Welcome, Fáilte - Diocese of Cloyne

Cloyne Diocesan Pilgrimage to Lourdes 30th May - 4th June 2025
All bookings for the Cloyne Diocesan Pilgrimage to Lourdes should be made through Joe Walsh Tours by telephone 01-2410800, online Joe Walsh Tours or by post to 89 Harcourt Street, Dublin 2, D02WY88. No booking is definite until a non-refundable deposit payment of €350 per person (plus insurance premium where applicable) has been receipted by Joe Walsh Tours. Early booking advisable.

Pilgrims who would like to travel with the Special Assisted Section should apply to: Cloyne Diocesan Pilgrimage to Lourdes, c/o Parish Secretary, 27/28 Bank Place, Mallow, Co. Cork. Tel: 022-20276. This special assisted/sick section is accommodated at the Accueil Notre Dame. Acceptance for travel with the special section for the sick is subject to approval of the Pilgrimage Medical Board. The closing date for receipt of application is 31 March 2025.

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8 Jun 2025 - Pentecost Sunday

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Coram Fratribus

Marian Mystery

Homily given at the June convention of the Fatima Prayer Centre in Büren.
Gen 3.9-20: Wo bist du?
Joh 19.25-27: Siehe, deine Mutter!
Unsere Lesung aus dem Buch Genesis beschreibt die Konsequenz des Sündenfalles. Man könnte meinen, eine solche Geschichte hätte unserer Zeit Read More

Coram Fratribus

Desert Fathers 24

Abba Antony said: I think the body possesses a physical movement that is mixed up with it, though it does not work except with the consent of the soul. There is another [kind of] movement which comes from nurturing and Read More

Coram Fratribus

Marian Mystery Homily given at the June convention of the Fatima Prayer Centre in Büren.
Gen 3.9-20: Wo bist du?
Joh 19.25-27: Siehe, deine Mutter!
Unsere Lesung aus dem Buch Genesis beschreibt die Konsequenz des Sündenfalles. Man könnte meinen, eine solche Geschichte hätte unserer Zeit nichts zu sagen. Wer denkt überhaupt mehr an Sünde? Die katholische Kirche, hört man manchmal sagen, sei zu lange von der Idee der Sünde besessen gewesen; sie habe dadurch den Menschen Lasten von Schuldgefühlen aufgebürdet; und sei so verantwortlich für eine Verdrehung des Glaubens, der ja für Leben, Freude, Offenheit und Heiterkeit stehen müsse. Also weg mit dem Sündengerede! Lassen wir lieber bunte Drachen des Optimismus in die Luft steigen!
Was sollen wir dazu sagen? Ich denke spontan an Worte des nachdenklichen Konsuls in Puccinis Oper Madama Butterfly. Wenn Pinkerton, der naive Schurke, von seiner Zukunftsvision spricht, einer Projektion von Glück der dem eigenen Verlangen rücksichtslos entspricht, sagt der Konsul: “Das ist aber ein zu einfaches Evangelium!”
Leben aber ist selten einfach. Leben ist schwer. Der Glaube hilft uns, ehrlich mit der Schwierigkeit umzugehen, nicht indem er sie wegzaubert; sondern in dem er uns hilft, Ursachen zu erkennen und dadurch Lösungen, Wege in die Freiheit, in den Frieden.
Sünde hat nicht hauptsächlich mit Schuld zu tun. Sünde steht für eine Wunde, die uns Verhältnisse sabotiert, die uns fesselt und vereinsamt. Der biblische Text beschreibt den Vorgang dichterisch, realistisch und luzid. Was tut der Urmensch nachdem er gesündigt hat? Was tut der für ewiges Leben geschaffene nachdem er, bewusst, dem Weg folgt der ihn in den Tod führt?
Er versteckt sich schamrötend, will nicht gesehen werden. Die Scham wird ihm nicht von Gott auferlegt. Nein! Gott ruft ihn zurück in die Beziehung: “Adam, wo bist du?” Die Scham kommt von selbst. Sie drückt eine Überzeugung aus, die uns vielleicht nicht ganz fremd ist. Sie lässt uns denken: “Würde jemand wissen, was ich in meinem Leben gemacht oder gedacht habe, würde mich jemand sehen wie ich bin, dann würde er vor mir meilenweit fliehen!” So verschanze ich mich lieber, wie Adam im Wald oder hinter einer Maske. Es scheint besser, sicherer, mich selbst zu isolieren als die gefürchteten, erwarteten Worte zu hören: “Ich will nichts von dir wissen!”
Die Entfremdung des Menschen vom Schöpfer spiegelt sich in der Entfremdung zwischen Mann und Frau. Ursprünglich fanden die beiden im anderen Wonne. Erst als Adam von Eva gesehen wurde und sich selbst in ihrem Blick erkannte, überwand er sein Gefühl von Unvollständigkeit. Der Mensch ist nicht grundsätzlich autonom und autark, nicht sich selbst genügend. “Es ist nicht gut, dass der Mensch allein ist” (Genesis 2.18). Die Sünde drängt ihn aber in die Einsamkeit. Nackt und verwundbar steht er da, ob er auch alles Mögliche tut um sich selbst und anderen ein Bild der Stärke und des Muts zu projizieren.
Gott ist Mensch geworden um diese existentielle Wunde zu heilen. Das Wort ist im Leib einer Jungfrau Fleisch geworden nicht nur um Schulden zu regeln: reduzieren wir sein werk nicht aufs Kalkül. Der allmächtige Vater hat in Christus durch den Geist die Menschennatur neu erstellt. Der Leib Mariens öffnet wieder das vom lodernden Flammenschwert bewachte Tor des Edens so dass der Herr, wenn alles vollbracht ist, ausrufen kann: “Heute noch wirst du mit mir im Paradies sein!”
Wunderbar ist es, dass er kurz davor seiner Mutter sagt: “Siehe!” Dann dem geliebten Jünger: “Siehe!” Die Szene ist kein bloß sentimentales Bild; sie enthielt eine theologische Aussage. In Maria erkennt die Kirche die neue Eva, die deren schönen Namen verwirklicht: endlich, nach tausendjährigem Warten, wird der in Christus neu geborene Mensch im wahren Sinne ein Lebendiger, nicht nur jemand, der ein Weilchen in dieser Welt überlebt, sondern des ewigen Lebens fähig ist. In Johannes sieht die Kirche ein Bild von sich selbst, “für das Menschengeschlecht die unzerstörbare Keimzelle der Einheit, der Hoffnung und des Heils” (Lumen Gentium 9). Im begnadeten Schatten des Kreuzes, wovon Herrlichkeit strahlt, dürfen sich Mann und Frau, die Menschheit symbolisch wiedervereint, sich wieder frei anschauen, ohne Furcht, ohne Scham, ohne ambivalente Begierde, in Dankbarkeit und mit freudigem Staunen. Denn der Kreuzstamm an dem das wahre Opferlamm geschlachtet wurde ist zugleich der Baum des Lebens. Durch ihn wird dem Menschen wieder ein würdiges Dasein ermöglicht und die Traurigkeit der Sünde verdrängt.
Deswegen ist die Feier die wir nun begehen wesentlich. Wir verehren die Gottesmutter nicht nur aus privater Devotion: wir bekennen dass wir, durch sie, zum neuen Leben berufen sind jenseits der Begrenzungen des Todes, von der Macht der Sünde befreit. Um unsere Rückkehr aus tödlicher Knechtschaft in die Freiheit geht es wesentlich. “Zur Freiheit hat uns Christus befreit” (Gal 5.1). Er lehrt uns was es heißt, gottähnlich zu leben – in Anbetung und zuverlässiger Hingabe, bereit zur Freundschaft, zu grosszügigem Dienen, zum liebevollen Opfer.
Hören wir dann auf damit, uns vor Gott zu verstecken! Kommen wir aus dem Gebüsch hinaus in seine Gegenwart. Er wartet auf uns “gnädig, langmütig, reich an Huld” (Ps 103.8). Maria, die vom Sündengewicht nicht niedergedrückte, zeigt uns wie das menschliche Nein! zu Gott in ein lebensspendendes Ja! verwandelt wird. Mögen wir leben, durch ihr Beispiel, auf Ihre Fürsprache, liebend, frei, glaubwürdig und furchtlos sehend, jetzt und in der Stunde unseres Todes. Amen.
Annunciation from the fifteenth-century Merode Altarpiece, now in the Met Cloisters.

Coram Fratribus

Accepting Mercy How striking is this panel from a door in the Jesuit church in Büren, artwork from the mid-eighteenth century. The parable of the Prodigal Son is presented, quite as in the sermons of St Bernard, as a universal parable of redemption. The palace is an image of eternity. The father steps across its threshold to call and embrace his long-lost child, freed now of illusions of self-sufficiency. The prodigal’s ragged clothes suggest his inward poverty in spirit, making him apt for the kingdom of heaven. The elder son, meanwhile, by his outfit attuned to his environment, stands ready with hat and coat to leave desertwards. He remonstrates with the servant bringing a ring for the prodigal’s finger, unable to endure an environment founded on mercy, not computation.

Coram Fratribus

Setting out to Sea I read Adam Nicholson’s wonderful book on Homer years ago, in Cameroon. Recently I came upon this essay, ‘Sailing with the Greeks’, in The Plough. He remarks how Western thought has long unfolded in a terranian framework. It has been on ‘a long campaign to establish “foundations” for what it does. No thought can be valid without some meaty “groundwork” having been laid. “Grounds” are where truth is thought to begin.’ What if, instead, we attuned our thinking to the sea? ‘When lying on a sofa or having lunch in a restaurant, nothing seems more obvious than our ability to choose. The menu of life encourages the illusion of potency and feeds the arrogance that comes in its wake. The boat is the opposite of that. It imposes a necessary modesty, a submission to the all too obvious reality of the defining situation around you. You can only do what the boat requires you to do. And in that compulsion, mysteriously, a sense of freedom flowers, one in which your life is momentarily liberated from the need to choose’.

Coram Fratribus

Desert Fathers 24 Abba Antony said: I think the body possesses a physical movement that is mixed up with it, though it does not work except with the consent of the soul. There is another [kind of] movement which comes from nurturing and heating up the body with food and drink, on account of which hot-bloodedness moves the body to act. That is why the apostle said: ‘Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery’. And the Lord in the Gospel gives the disciples this commandment: ‘Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness’. There is, though, yet another movement affecting those who fight [the ascetic battle]. It is born of the wiles and envy of the demons. You need to know, then, that there are three kinds of bodily movement: one physical; one sprung from indiscriminate eating and drinking; and one worked by the demons.
It was customary for a long time to consider St Antony an unlettered bumpkin. This was partly because he was known for his extravagant temptations. Scholars who were sons of the Enlightenment took it for granted that, had Antony read more books and been smarter, he would have been armed against trials of this kind — a position that betrays, really, great (and potentially culpable) naivety on their part.
A detail in Athanasius’s life nurtured this misconception. We read that as a child Antony ‘was raised by his parents, knowing nothing besides them and life at home’; then that, growing older, ‘he did not continue learning his letters, wishing to stand apart from the normal activities of children.’ What the text says is that Antony did not wish to be conditioned by prevailing pagan culture. He chose to develop an independently Christian mind. Early modern readers, however, assumed he had simply dropped out of school. Great was the perplexity, then, when a cache of letters attributed to Antony was unearthed. These texts betrayed a high degree of intellectual culture. A number of people assumed they were spurious; others more creatively asked if it might not be the case instead that the prevailing image of Antony was false? This last lot was proven right. Hardly anyone now doubts the authenticity of the letters.
The saying before us corroborates the account of Antony as a man of subtle thought. Introducing the section of the Apothegmata devoted to lust, it sets the scene, as it were, for disquisitions to follow. The distinctions Antony draws are extremely helpful. Had they been better known, better taught in seminaries, noviciates and marriage preparation courses, much perplexity and pain might have been avoided.
For is it not often the case that when things go awry in people’s sexual and affective lives, nature is blamed? One hears people say, ‘My body’s natural urge was too strong!’ or ‘This is just who I am!’ Sometimes this may be so; but not always.
Antony sets out from a clear affirmation: the body’s ‘movement’, its erotic impulse, is fundamentally neutral, untouched by stains of immorality. To be human, a man or woman, is to have physical urges. In themselves they are good. They can become a source of happiness, expressions of love, if directed well by the discerning reason of our intellectual soul. According to our true nature, made in the image of God to be like him, body and soul are not at odds. The pursuit of chastity is about reconquering their fruitful complementarity. Pressed for definitions, the Fathers are unlikely to have called this first kind of urge porneia. It is just physical eros.
The second kind is more ambiguous. The body, no longer working ‘naturally’, is in imbalance on account of overindulgence. Rich food and immoderate drinking stimulate physical passion. Anyone who over time has fasted or practised abstinence will know this interconnectedness from experience as appeasement. There is a chance, therefore, that the body’s lustful urges are not merely ‘natural’ but fuelled by gluttony, acquiring that vice’s characteristics, no longer seeking communion in love but rather private satisfaction, stimuli to feed on. To start combating impure lust, I must begin by examining what, and how, I eat and drink, to equilibrate appetite.
The third kind of lust is demonic. The sayings abound in accounts of devils assailing sorely-tried ascetics like swarming flies. Let us not too quickly dismiss these tableaux as superstition. They do presuppose the reality of the ‘hater of good’. At the same time they are instances of imaged speech that convey realities hard to fathom in words. What they boil down to is this: a realisation that we human beings are, in the realm of our sexuality wounded by sin, prone to impulses that may be irrational, perverse, and destructive. With these there can be no dialogue. They must be driven out by prayer, compunction, and the revelation of the heart. How to recognise them? They induce deep sadness, even despair.
The Fathers do not say that that all lust fits under this heading; but neither do they call all desire pure. At once dispassionately lucid and shrewd, they teach us to discern. That is why they could give counsels both sublime and practical. They would elevate the tempted person’s mind towards God’s love. At the same time they would say things like these: ‘Never take more than three cups; and do not hang around in places where you have sinned against God.’
St Antony will not have looked anything like this, but it’s an engaging motif all the same, displaying him as a writer, smart spectacles and all. Piero di Cosimo, Visitazione con Sant’Antonio abate (1490), now in the National Gallery of Arts in Washington.

Coram Fratribus

Speech One doesn’t expect an essay on Pentecost in a secular broadsheet, but that is what Carsten Knop, an editor of the FAZ, provided yesterday in a beautiful, wistful piece: ‘[Those present at Pentecost] recognise the power of human words. They notice that a divine origin shimmers behind words not destructively used: we are intended for relation with each other. The purpose of words is to live out relationship. To be endowed with language is not just about emitting grunts. We are able to confide in one another; we can establish connections and networks; we can enthuse each other, create shared knowledge and elevate ourselves in its light. That is the effect of the Power that, in the story which provides us with an extra holiday, is called Holy Spirit. Don’t laugh: anyone who has known what happens when people leave an auditorium amicably together in order, afterwards, to speak about what they have experienced, has had a sense of what it is about, not just at Pentecost. We must simply try to understand each other.’

Next Sunday 22nd June we celebrate the Solemnity of Corpus Christi. Please post your Parish Procession/Benediction arrangements here. 6 Comments

Cloyne Diocese Carrigtwohill Parish

Parish of Doneraile

Inniscarra Parish

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Posted: 2 days ago

Introducing theway.ie 1 Likes

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Today June 15th is the Feast of the Holy Trinity- celebrated on the first Sunday after Pentecost.
The concept of the trinity can never be completely understood or rationalized, but it is clearly taught in Scripture.
GLORY BE TO Read More 10 Likes

Posted: 3 days ago

Photos from Cloyne Diocese's post Happy Father's Day to all our fathers - the biological, adoptive, and spiritual, and remembering those who are no longer with us.
Today, on this special day we ask St Joseph to bless and protect all fathers in a special way Read More 9 Likes

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Photos from Vatican News's post 4 Likes

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Recent picture of St. Colman's Cathedral, Cobh. Co. Cork

Pilgrimages for 2025

Pilgrimages for 2025

Jubilee Pilgrimage to Assisi & Rome 25 Sep - 2 Oct 2025

Light a Candle at St. Colman's Cathedral

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