravages of war’. As another such instance he cited Leo the Great, who turned Attila away from northern Italy in 452 relying ‘on the help of God, who one should know is never missing from the labours of the pious.’ Augustine and Leo, consummate theologians, men of prayer and courage, orderers of chaos, keen readers of the signs of the times: these are the patrons of a new papacy. Long life to Pope Leo XIV!

Coram Fratribus

Desert Fathers 19 You can find this episode in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here.
Some brothers set out from Scetis to see Abba Antony. When they got into the boat to travel to where he was they met another old man. He, too, intended to travel to the same place; but the brothers did not know him. Sitting down in the boat, they began to speak about the sayings of the Fathers, and about Scripture, and about their manual labour. The old man, meanwhile, kept quite the entire time. Arrived at port, they found that the old man, too, was going to see Antony. When they came to him, he said to them: ‘In this old man you have found excellent company!’ Then he said to the old man: ‘Abba, you have found and brought with you some fine brothers!’ The old man said to him: ‘Yes, they are good; but their yard has no gate. Anyone who wishes can come in and let loose the donkey.’ He said this because they said aloud everything that came into their mouth.
The next book in the collection is about self-mastery. This is the full title in the Greek text: ‘About self-mastery, to be kept not only with regard to food, but also with regard to the other movements of the soul.’ We, now, are obsessed with food. Even journals of spirituality have cookery columns. Obesity is a challenge to public health throughout the Western world; at the same time dieting is a secular religion. The coexistence of these two trends is representative of much societal tension. We are quirky about what we eat and drink on account of real or imagined intolerance or simply on the basis of taste. With so much else not working around us, we want to get our food orders exactly right. It is a way, I suppose, of making us feel we are somehow in control. So rampant is this tendency of specific requirement that if you go into a coffee shop and ask for a straight coffee with caffeine and cow’s milk the barista gives you a blank look. ‘What? Not even a shot of pumpkin spice?’ Ask an average Catholic what he or she is doing for Lent, and the chances are you will hear about dietary regulation. This is excellent, of course, but if we dig a little, we often find a sub-text of self-interest: the wish to fit again into clothes bought last year or awareness that the habit of taking just a single extra glass of wine has gone too far.
Since the role food plays in our lives is already so much in focus, it is striking to find that the first entry in this section speaks, not of fasting, but of restraint in speech. We meet Antony once more, dear Antony, who spent the final period of his life on a mountain in the inner desert, solitary yet always ready to receive guests who came to him for solace or advice. His fame had reached far. At one point the emperor, Constantine, called for Antony to come and see him. Antony asked his friend, Abba Paul, ‘Should I go?’ ‘If you go’, said Paul, you will be called Antony. If you refrain from going, you will be called Abba Antony.’ Antony wrote a nice letter to the emperor, but stayed put. The word ‘abba’ means ‘Father’. It was by fidelity to his desert outpost, by perseverance in his specific call, that Antony acquired his moral authority. Thereby his life became fruitful. More and more people came to regard him as their father, as a man who was for others a source of life. Pilgrims started coming from far away, like the four men described in the saying above.
Note Antony’s cordial welcome. Long years in seclusion had not made him crusty. He remains an attentive, generous host. Note, too, the visiting elder’s thoughtfulness. For several days he has had occasion to observe his fellow travellers. He recognises them as sincere: ‘They are good!’ The reference to the loose donkey permits him nonetheless to communicate salutary fraternal correction. In ancient Egypt a donkey was for the average farmer tractor, car, and bus all in one: indispensable for the management of necessary tasks. The old man shows that we lose something truly vital by unbridled talk, be it about edifying topics. In as much as we nurture the urge to say all that occurs to us, inner strength is tapped. The monk’s turn of phrase is telling. He blames his young friends for speaking everything that comes ‘into their mouth’. There is a stage at which speech is still potential. A thought has been articulated; the words lie ready on our tongue; but as yet they exist only in our mind. At that moment we exercise sovereign freedom to choose whether to speak or whether to keep silent. The old man lets us see that this choice should be carefully pondered, for much is at stake: the whereabouts of the donkey, our inner dynamo.
It is good to reflect on this matter today, when everything is set to let us say and share absolutely everything that occurs to us however vaguely. Hoards of donkeys are roaming around to no useful purpose, eating freely from strangers’ flower beds, while we are left feeling exhausted and deflated. Discourse thereby becomes superficial. So does society itself. Once we realise what can be wrought by a good, deliberate word, we discover how easily mere chatter turns into a deafening, dull, unproductive din. We wake up, then, to the responsibility we carry through our freedom either to speak or to be silent. That freedom is always there, even when our tongue is really itching. As Jesus Ben Sirach wrote more than two millennia ago: ‘Have you heard a word? Let it die with you. Be brave! It will not make you burst!’

Coram Fratribus

3. Sunday of Easter: Confirmation Acts 5.27-41: Obedience to God comes first.
Revelation 5.11-14: Then I heard all the living things in creation.
John 21.1-19: Simon, do you love me?
Dear candidates,
Well, here you are after a year’s preparation, ready to renounce evil, to profess your faith and to receive the sacrament of confirmation. Confirmation represents at once a gift and a commission. You receive the ‘seal of God’s gift’ in the form of the cross I shall draw with sacred chrism on the forehead of each; then you are sent forth as witnesses to the Gospel. From today you are no longer children in the faith, but responsible adults.
The business of ‘testimony’ may cause us to tremble a bit. A testimony is, in common parlance, a public statement. We think of witnesses called to testify in court cases. In a religious context we think of people who stand on soap boxes talking about Jesus, the way I saw a man standing, not long ago, on the market square in Trondheim one evening, out in the rain, passionately holding forth while no living soul paid attention.
Perhaps we do not envisage ourselves testifying quite like that? Does that mean we are unfaithful to our confirmation? Not necessarily. But let’s consider this matter a little more closely.
Above all: there are people called literally to heed the commandment to go out ‘into the highways and byways’ to call others in to God’s banquet (cf. Luke 14.7-24). Courage is required for such a task. And courage always deserves respect. A testimony can also find a different expression, however. It is said about St Francis of Assisi, whom even hardened heathens regard as an estimable human specimen, that he told his companions, the first Franciscans: ‘Preach the Gospel at all times! Use words when it is absolutely necessary.’
To be a credible Christian is not always a matter of spouting a lot of words. This has always been true: Francis lived 800 years ago. But perhaps it is truer now than ever before. We are bombarded with words from all sides, on TV, the internet, and social media. Others use words to persuade us to buy stuff, to support a given cause, to think in a particular way. We are suspicious of words. That, I think, is sensible. Words should be carefully weighed, both before we welcome them into our minds and before we speak them. Not to speak out of season, not to swallow everything others say: this is a mark of good sense.
We shall most effectively communicate to others what Christianity is about by the way we live, by the choices we make. What matters is to become a Christian, a new kind of human being.
But how to go about that?
The Gospel the Church gives us today proclaims Jesus’s resurrection. Faith in the resurrection is the foundation of Christian life. Without faith, death seems the surest thing about life. No one escapes death. Death stands for a definite end. ‘It is finished now’, people sometimes say when a person dies, as it everything he or she had ever done is henceforth immovably set, petrified like a fossil we might find on the beach. Jesus’s victory over death gives us a different view of things. It shows us that what seems to be a final ending may in fact be a beginning; that we carry within us a legitimate longing for everlasting, boundless life. The resurrection teaches us to hope.
Hope, more than anything else, distinguishes a believer from someone with no faith. What is hope? Hope is the certainty that what a thing, a relationship, an experience is now does not define what that thing, relationship, or experience has the potential to become. The encounter between Jesus, the Risen One, and Peter gives us an example.
Peter, as you know, had enjoyed Jesus’s trust. The two of them were firm friends. Peter had promised Jesus never to abandon him. Yet when Jesus was most cruelly exposed he denied him three times. When Jesus was nailed to the cross, Peter ran away to hide. He let his friend suffer and die alone.
I dare say most of us know from experience what we feel like when we know we have acted cowardly. It is damned hard to live with our disappointment in ourselves as we think: Now I have ruined something that can never be rebuilt. That sort of pain can turn into an open inner wound. If we’re vulnerable within we easily become insensitive, or violent, without. And so we find ourselves in a state of lonely stuckness and think: Is the rest of life really going to be like this?
When Jesus asks three times: ‘Do you love me’, he puts his hand right upon the wound inflicted by Peter’s three betrayals. Peter feels ill at ease, and humiliated. It hurts so much he thinks he is being punished. Then he sees that the opposite is the case. He realises that his relationship with Jesus is not defined by what has been; that reconciliation is possible. By the fact of touching and revealing his betrayal, Jesus enables the forgiveness of his sin. Thereby something bad turns into something good. Peter sees that the relationship he had compromised is made, through forgiveness, stronger.
The meeting between these two friends is like a parable of the sacrament of reconciliation, which permits us to leave things behind, to set out afresh.
That is an immense source of hope for ourselves and for others. For if my sin can be forgiven, so can that of others. Then no one is beyond the pale.
Dear friends, it is our Christian experience that it is possible to start afresh, that death can be turned to life. This experience has become rather rare in our faithless times. And so we see many signs that our world is brutalised.
If people don’t believe they can be forgiven, they see no reason to forgive others: they’ll rather just knife them. If people have no notions of mercy, they feel no responsibility for others who suffer: their concern will then simply be to keep these others away, so as not to be disturbed. If people don’t believe that life has an eternal dimension, and therefore is holy, they’ll see no sense in what they think of as unproductive lives: then they’ll have these put out of what they consider their misery.
We need courageous young women and men who can protest against such developments, who know what life is about and can testify to it. This is the testimony for which you are equipped today. By all means: use words when they are called for! But live as Christians, above all. That way you will be a blessing for yourselves and for many, many others.
By being forgiven, Peter is drawn anew out of storm chaos-waters to find a place in the boat. Lluis Borrassa, Peter Walks on Water, a painting now in the Rectoria de Sant Pere de Terrassa.

Coram Fratribus

Desert Fathers 18 This week’s episode is shaped in the form of a Q&A in a dialogue between Jamie Baxter and myself. Here are some of the questions we considered:
I’m having a hard time reconciling Moses’s admonition to “stay in your cell” with a deep sense of feeling called to more. Towards the end of his life, Antony was removed from his cell by his friends. How can we reliably follow Moses’s exhortation without hiding behind it as an excuse for inaction?
Often I feel like the apostles on the boat during the storm with Jesus asleep on the boat. It’s hard not to be affected by the circumstances (storms) that occur in the world. How does one stay present in the world but not too affected by it? How does one keep one’s peace?
You described the fear of God not as anxiety but as “an existential consciousness of reverence.” How would you explain this to someone who has only ever understood fear in terms of punishment or dread?
You can find it in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here.
Nuns of Abtei Mariendonk keeping the right balance.
A kind Canadian Benedictine has been good enough to transcribe the online conversation:

Jamie Baxter: Come Holy Spirit, come through Mary. Hello, and welcome back to Desert Fathers in a Year. This is episode 18, and we are excited to do something that we did after our first month of the series, and that’s have a question and answer with Bishop Varden himself. Bishop Varden, happy Easter. Thank you so much for joining us today. Happy Easter to you. Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed. So we’ve received a number of beautiful questions from our listeners who have been following along with us over the last couple of months, and just by way of framing, we are now one-third of the way through our series, if you can believe it, with four months in and eight months to go.
Lots of work we’re putting into this, both of us, and we’re so grateful for the time, the prayer, the reflection, the experience, Bishop Varden, that you’re giving to these teachings, which have resonated very deeply, not only with me and our team, but so broadly, and I’ve had the good fortune of receiving these questions from our listeners, and I’m excited to organize them a bit. We’ll do a couple of general kind of questions about the Desert Fathers and the systematic collection, and then we’re going to go through each of the topics of our chapters, so on perfection, peace, and compunction for our Q&A here, and then we’ll wrap up with a couple of people who have come out to you in the desert seeking a word, and I’d love to kind of receive those questions as well. Before we start, Bishop, would you go ahead and open us with a prayer?
Bishop Varden: Sure. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Risen Lord Jesus Christ, illumine our hearts and our words, and bless all those who are listening out for a word of life. Inspire us with your spirit that we may be true and credible witnesses to your gospel of life. You who live and reign with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Our Lady, seat of wisdom, pray for us.
Jamie Baxter: Okay, so the first question was really just about how the systematic collection is organized, and yeah, so the listener mentions perfection, peace, compunction, and so on. Should we think of each of the chapters of the systematic collection as stages to walk through as disciples of the Fathers, or how should we view the very organization of the sayings?
Bishop Varden: Thinking of them as stages would be overwhelming. If we set out from page one and think, well, I’ve got to implement all this before I go on to the next lot, the chances are that none of us would get beyond section one. So I’d think of it more in terms of the organization of an encyclopedia, or say a medical manual. I’ve got a bit of a toothache, or I’ve got a pain in my ear, so I look up ‘Tooth’ or ‘Ear’ to see what is suggested. Because they’re eminently practical resources, they’re intended as a help for easy reference, so that I can look up a particular topic that draws me, that seems to correspond to a prompting of the Spirit here and now, or where I may have a little bit of trouble to see what the Fathers have to offer.
Jamie Baxter: That is a consolation. They’re short chapters. It doesn’t take long to read through them, but it takes a lifetime, obviously, to internalize and metabolize them. So, no, that’s a wonderful instruction.
Bishop Varden: The wonderful thing is that the Desert Father tradition itself is full of examples of monks who may think that they’ve covered this A to Z and have it all sussed, only then to discover, sometimes by means of a fall, sometimes by means of an encounter that, ouch!, I haven’t even begun, and who then set out again from page one.
Jamie Baxter: Yeah, no, that’s so powerful. We’ve had a couple of questions come through about, just kind of tactical questions, about the translation you’re using for your sayings. A couple of people have wondered about who’s your translator, or if you’re doing these translations yourself. I wanted you to be able to speak into that. And then another kind of tactical question has been, are we going to explore any sayings from Desert Mothers? That’s been a frequent question from our female listeners.
Bishop Varden: Well, the answer to the first question is easy: I’m translating myself. I’m setting out from the Greek text, using the edition published in a French collection called Les Sources Chrétiennes, Christian Sources, begun by a group of French Jesuits in about the 50s, in order to make Christian sources available to a broad readership. That was one of those movements that fed powerfully into the Second Vatican Council, and that has really nurtured the Church extraordinarily over the last century now, almost. It is the movement known as Ressourcement. It’s got a French name because so many of its proponents were French. And it’s precisely that return to the sources, which was one of the watchwords of the Second Vatican Council. So, there is a wonderful collection, a wonderful edition in three volumes of the Apophthegmata, the sayings of the Desert Fathers. That is my reference text. And then I’m just translating the sayings I choose as I go along. As for the Desert Mothers, they are coming!
Jamie Baxter: Perfect. I know many will be excited for that, as will I. So, that’s wonderful.
Okay, so we received a question from a man named Alexander. He said, I’d like to know how the Desert Fathers lived in the waiting for the second coming of Christ. Was this theme, which seemed urgent at the time of the first Christians, still important in the thinking of one or more of the Desert Fathers?
Bishop Varden: It’s still important. Obviously,we’re dealing with a tradition that covers several centuries, from the fourth until about the sixth, perhaps seventh. And sensibilities change over time. And that was, as you, Alexander, will know from posing this question, that’s one of the interesting changes we see in Christian theology, that as time passes, and the end of the world doesn’t come about, people start reflecting on thinking about living with the prospect of the second coming differently. I think I would rephrase and say that in the Desert tradition and the sayings we find a strong eschatological thrust. They look forward to the restoration of all things in Christ, both as an historical reality to be fulfilled at the end of time, and as a personal imperative to be realized now. And that prayer for the Kingdom of God to come now in me, in my life, in my community, in my fellowship, that is very, very strong, as is the consciousness of an impending judgment for which one has got to make preparation. And so we find a range of sensibilities, since we’re dealing with, I mean, lots of different people, and people living over a long period of time. But the eschatological thrust is certainly there, and the prospect of, and the hope for, the parousia, the coming again of Christ, is powerfully present.
Jamie Baxter: Okay, can I ask you an off-script question, Bishop Varden?
Bishop Varden: Absolutely, but before you ask that, let me, okay, I’ll just complement that with a story told about Arsenius, whom we’ve met on a number of occasions. I love this story. It was said about Arsenius that on Saturday evening, so after having said Compline, he would go out into the desert and raise his hands and face east. So he would stand there and wait for the rising sun, which, obviously for Christians, was a sign of the fulfilment of Christ’s promise, which we eagerly expect, which is why we turn east in prayer. So that is an example, an embodiment, if you like, of that consciousness we’ve been talking about. But sorry, I cut you short.
Jamie Baxter: No, that story from Arsenius’ life is such a perfect embodiment, actually, of this question. So I think that was wonderful. How do you think, I don’t know if people ask you, they do ask me from time to time, hey, where are we in Church history as it relates to the second coming of Christ? And do you have just any thoughts on that? I mean, and obviously preparation, this idea of how, preparation for death, impending judgment is today for us. But how do you think about the question of where we are in the history of Church?
Bishop Varden: Well, that is a question, really, that exceeds my competence! Throughout Church history, people have speculated on this. And there have been times particularly associated with strong epochal change, when some sort of natural disaster happens, or civilizations collapse, or when the calendar invites the sense that something crucial is changing. So at the changing of the millennium, say, we had that around the year 1000. We had it again around the year 2000. The challenge is to live as if the end of the world would come tomorrow. And at the same time, to work as if the world were to last forever.
Jamie Baxter: Yeah, I can’t put that any better. I think that’s so powerful. Yeah, typically, when I’m confronted with the question, I think thoughts of this is so far beyond my pay grade. Yeah, I have no idea. I once posted to my father, who I’ve told many stories about in our roundtables, and my father’s a man of deep prayer. And he was the first person that actually said, kind of, at least in my experience kind of what you emphasize in the latter, which is, yeah, we need to live as though, lay the foundations as though this will go on for a very long time.Yeah, we are early Christians. It really struck me, and had a great effect upon me. So anyway, I appreciate hearing both of those points.
Bishop Varden: In the Rule of Saint Benedict, which we’ll talk closer to the end of the year, in the fourth chapter, the tools for good works, Benedict gives this counsel, that he says that monks should live every day, having death before their eyes, ante oculos mortem suspectam habere, which isn’t to say that he was in any way morbid, or sort of fixated on death: he says in the prologue to his rule, that the criterion for living the monastic life is the desire to live. He simply reminded us to be conscious every day that life is a trajectory that goes towards a goal. It is not aimless, it has a finality, and it’s not infinite. And he invites us to live every day, asking ourselves, has my life today, have my choices today been such that they’ve helped me focus on that finality? Or have I been distracted?I think that personal application holds as much for our shared, communal, ecclesial attitude to the end of all things.
Jamie Baxter: Well, that’s a perfect bridge, actually, to our next question from a listener, which touched on a saying from the chapter, the first chapter on perfection, and it goes like this. So in the first chapter, Anthony encourages us to, yes, so simply, but it’s also so mind bending, to keep God in mind, follow the example of the scripture, and “not to move in a hurry.” Our time is characterized by freneticism, busyness, and just feeling like there’s not enough time to do what we need to do. So do you have any advice for how we can slow down a bit, remain recollected, and remain recollected as we go about our daily duties?
Bishop Varden: Switch off your phone. It’s interesting, we have a couple of seminarians who are studying in a seminary where they have very sensible rules on mobile phones, just asking seminarians to put them away. One of these fellows rang me for Easter, and he said: ‘I just had not anticipated the great good this would do me!’ Just being conscious of, of experiencing time differently, of having time in a way he didn’t think he had. And I think engaging differently with reality as well. So that’s one thing: not to yield to this seduction of our techno-crazed society that keeps making us think that we need to stay connected all the time. Just unplug, and then practise doing things slowly. And enjoy doing simple things, be present to what you do when you cook or clean or wash up or wash your car or drive to work, then be present in what you’re actually doing without projecting the here and now into the future, or thinking about what you did five minutes ago or last night. And then practise sitting still now and again. Just plonk yourself in a chair, and listen to yourself breathe. Listen to the birds singing outside, or the cars passing outside. Practise deliberate non-agency for concentrated periods of time. I think spending brief periods in that sort of attentiveness actually makes us more productive when we actually have things to do. Those would be some very practical examples of what you can do.
Jamie Baxter: I think in a work setting too, it’s important. I know for me, there’s about three or four years ago, I just felt completely overwhelmed by what I had to do. I was working too much, and just really stressed. And I had a mentor sit me down and say, hey, we’re going to write a plan of life, and you’re going to stick to it. And there are things in your day you’re going to do every day. Time for meditation and prayer, sacraments, it’s a big part of that. Constraining, putting guide rails up on how much I’ll work and when I’ll work is really helpful. And accepting the constraints that come from that. And the other thing that really helped me was, and I understand not everyone is able to organize their day fully. Many people’s jobs, their days are given to them in their workflow. But for me, taking the mornings to do the deep things, obviously prayer, but also writing, reading, thinking. I walk outside on a trail that used to be a railroad outside my office and in our house, have been helpful to me. And then saving the shallower things, the meetings, the emails for the afternoon, and admittedly giving quite a bit less time to those activities. And that’s really helped me. It slowed me down a lot. There’s less things I can check off the list, which is tough to get used to. But it’s also really freeing to be focused on the things that really matter. And I think that’s what leads to this feeling of, quote, “not enough time” to do what you need to do. It’s like, well, when you’re getting done the most important things, at least in my experience, you don’t feel that way actually. But it does take a lot of intentionality to plan the day. And to really kind of take a learning from the rules of the monasteries and apply them as we are able and as it makes sense to our state of mind.
Bishop Varden: That is, I mean, it’s at once one of the great asceticisms of living in a monastery and one of its very liberating features. The fact that you have bells ringing all the time that tell you, well, that was the time for that. And now it’s the time for this. And to learn to put things down, to go to another place, that can be hard sometimes. And if you try to resist that rhythm and you try to get your own way within it, it can wear you down to an improbable degree. But if you surrender to it, it can be very, very freeing. I mean, resisting that sort of activism, even when it comes to spiritual things.
There’s a story in a wonderful book by metropolitan Anthony Bloom. I think it’s in his book called School for Prayer that I like very much. He talks about going to an old people’s home on a pastoral visit, and he meets this woman who’s very distressed. And she says: I pray all the time. I recite my prayers without ceasing. And yet my heart is so dry and I’m in this desert. So Anthony Bloom listened to this. And then he said, right. I’ve got some advice for you. And she thinks: that’s wonderful! More prayers, different prayers! And he asks: I’ve got some advice, but will you follow it? I mean, he was a metropolitan after all. So she said: Yes! And then he says, well, right, from now on, I want you to spend, I think it’s half an hour, half an hour every day without saying any prayers at all, simply knitting in the face of God. This seemed to her, I think quite, I mean … it’s a bit like the prophet asking the leprous visitor to just go and bathe in the Jordan. She was disappointed. But obviously the story concludes by observing that it transformed her life, because she suddenly realised she wasn’t the engine of everything.
Jamie Baxter: Our next question is one of my favorites, that really kind of engages in the chapter on peace, and it’s a question I’ve really shared, so I’m really very excited to have you speak into the paradox here. He says, I’m having a hard time reconciling Moses’s admonition to, quote, stay in your cell with a deep sense of feeling called to more. Towards the end of his life, Antony was removed, well, like halfway through his life, I guess, Antony was removed from his cell by his friends. And so the question is, how can we reliably follow Moses’s exhortation without hiding behind it as an excuse for inaction?
Bishop Varden: No, in a way, there isn’t a straightforward answer to that, because it calls for discernment. And it is good in that sort of discernment not to be on one’s own. As you said earlier on, to be accountable to somebody, to be living within the dynamic of obedience, which is a school of freedom. I think I would say this, though, that the counsel to remain in your cell is linked to the one we just talked about, about not moving quickly. It’s not saying that you shouldn’t move, but it’s saying that you should only move deliberately and not be too easily stirred by impulse or fear or boredom or passion. And as I think I talked about in that episode, to stay in your cell isn’t necessarily for everyone just to remain within one space. It is to remain committed to a task, because for Moses, his cell was a task. He wasn’t just sitting around in it. He was busy monking, living the monastic life and doing everything that pertains to it. So it’s about not running away from a commitment undertaken, from a call given, from a task that has been entrusted to me, at least not until there is a compelling reason and a wise reason to act otherwise.
Jamie Baxter: This question is from a man named Richard. He says, Bishop Varden, I often feel like the apostles on the boat during the storm, with Jesus asleep on it. It’s hard not to be affected by the circumstances, storms, that occur in the world. How does one stay present in the world, but not too affected by it? How does one keep one’s peace?
Bishop Varden: I would begin by challenging the expression, ‘Keep‘ one’s peace, because that supposes that peace is a possession I must hold on to like grim death to make sure that it doesn’t escape my hands. I love a verse from the Psalms that Saint Benedict quotes in the prologue to his rule, where he exhorts us, I think I’ve cited this before, to ‘seek peace and pursue it’. It speaks of peace in other terms, as something dynamic, as something that goes before me, like the pillar of flame that led the Israelites through the wilderness. So it’s not a matter of trying to construct or reconstruct circumstances or attitudes or sentiments within which I once experienced peace, but about asking: Where is peace now?
I also think it’s really helpful when talking and thinking about peace to remember what Paul says in one of his letters when he speaks of Christ and says: ‘Christ is our peace’, and to remember that in a Christian way of thinking, peace isn’t just a state of heart. Peace is a presence and a personal presence. We could even say peace is a Person, and that to be at peace is where Christ is. We’re in the Easter Octave now, and we’re reminded almost on a daily basis in the Scripture readings that when Christ appears to his disciples after rising from the dead, well, what does he say to them? He says, ‘Peace be with you!’ We often speak in liturgical terms and devout terms about Christ’s ‘farewell gift of peace’, but it is every bit as much his salute, not only when he takes leave, but when he comes again. And I think ultimately that is how we shall remain peaceful in life’s storms and in the global storm in which we’re all caught up now that gives so much cause for objective anxiety, to cling not to sentiment, but to cling to Christ, the incarnation of the living God, to want to be where he is, because that’s where peace is and nowhere else.
Jamie Baxter: Yeah, I love the emphasis on the dynamic of peace, which in your episodes, really clearly stated is not this state of tranquility. In fact, it’s when you commit to silence, you make room for the battle of the heart.
Bishop Varden: Absolutely, and that it is that peace comes through that battle, that the fact of battling now doesn’t mean that peace is somehow eluding me. I’m simply preparing the ground for it, and that may require some real mining work over long periods of time, which is why there is actually such consolation in those stories of the fathers and these details are sort of given in the life of Antony. Athanasius gives us a clear chronology of the life of Antony: he spent so many years doing this and so many years doing that, and when we realize that he spent, whatever it is, 12 years or something in the cemetery, in the state of almost constant battle. That gives us a sense of perspective. But we get, we find these throwaway remarks in many of the other lives of the fathers as well, and indeed the mothers. There’s a story about Amma Sarra, where it says she lived with this temptation for 13 years, and that is how peace was given her. So let’s never underestimate the purposefulness of battle as the preparation for peace.
Jamie Baxter: Yeah, and you can just, I mean, when the apostles receive the peace of Christ, which he gives to them they’re sent forth all the way to the point of death for the sake of the name. So that’s wonderful. Okay, our next questions are on the topic of compunction, and there’s a couple of them I’m excited to get into. So you describe the fear of God not as anxiety, but as an existential consciousness of reverence. How would you explain this to someone who has only ever understood fear in terms of punishment or dread?
Bishop Varden: Good question, and an important one. I think, I mean, in some ways our phrase, ‘the fear of God’, a scriptural phrase, is an unfortunate one… And so I think one way of conveying it is by extending the vocabulary to speak in terms of reverence, and even in terms of trust, because here we touch something which is a biblical and a spiritual paradox, that the salutary fear of God, the fear of God that we want to obtain and entertain is an experience of trust.
It is the fear of God that results from realizing, be it even in a glimpse, an insufficient glimpse, the holiness of God, and ascertaining that here is this essential fire that yet does not consume me, but beckons to me, warms me, and accompanies me. So I think one way of doing that would be to try and help that fearful person who may have been wounded by fear to recognize that absolutes are not necessarily destructive, and that the ultimate absolute, who is God, is in fact revealed to us and is experientially accessible to us as a carrying benevolence. I love that phrase in the book of Deuteronomy when Moses reflects on the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness and all the hardships and all the rebellions and the murmurings and the waiting and the frustration and the deaths along the way, and yet he says, ‘and underneath were the Everlasting Arms’. It is that realization that inspires in us the true fear of God.
Jamie Baxter: In The Monk and the Actress you mentioned that only truth spoken in love has the power to awaken another’s conscience. How do we cultivate that kind of love in a polarizing time?
Bishop Varden: By exercising, and I think for most of us the obvious place to start is by learning to shut up, to keep quiet when I’m about to say something which is unmotivated by love, and to keep quiet when my tongue is itching to say a condemning or a hurtful or a spiteful word, be it ever so elegantly phrased. Dorotheus of Gaza speaks of this. He’s one of the later fathers, and I mean we could do a whole year of Dorotheus of Gaza.
We have a collection of his sayings simply known as The Instructions, and in The Instructions Dorotheus of Gaza speaks at one point about fraternal correction, about telling my brother when he’s not on the right path, and Dorotheus says this is a high and wonderful virtue and an indispensable element of community life, and we must all practice this assiduously, etc., etc., and then he says, but if when you’re on the point of correcting your brother, if you find that there is the tiniest flicker of bitterness, envy, hatred, or rage in your heart, do not say your word, for even a true word uttered with spite will not do any good. It will not produce peace. It will produce further division, and not only will it do harm to you, to the other person, but it will do harm to you who utter it. So to learn to speak the truth in love is first of all to learn not to speak when love is not my motivation, then to live in such a way that my love is purified, and then to try little by little, as time passes and grace works, to make my loving disposition and my spoken words coincide.
Jamie Baxter: I’m not sure if I’ve shared this with you, but it was actually, I was handed a collection of Dorotheus of Gaza when I was 15, so this was like my first introduction to the tradition of the fathers, actually. So anyway, we haven’t really even discussed that, so that’ll be, yeah, maybe a future discussion. I’d love to get into that more.
Okay, so this one is another kind of a distinction question from really trying to understand the ascetic grief, which gives motivation for our compunction from unhealthy guilt, or what the questioner asks as self-pity, or that converge on scrupulosity. So maybe what are the tell-tale signs that, what are the fruits, I guess you could ask of this holy grief, versus something more self-referential, maybe even coming out from a place of hurt or wound?
Bishop Varden: In fact, I think you’ve just given the answer, because the tell-tale signs are very clear, and they’re extremely reliable, that a holy grief will open me up and turn my gaze away from myself, because a holy grief is inspired not by my mourning the wound that I’ve suffered, but by realizing that I have hurt someone else, that I’ve not lived up to God’s call, that I’ve not shown myself worthy of Christ’s love, that I have betrayed the grace given to me, and that, often enough, I’ve done this by hurting someone else, or by being a stumbling block to them, or by discouraging them. So, a holy grief will open me up in repentance, and make me conscious of not having lived up to a call to communion, whereas an unhealthy grief will close me in on myself, and inspire self-pity, and bitterness, and murmuring, and we all know that bitter complex of sentiments that form an enclosure around me, that actually ends up shutting me off from everything and everyone, and even potentially from grace itself.
Jamie Baxter: So, our next few questions are very much about kind of particular instances of, or they’re kind of asking if they’re experiencing this holy grief before a couple of struggles that they’re having, or sins that they see in the world. So, I’ll do my best to kind of summarize the next questions, and present them together, if that’s okay, Bishop Varden.
So, the first is really the listener feeling like they are in a place of joy-producing penthos, a holy and ascetic grief which they believe are inspired by kind of what God is unfolding in their hearts. And the grief that they experience is really before many Christians that they say who possess nothing more than a symbolic and memorialist understanding of the Holy Eucharist, the most holy sacrament in which we partake of the body and blood of Christ Jesus our Lord. My heart’s desire, they say, is to speak the truth in love, and to do so as the Lord leads. And while I know that there is a risk of being horribly misunderstood, and that there’s a real possibility I shall suffer rejection for my conviction; I’m willing to say and do whatever I must that God would be glorified.
Am I right to think, so here’s the question, am I right to think that when human beings partake of holy communion in error, and divine grace is being obscured, that precious souls are being starved, and that God is being mocked by such an irreverent act? Help me to understand if this is a cause for a holy grief.
And then the other question is also kind of a particular, the struggle of a listener in the world around: they mentioned they’ve spent a lot of time lobbying Catholics to reject the legalization of euthanasia in all its forms. And they’re just, they’re finding that more and more Catholics are approving of it in different ways. And they mentioned that they’re in Canada, and availing themselves to a kind of government-sanctioned death. How does one find peace? So I guess this is more of a peace question, peace going up against what they see as explicit forces of evil in the world. So yeah, how do we…
Bishop Varden: That gives us enough to start with.
Jamie Baxter: There’s a lot there, take that where you are.
Bishop Varden: I think what I should have clarified from the beginning is this: the penthos, the joy-bearing grief that the fathers speak about, springs from compunction and repentance. To feel grief because someone else is not living up to their vocation or their commitment, that too can be a legitimate grief, but it’s a different kind of grief. But it’s a risky grief, because there is easily, for all of us, wounded as we are, in such grief, that makes me feel sad when I look at how others live, or do not live. It’s a Pharisaic tendency to think, why doesn’t that person have my insight? Why doesn’t that person perceive things the way I perceive it? Why have they not reached my degree of advancement in prayer or in sacramental understanding, etc.? I think, from an ascetic point of view, we must always be very cautious in such instances against the temptation to self-righteousness, which is an extremely subtle one. The Fathers speak about this at length.
It’s not least when we’re convinced of being in the right, that the tempter utilizes that to stimulate our pride, and there effectively, again, to cut us off rather than to open us up. That’s the first thing I would say with regard to that. In terms of the importance of having reverence for the Eucharist, I mean, that is obvious.
And we have any number of very valuable documents and church teachings and authoritative statements on that topic. At the same time, I think we must beware of being more protective of the Lord than he was of himself, because who am I to know what receiving Sacramental Communion will do to another, even if his or her outward form may not correspond to my expected standard? If we think at the institution of the Eucharist we have Maundy Thursday just a week back, the fact that the Lord gave the bread and the wine to the Twelve at the Last Supper, saying, This is my Body, This is my Blood, including Judas. The Lord knows what he is about to set out to do. So, clearly, entertaining some hope against hope that a restoration to communion might still be effective in some way. When confronted with these things, we must always really strive to put on the mind of Christ. So, that’d be one thing.
With regard to the other question, and attitudes to life and death, etc., that is a source for grief. At the same time we are as Christians, and the first disciples were, up against a world that is operating on terms of destruction. And what did the disciples do when the eleven of them stood around the ascending Christ? There they were, eleven weary fellows in a collective state of post-traumatic stress, being told to go out and evangelise the world. They didn’t become fainthearted on account of the iniquities before them. They simply set out, step by step, walking with Christ and, as we read in today’s Gospel, letting the Lord work in them. I think what matters is to remain close to Christ, to adhere to him, to let him work in us, and to let him be our peace, even confronting the culture of death.
Jamie Baxter: Our last couple questions, Bishop Varden, come from men and women seeking a word in the desert from an Abba. So these are quite personal and I appreciated them deeply and the trust our listeners have expressed here.
So the first is this. I had a huge conversion to Christ about 35 years ago. It’s been a difficult struggle to turn from some sins that I did for many years before my conversion, so over 35 years ago. To give you an example of their desire for wholeness and holiness, they packed up and lived in a Catholic monastery for a few years after their conversion. So they’ve changed a lot, but they still struggle daily with a couple of sins. And without mentioning what they are specifically, here’s my question.
If a person lives in great sin for years and years, is it possible that what lingers from this is nearly impossible to turn from? After a lot of therapy and spiritual guidance, I clearly see these lingering sins as something the Lord doesn’t like. Should I still be trying to turn from these sins or accept the fact that I’ll have these hanging over me indefinitely? And they say, I know the Lord wants to use me more, but I believe these sins are keeping me from that. Thanks for the opportunity to ask this.
Bishop Varden: No, again, thank you for the honesty which is explicit in that question. I would say, as an answer to the most specific question, ‘Should I still struggle against and turn away from these sins?’ Yes, by all means. ‘Should I expect that my turning away will cause the temptation to vanish?’ No, not necessarily.
That, too, is where we find great light and encouragement in many of these stories of the fathers and mothers. I think we may have talked about already the story of St. Mary of Egypt, a paradigmatic tale in so many ways. I speak about that in my book, The Shattering of Loneliness. It’s an ancient story, but it’s almost shockingly specific and realistic. And it talks about this woman who’d given herself to a life of sexual lust and indulgence for 17 years. And she said, ‘I did it purely because I wanted to. There was no material necessity forcing me to do this. I did it because it was my desire.’
And then she has a conversion. She begins a new life. And yet she turns from these habits resolutely and with great fortitude. But she ascertains that she carries the scars and she carries the memories and that some of the sweetness that she experienced mentally and physically is still within her. And she speaks about how she could hear in her inner ear songs she used to sing that were connected with certain environments and kinds of behavior. And she speaks of the memory of pleasure that remained in her body.
And she says, at such times, the only thing I could do was to throw myself on the ground and pray, Lord Jesus, have mercy on me. And she said, sometimes I remained like that, prostrate on the ground until nightfall. And what she says tellingly is that she remained in that state of ongoing purification for 17 years. So a period of life corresponding to the life she had spent in vice. But she says, after 17 years, that cloud lifted, it was taken away.
But it’s a hopeful tale, but it’s also a very realistic one that reminds us that our choices, our good choices and our bad choices leave traces and inflict wounds and that we live with those wounds and that the healing takes time. But it is accomplished as long as we cooperate with the healing. So I would say, turn away from sin, be prepared to battle with temptation, and have faith that the divine physician, whose wisdom defies every obstacle, will reliably work his cure, but that it takes time.
Jamie Baxter: Thank you.This question is from a religious sister, it seems to me. So they asked this, and it’s basically about preferential love for another in a community setting. I was wondering if Bishop Varden could talk to us about when one feels like a love for a particular sister or brother, a spiritual sister or brother, how to overcome fear of loving them too much or becoming attached. Not wanting to support, but how to express it in a way that wouldn’t harm the overall fraternity, for example, of creating, quote, inside groups or causing jealousy in other members of the community. How do we imitate the noble affection of Christ, such as the case with his beloved disciple John? Thank you so much.
Bishop Varden: Important question. A tree is judged by its fruits. In community, as indeed as in a parish, friendship is important. The ascetic literature of ages bygone used to warn against ‘particular friendships’, which isn’t such a good phrase, really, because, I mean, what sort of friendship isn’t particular? You can’t be someone’s friend in a general way. But what that phrase refers to is still quite a useful criterion, because we could paraphrase it by speaking of friendships that turn self-sufficient, that close two people into themselves and create a sufficiency rather than strengthening the body, the community.
And I think that’s part of the particular celibate challenge, because the celibate commitment, whether for a priest or a religious brother or sister, is not only about abstaining from sexual practice. It is about a certain solitude of the heart. I must be aware of not compromising that by fostering affections that are intended to make up for my own self-oblation. Such compensatory dynamics can be outwardly pure in every way, and yet still compromise me. If I start doting on this person for encouragement, for a good word, for attention, if I feel I have a claim to their time, etc., then my heart, which I would want to be Christ’s, is in fact turning into a piecemeal heart that is more geared towards immediate little satisfactions.
So those are the sort of signs to look out for. When I get up in the morning, do I think, ‘Another day in the service of the Lord!’, or do I think, ‘Oh will Sister Such-and-Such give me a smile when I turn up at breakfast?’ It’s a silly example, but you get the point. Is my mind in the consecrated finality of my religious life, or am I increasingly set on receiving affective consolations here and now? If the latter, well, there’s something that probably needs to be set right.
Jamie Baxter: Well, Bishop, before we have you close us in a prayer and a blessing, I had one question related to the time in which we find ourselves. So we’re recording this on Easter Friday, and our Holy Father, Pope Francis, died this past Monday on Easter Monday. We’ll honor his life and legacy and his funeral tomorrow, and then we’ll begin this time of conclave. And there’s just kind of a lot we’re all kind of going through and navigating.
And what I wanted to ask you is, and maybe I’ll tell you exactly where this is coming from in my heart at the end, but basically, we’re in this time of transition. And in one of our recent episodes you presented so beautifully the story of Pambo and the monk and the actress. And you said here in this example, and there are a couple, of how the charismatic and institutional authorities are not bound up in conflict. The fathers, though committed to solitude, did not refuse to emerge from it now and again when the church had need of them.
And my question for you is, for those of us listening to this series, entering into the spirit of the desert fathers, what does the church have need of us during this time? And here’s where I’m coming from. It’s just so easy to just kind of politicize this whole thing and here’s the big players. And you kind of, you can, it almost seems to me as I read about all this in my secular papers, it’s like, yeah, we kind of reduce, yeah, the institution of the church to kind of conversation that I don’t think is quite becoming of the spirit of the fathers.
And at least for me and my own experience, I find myself really reluctant at when I’m asked questions, so, hey, who do you think is going to be the next pope? As though I have any kind of intel, insight, or even an opinion about it which I don’t. And I don’t really feel like it’s my station in life. So I guess my question, that’s where I’m coming from. That’s kind of what I’m carrying. But I guess the question more broadly is how would the fathers encourage us to live during this time of papal transition?
Bishop Varden: I think they would say: ‘with detachment’. This is another theme which we find in the lives of several, which I always think is very touching. You have somebody who’s been living in solitude for a long time, and then a pilgrim comes along, and they will ask questions like, ‘Oh, so how are the Christians? How is the emperor?’ Having no idea who the emperor is now, but knowing that there is one somewhere, and that he has an important part to play in the, what the fathers call the oikonomia, the economy, the unfolding of the civilized world, and ideally a task to play in the life of the Church.
During the period in which the Fathers lived, most of them wouldn’t have had a clue who was the bishop of Rome at a given moment. They wouldn’t even have known his name. But they would pray for him because they would pray for the bishops, and they would pray for the Successor of Peter. And they would be assured that the providence of God was strangely making its way and realizing itself in the Mystical Body, and that their task was to do what they were doing as well as possible.
Think for a moment of the autobiography of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, when she talks about her great desire to accomplish all the vocations, to be an apostle and a martyr and evangelist and everything. And she’s sort of tortured by this, and she wonders how am I, little I, going to deal with all this? And then she has this great insight, which becomes her Little Way. But it’s a Great Way! And she says, ‘I suddenly realized that my task is to be love, and to be love in the heart of the Church, my Mother.’ At this time, we might try and bring cardiac rest, to oxygenize the mystical body by fostering peace and by letting the bloodstream run at a normal course without getting too excited, without the body needing to take medication to lower its blood pressure. That, I think, is the most helpful way we can live as Catholics right now.
Jamie Baxter: Beautiful. Well, with that, Bishop Varden, I just want to thank you so much for your time today, answering these beautiful questions from our listeners.
Bishop Varden: Thank you very much, and thank you to all who have bothered to write in and ask questions, and to all who follow us in this joint pilgrimage. Even here and now we are speaking from Trondheim and Indiana! Yet we’re walking together, and it’s great that somehow this little flock that we constitute is making its path together under the aegis of the Fathers.
Jamie Baxter: It’s so true. Dr. Jared Staudt was remarking the other day: ‘Honestly, I’ll never be the same!’ That’s how we all feel, just a third of the way through the journey, and it’s such a gift to make this journey with you and all of our listeners, Bishop Varden. With that, would you close us in a prayer and send us forth?
Bishop Varden: Gladly. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. And may the blessing of Almighty God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit come down upon you and remain with you always.
Jamie Baxter: Amen. Thank you, and with that, thank you so much for listening to episode 18, this Q&A with Bishop Varden. Next week, we will begin our journey into the fourth chapter of the Systematic Collection on Self-Mastery. With that, may God bless you, and we’ll see you next week.

Coram Fratribus

Interesting Report A Review of evidence and best practice in the field of paediatric gender dysphoria published today chimes with a growing global consensus. It concludes: ‘A central theme of this Review is that many U.S. medical professionals and associations have fallen short of their duty to prioritize the health interests of young patients. First, there was a rapid expansion and implementation of a clinical protocol that lacked sufficient scientific and ethical justification. Second, when confronted with compelling evidence that this protocol did not deliver the health benefits it promised, and that other countries were changing their policies appropriately, U.S. medical professionals and associations failed to reconsider the “gender-affirming” approach. Third, conflicting evidence—evidence that challenged the foundational assumptions of the protocol and the professional standing of its advocates—was mischaracterized or insufficiently acknowledged. Finally, dissenting perspectives were marginalized, and those who voiced them were disparaged. While no clinician or medical association intends to fail their patients—particularly those who are most vulnerable—the preceding chapters demonstrate that this is precisely what has occurred.’ Cf. this statement from the Norwegian Council of Catholic Bishops produced in 2022.

Habemus Papam! We have a Pope!
The Cardinals gathered in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel have elected Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost as the 267th Pope, who took the name Pope Leo XIV. 5 Likes

Posted: 16 hours ago

2 Likes

Posted: 17 hours ago

White smoke! The 133 Cardinal electors gathered in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel have elected the new Pope. He will appear soon at the central window of St. Peter’s Basilica. 3 Likes

Posted: 18 hours ago

On 21 June 2025, The Religious Order of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God, Carrigtwohill, (PSMG) wish to invite you to join them in giving thanks to God for their ministry to the local people over the past Read More 5 Likes

Posted: 19 hours ago

As the College of Cardinals prepares to enter the Conclave today, let us unite in prayer for wisdom, unity, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit 🙏 1 Comments

🙏🙏🙏🙏

9 Likes

Posted: Yesterday

Cloyne Diocesan Knock Pilgrimage 2025

Sunday 11 May 2025

Schedule of Ceremonies

Explore Knock Shrine

Celebration of 150 years of Ministry - Poor Servants of the Mother of God

On 21 June 2025, The Religious Order of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God, Carrigtwohill, (PSMG) wish to invite you to join them in giving thanks to God for their ministry to the local people over the past 150 years.

Life in the Spirit Seminars - May 16th to June 27th 2025

Come to know the Personal Love of the Lord more deeply through an uplifting and inspiring series of talks, prayer and togetherness (Life in the Spirit Seminars)

Camp Creideamh Knockadoon

Camp Creideamh Knockadoon 8th - 14th June 2025

Search

Email Subscription

Latest Homily

Latest Articles