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Fáilte, Welcome

to the website for the Catholic Diocese of Cloyne, Ireland

Bishop William Crean

19 August 2024

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
Richmond House,Fermoy
(Richmond Hill) College Rd, P61 T292

Friday nights at 8pm
from Fri 20th Sept to Fri 25th Oct 2024

For further information please contact:
Tim 086 - 8098004

Everyone Warmly Welcome

Send Forth Your Spirit. Oh Lord, and renew the face of the Earth (Ps. 103:30)

Please follow this link for more information on the Relics of St Bernadette and their visit to Ireland.

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St. Bernadette Relic Pilgrimage Ireland 2024

A retreat that reflects on the lyrics of Leonard Cohen

To help us encounter the God of the Scriptures we will use the songs of Leonard Cohen, who has inspired millions as they face the paradox of believing in a loving God while living in a broken world. During this retreat his lyrics will help us to explore prayerfully how the word of God can speak to us today offering hope and meaning in difficult times.

Bookings are now open and early booking is advised. The cost is €530 residential and €300 non-residential.

For further information click here or to book a place on this Retreat, please call 01 4048189 or by email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

“There’s a crack in everything: that’s how the light gets in” Sean Goan

Fr Eamon Roche and the Camp Creideamh team are planning a one day bus trip to Killarney on Wednesday 7th August

The day will incude Mass, Rosary, hike, sight seeing, meal, rides in jaunting carts, etc.
13 to 18 year olds are welcome to apply and former campers also welcome

The idea is to have a fun day with Mass and prayers

Please apply here

or call

086 997 2539

Camp Creideamh Killarney - 7 Aug 2024

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11 August 2024 - Mysterium Fidei

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Coram Fratribus

21. Sunday B

Joshua 24.1-18: Choose today whom you wish to serve.
Ephesians 5.21-32: This mystery applies to Christ and the Church.
John 6.60-69: ‘This is intolerable! How could anyone accept it?’
Our Gospel begins with the exclamation of one who’s had enough: ‘Intolerable! How can Read More

Coram Fratribus

Norsk schizofreni Norge har i år feiret tusenårsjubileum for kristenretten, øyensynlig med allmen begeistring. Fromt er det blitt sunget over det ganske land om Guds fire døtre. Vi har ropt hurra for at Norge i 1024 gikk fra å være maktsamfunn til å bli rettssamfunn; for anerkjennelsen av kvinner, barn og treller som rettssubjekter; for funnet av “verdier” som utgjør det Grunnloven kaller vår kristne arv. At regjeringen nettopp i år presser gjennom en ny abortlov som konsekvent unnlater å omtale fostre som ‘barn’, som kaster levedyktighetsprinsippet på båten og derved befester at det er lovlig, på statens premisser her til lands, for ett menneske å ta et annet menneskes liv, vitner om en kollektiv schizofreni det er ille ansett å omtale. Men det må til. Norsk katolsk bisperåd analyserte lovforslaget i vår og bad om at det skulle forkastes. Vi spurte: ‘Er Norge tjent med en utvikling av lovverk som åpner for sentimentalisering av selve personbegrepet, som tilskriver et ønsket individ personlighet, mens et uønsket individ fraskrives personlighet, og som på dette grunnlag ekspederer individet enten mot liv eller død?’ Og svarte så, ‘Vi mener at Norge ikke er tjent med slik utvikling.’ Det mener vi fortsatt. Vi beklager dypt at utviklingen tross alt finner sted, tilsynelatende uten at så mange bryr seg.

Coram Fratribus

Tore Hund Med interesse har jeg lest Heidi Frich Andersens Men utenfor er hundene om hellig Olavs banemann. Den historiske roman utgjør en vrien genre. Man risikerer anakronismer på flere plan, og forenklende fortidsperspektiver. Frich Andersen navigerer imidlertid stødig og godt. Hun baserer seg trygt på sagalitteraturen. Når hun bruker fantasien er det, så å si, innenfor sagaens rammer. Hun formidler kompleksiteten i menneskers liv, i valgene de møtte, for tusen år siden. I hennes gjenfortelling synes beretningen om Tore Hunds omvendelse og pilegrimsferd til Jorsal på intet vis uunngåelig, men menneskelig mulig, ja, ikke usannsynlig. I tillegg beskriver hun levende hvordan Olavs helligkåring kan ha fortonet seg i samtidiges sensibilitet. Hun skriver godt, stilrent. Latinen er dessverre noe maltraktert. Jeg vet ikke om det er tenkt som litterært virkemiddel? Historien gir seg ut for å være Tores opptegnelse. Noen stor latinsk kultur hadde han neppe. Men hadde han så gjennomført gått på tverke med deklinasjoner og rettskriving, ville han neppe ha ført et så godt riksmål. Nå, dette er en marginal skavank. Boken er høyst leseverdig. Den maner til ettertanke. Og det trengs.

Coram Fratribus

Like a Bad Habit In a cogent essay Timothy Snyder engages with the distorted reading of history that underpins Russia’s ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine. The framework he uses, reminding us to check projections and downright inventions against facts, can be applied to other situations, too. ‘When confronted with magical thinking by dictators, historians feel out of place, like a bridge player invited to judge prestidigitation, say, or a surgeon hired to care for wax figures. Putin is in love with a legend. Historically speaking, this is very familiar: new regimes, such as Putin’s, seek compensation in myths of ancient origin. Putin’s idea of Russia, his justification for the killing of hundreds of thousands of people, his rationalization of his attempt to destroy Ukraine as a people — it all rests on a very familiar sort of tall tale: we were here first. These stories are generally complete falsehoods, from the “we” through the “were” and the “here” and the “first.” And so it is for Putin. But the stories get repeated so often that they take on a kind of leaden plausibility, like a bad habit.’ After unpicking these stories, Snyder concludes: ‘Were Putin to follow his own logic, he would not be invading Ukraine, but handing over European Russia to Finland or Sweden.’

Coram Fratribus

21. Sunday B Joshua 24.1-18: Choose today whom you wish to serve.
Ephesians 5.21-32: This mystery applies to Christ and the Church.
John 6.60-69: ‘This is intolerable! How could anyone accept it?’
Our Gospel begins with the exclamation of one who’s had enough: ‘Intolerable! How can anyone put up with this?’
What is this all about? What led this fellow, and so many others besides, to withdraw from Jesus’s company, so that we find him asking even his trusted friends, the ones he had called to remain with him: ‘Will you go away, too?’
The scene is played out in the wake of the speech Jesus pronounced in Capernaum after feeding multitudes by the Lake of Galilee. What we witness is the formation of clear fronts. On the bank of the lake the day before, five thousand men, not counting women and children, had been fed from provisions that amounted to next to nothing, five loaves and a couple of fish. These thousands had followed after Jesus because they were fascinated by him. They had seen some of the wonders he performed; they had heard him speak nobly, with authority. They had benefited from free meals.
Since the beginning of recorded time people have followed prophets of various kinds noncommittally like this, asking themselves, ‘Maybe? Maybe not?’ It is immensely satisfying to be in the vicinity of a categorical imperative. We get butterflies in our tummy and think: ‘I could make a radical decision. Who’s to say I haven’t got the makings of a hero?’ Indeed, it can happen that we are deeply moved by our own capacity for greatness before we think, ‘Still, there’s no rush’, and potter home to flick on the telly.
When Jesus, in Capernaum, saw people from the day before come to see him, he said: ‘You look for me, not because you have seen signs, but because you have eaten your fill of bread’. This remark, and the question to the apostles, ‘Will you go away, too?’ shows God’s realism with regard to human beings. It has a tragic aspect being based on perennial experience. Again and again the Lord has ascertained that we, apparently pious, openhandedly receive his gifts but shy away from his demands. When the Church teaches us about original sin, about the force of sin in our lives, it is not primarily with a view to sensational transgressions or lewd excesses. We know we are sinners because even our noblest aspirations and aims are subject to corruption, like the rose in Blake’s poem:
O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
The ‘secret love’ referred to here can be simply our search for security, maintenance, food and drink — things we really need, not bad in themselves; however they risk shutting us off from the world and from others, fixing our attention on our navel, untouched by the rose’s unselfconsciousness. For the rose is content simply to be, and freely to be picked.
Jesus would teach us to live like the flowers of the field. This image is far from sentimental mush; it is radical. Think of how the Loreto litany calls Mary, the utterly absorbed who knew the Godhead’s burning and the sword of suffering, ‘Mystic Rose’. In Capernaum Jesus tries to induce self-centred people to raise their gaze towards the import of his long catechesis about the bread of life: the eucharistic self-outpouring of the Son of Man. It is that which will permit him to ‘ascend to where he was before’, thence to bestow life and spirit on those who, following his example, renounce themselves and the dear illusion that they might conquer the world, in order instead to abandon themselves into God’s hands.
To live by faith, to ‘serve the Lord’ the way Joshua taught the Israelites at Shechem, is to step outside, once for all, the logic of profit and graciously to receive God’s gift, which Scripture likes to call ‘grace’. Thus we are made gracious, and renewed.
Earlier in the Gospel of John, Jesus says to the woman at the well: ‘Ah! If you knew the gift of God’. If we knew if, even just a reflection of it, no sacrifice would seem to us too great, no trial too heavy; then it would be self-evident that the pearl of great price is worth whatever else we might own. We find an expression of such insight in Peter’s answer to the Lord’s question to the twelve about whether they will retrace their steps and return home: ‘Lord, to whom should we go? You have the words of eternal life.’
To be fully a Christian is to assent to a degree of homelessness on earth. It is to know that only ‘in Christ’ do we have certain anchorage. To live on these terms is demanding. We walk blindly at first, and fumble. The Bible tells us what it cost Peter to take leave of accumulated securities. It shows no less the fecundity he found in surrendering himself to divine providence. He reminded believers that they are, true enough, ‘aliens and exiles’ but subsisting within ‘an indescribable and glorious joy’ (1 Peter 2.11, 1.8).
To be truly united to Christ is to experience a unity so profound that even the nuptial covenant of man and wife seems in comparison an imperfect symbol. Paul, no less than John, though in a different dialect, bids us practise the art of living ecstatically, so as to give our lives that others might live. This is love, he tells us: the self-transcendence that lets us joyfully, gratefully find our life’s focus outside ourselves.
This is the way to construct our lives if we want to live fully, and not merely survive. The rose of our love is capable of eternity if it isn’t just left in the swamp of selfishness but is nurtured by spirit and enabled to stretch upward towards the hand of God, who will pick it at the opportune time. No ‘dark secret’ has power over it then; the invisible worm is swallowed up by the night, while we bloom towards day.
In today’s collect we pray that our hearts may be fixed ‘where true gladness is found’, that is through Christ, with Christ, in Christ. To him be glory for ever. May our devoted lives give him praise, and joy. Amen.

Coram Fratribus

Venice at Dawn Lawrence Durrell in Bitter Lemons: ‘These thoughts belong to Venice at dawn, seen from the deck of the ship which is to carry me down through the islands to Cyprus; a Venice wobbling in a thousand fresh-water reflections, cool as a jelly. It was as if some great master, stricken with dementia, had burst his whole colour-box against the sky to deafen the inner eye of the world. Cloud and water mixed into each other, dripping with colours, merging, overlapping, liquefying, with steeples and balconies and roofs floating in space, like the fragments of some stained-glass window seen through a dozen veils of rice-paper. Fragments of history touched with the colours of wine, tar, ochre, blood, fire-opal and ripening grain. The whole at the same time being rinsed softly at the edges into a dawn sky as softly and circumspectly blue as a pigeon’s egg.’
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Life in the Spirit Seminars - Friday 20 Sep to Friday 25 Oct 2024