No LuxuryI find Bartók’s first piano concerto difficult to listen to on recordings. It might work, I suppose, if you’ve a super-sophisticated sound system with spaced-out impact; with headphones or a single speaker, the strong percussional character of the work overwhelms Read More
Security AlertYou may have noticed that Coram Fratribus was off-line this week. This was a measure taken in light of the PHP security warning that affected the internet. The warning, provided by whistle-blowing AI, exposed vulnerabilities that provide access to a Read More
Angelic Seeing‘It is the ‘angelic’ sensibility which gives rise to great art, and if, like me, you ever get the chance to live in Paris for a spell, you will find a magnificent example of it in the Musée Marmottan, the Read More
MigrationFor today, the 30th Sunday in Ordinary time, the Nordic Bishops’ Conference has prepared a pastoral letter on migration. In today’s reading from the Book of Exodus, we read: ‘You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.’ The Gospel tells us: ‘You must love your neighbour as yourself’. How do we do that in practice? Dear Brothers and Sisters, When God sent his Son into the world, he came as a migrant from heaven to earth. There was no room for him at the inn, only a poor manger among the animals. Hardly had he been born when people wanted to kill him, and he had to flee to Egypt. When God became man, he shared from the beginning the difficult fate that countless migrants throughout history have experienced. In the Old Testament, we see how the people of Israel repeatedly had to seek refuge elsewhere or were forced into exile. Ever since then, God’s people has been a people on the move, on a pilgrimage toward God’s eternal kingdom. We have no permanent dwelling on earth. At the same time, we are called to make ourselves at home where we live and to make the best of our earthly existence. Our final homeland is in heaven, but we must nonetheless build a just and good society where providence has placed us, doing our best to live together in solidarity and mutual care. Every human being has the right to live a good, peaceful life. In our time, migration has often become a source of conflict leading to polarisation. Through her social teaching, the Church helps us find good solutions, encouraging people of good will to work together on this important issue, which belongs to the perennial history of mankind. Migration has occurred in all periods, in all parts of the world. The earth is our common home, where all people are entitled to find a place to live. Migrants may unsettle us. They can also contribute to the good of the nations in which they settle. Whether they had to leave their own countries on account of famine, war, or persecution or whether they set out freely in search of a better life, migrants can be carriers of valuable insight, energy, and skills. They can come bringing resources that our own countries presently fail to generate. In Antiquity, the Christian faith spread throughout the Roman Empire through missionaries and migrants who bore witness to their faith wherever they went. From Christianised Europe, the Good News later spread throughout the world. More recently, the Catholic Church was rebuilt, after the centuries of persecution, in our Nordic countries by migrants who brought their Catholic faith to us. Priests and religious sisters from different parts of the world have, with selfless dedication, contributed to building up the Church throughout Northern Europe. Migration has potential to lead to difficulties. Migrants must be carefully integrated into their new countries; otherwise, serious problems arise. Those who come from other cultures must be helped to grow into their new country. The Church teaches that migrants are ‘obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens’ (CCC 2241). This contribution must not be seen to exclude their legitimate right to preserve their own heritage. There is a risk that migrants isolate themselves and fail even to attempt to adapt to their new circumstances. Over time, this tendency generates unease and conflict. Migrants are to be encouraged to integrate but not subjected to forced assimilation. Finding this balance is not always easy, but it is vital for the future of our countries. Many European countries are increasingly closing their borders. Our time tends to build walls rather than bridges between peoples and countries. Each country naturally needs to assess how many migrants it is able to receive. When this does not happen, and when more people are received than can be integrated well, social problems result. These in turn lead to new strictures in policy, so that it becomes near impossible to enter within our borders even for refugees and asylum seekers, who stand under the protection of international norms to which our countries are obliged. In some cases, this development has reached the point where it is considered good to send away as many people as possible, including those who are well integrated and who make significant contributions to our societies. The Church must raise her voice in defense of those who are in danger of being subjected to unjust treatment without due cause. Our Catholic parishes often function as integration workshop, where migrants are welcomed with love and respect and where they can learn how to live harmoniously in their nation of adoption. Our dioceses are melting-pots where cultures meet. Masses and catechesis are proposed in a range of languages. Practical assistance is given to help newcomers find their way through an unknown bureaucracy and unfamiliar social norms. In these ways, migrants who join our communities learn how to live out their Catholic faith in their new country. They learn how to contribute to building up the local Church. Once they have become part of a parish, it becomes easier to grow into the wider society and to contribute to it through their own life experience and commitment. Nordic culture has, throughout the centuries, been enriched by people from all over the world who have been welcomed among us and have become part of our society. It is our prayer and hope that this will continue to be the case. To foster love of one’s nation, to value its traditions and heritage, is a good thing. Narrow-minded nationalism, however, must be abhorrent to Catholics and to all people of good will. Pope Leo XIV calls upon all of us to work for a world in which people of different cultures and religions can live together in peace, cooperation, and solidarity. He has visited places such as the Canary Islands and Lampedusa and to appeal for help for those who have been forced to flee to another and safer country. Again and again, the Holy Father calls on us, too, to disarm our language. He asks us to be careful about the way in which we speak about each other, to avoid rhetorical excess. We remind ourselves and all of you of this point. We find nowadays that public coverage of and discourse about immigration tend to become harsher, less nuanced, and more aggressive. This can turn into a form of manipulation we have to resist. As Christians, we cannot close our hearts to the defenceless and vulnerable people who turn up on our doorstep. We must recognise Jesus in the person in need who counts on us for help. Europe is searching for a new balance in this area. We must be realistic about our limitations, human and material. Still, we must be ready never to reject a suffering brother or sister who calls on us for help. We, the bishops of the Nordic countries, thank all those who have come to our countries from abroad and who, in various ways, have contributed valiantly to the development of our Church and society. We pray for our countries that they may continue to welcome people who, in communion with all of us, are prepared to work for a world in which all can live in peace and justice, reconciliation and unity. We place our countries under the protection of the Immaculate Virgin Mary — the ‘Mother of Migrants’ as we pray in the litany. We ask for her intercession, that we may ever more faithfully follow Jesus Christ in his love for the poor and vulnerable. +Erik Varden OCSO, Trondheim, Tromsø – Præses +Anders Cardinal Arborelius OCD, Stockholm +Czeslaw Kozon, København +David Tencer OFMCap, Reykjavik +Raimo Goyarrola, Helsinki +Fredrik Hansen, Oslo * * * Here are some excerpts from the recent magisterium of Our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, highly relevant to this topic. ‘Dear migrants, before saying anything else to you, I want to bow before your dignity. You are not just numbers or files. You are people who have left behind families and homes. You have dreams that no one has the right to despise. However, I also want to tell you that your lives must be protected. Do not surrender your lives to those who trade with them. Do not believe those who promise easy paradises in exchange for your body, money, silence or freedom. Those false promises are “siren songs”; they are industries of death. This tragedy must serve as an appeal to the conscience of the nations of origin of the migrants, which must establish conditions for peace, justice and development. It is also an appeal to the conscience of the transit nations, which are called to protect the vulnerable and not leave them in the hands of criminal networks. It is likewise an appeal to the conscience of Europe, which cannot claim to uphold human dignity while growing accustomed to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic becoming unmarked graves, as well as that of the international community, which is called to effective and persevering cooperation. The Church, too, must allow herself to be challenged. Welcoming migrants cannot be a secondary matter that is left to a few volunteers. We kneel before the altar to adore Christ present in the Eucharist, from whom we receive the strength and the motivation to live charity; for this reason, we cannot then “pass by” the small boats and rafts, for all service and every commitment spring from prayer and lead back to it.’ Address at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria on 11 June 2026. ‘There is no love of God without love of neighbour, and there is no neighbour if I do not draw near. To pause, to be moved, to bend down, to weep before another’s pain — as Jesus did — means entering into the dynamic of love, the very movement in which God has revealed himself.My dear friends, those who allow themselves to be drawn into this dynamic of compassion and mercy begin to live differently, to be citizens in a different way and to work differently. Then the civilisation of love — the one envisioned by my holy predecessors John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II — can truly emerge. Together with a great number of prophets and martyrs of the last century, they understood that only mercy can respond to the depths of the human heart and the horrors of war by opening the way to a new beginning. Now, standing on the shoulders of these giants, we have entered a millennium in which we must give spiritual, cultural, legal, political and economic expression to the civilisation of love. May the enormity of the suffering we witness help us grasp the radical nature of this call.’ Homily given at Lampedusa on 4 July 2026. ‘The first contribution we can make toward a more humane civilisation is to be mindful of our words. “Let us disarm words and we will help to disarm the world.” Words have enormous power, something we experience in our daily interactions; for example, spoken words can change our mood for better or for worse. “Peace begins with each one of us: in the way we look at others, listen to others and speak about others. In this sense, the way we communicate is of fundamental importance: we must say ‘no’ to the war of words and images, we must reject the paradigm of war.” We must all, therefore, examine our conscience regarding the words we use, the prejudices we have and the explicit or implicit aggression that lies within them. We have a real opportunity to contribute to the common good each time we speak the truth, offer wise advice, support those in need of comfort, denounce injustice and give a voice to the voiceless.’ Magnifica Humanitas, par. 214. When we Norwegians reflect on the subject of migration, we do well to remember that ours is a nation of emigrants. In the period 1825-1940 some 900,000 Norwegians left their poor homeland in search of a better life elsewhere. The complete population of Norway in that period was about 2 million. Gustav Wentzel’s painting The Emigrants from 1902 catches the mood. Photograph: Wikipedia.
No LuxuryI find Bartók’s first piano concerto difficult to listen to on recordings. It might work, I suppose, if you’ve a super-sophisticated sound system with spaced-out impact; with headphones or a single speaker, the strong percussional character of the work overwhelms the ear. To hear Yuja Wang perform it live with the Wiener Symphoniker this evening, though, was thrilling. Suddenly I become aware of how melodious it is. Wang’s technical virtuosity is the stuff of legends. She is also an interpreter of great, intelligent sensibility. That was as evident in the Bartók as in the lovely Piano Concerto by Barber, which I’d never heard before, but which I shall now study carefully. After the interval, the orchestra played Schumann’s second symphony. It filled the grand auditorium of the Musikverein with joy. Yuja Wang said not long ago: ‘For me, music isn’t a luxury or some pleasant additional extra. Music is a necessity, something without which I couldn’t be fully alive.’ This evening gave that statement substance.
Security AlertYou may have noticed that Coram Fratribus was off-line this week. This was a measure taken in light of the PHP security warning that affected the internet. The warning, provided by whistle-blowing AI, exposed vulnerabilities that provide access to a given server’s ‘file system or database‘. One can see why dastardly agencies, human or virtual, seek to take advantage of such vulnerabilities. What any of them might gain from accessing Coram Fratribus, a humble reality quite without geopolitical or commercial interest, is less obvious. This incident revealed a feature of contemporary life that conditions us more and more. Since we’re all hooked up to, and caught in, one world-wide web, a single destructive operation makes itself felt across the board – from security services to parish newsletters. All the while, we keep entrusting all our resources and anything we know about anything to this ultimately fragile system. It seems bonkers: a mouse-click and all the world’s frozen pizzas thaw. What if someone simply pulls the plug of the grids that now run everything? That the world is subject to fragilities beyond human control is one thing; that we keep making ourselves ever more fragile is another. It’s something we should think hard about.
Angelic Seeing‘It is the ‘angelic’ sensibility which gives rise to great art, and if, like me, you ever get the chance to live in Paris for a spell, you will find a magnificent example of it in the Musée Marmottan, the city’s largest collection of Monet paintings. On the first floor you find a range of pictures we all know from poster shops: pastel landscapes, fog-wrapped towers, and pretty portraits. The painter here is unquestionably the master, not only of his craft, but of his motive. If you go downstairs, however, to the basement gallery, you are transported to a different universe, among canvases Monet painted at the end of his life. These are chaotic, sometimes violent, and his series of water lilies possess a compelling force that draws you in, like a charmed lake in a German fairy tale. The painter is no longer in control of his subject. He is at its mercy, letting it find its own expression through his art, which thus becomes the sign, the monument, of an encounter.’ From an old talk about a still significant film.
One with MysteryHomily given at the convention of the clergy of Trondheim in Klosterneburg, near Vienna. Ephesians 3.2-12: I was given knowledge of the mystery. Luke 12.39-48: One to whom much is given, of him will much be required The Letter to the Ephesians confronts us with the mature Paul, a man nurtured, wounded and enriched by long apostolic experience. Paul finds himself in Roman captivity, ‘a prisoner for the Lord’ (4.1), waiting to have his case tried by the emperor (cf. Acts 25.11). Not that he will have expected much benevolence. The emperor was Nero, the most perverse of all persecuting potentates. What Paul looks forward to in peace is not comeuppance but a chance to follow Christ in his Passion. When in his final letters he reflects on the cross it is not just retrospectively, with eyes fixed on Calvary; he does so prospectively, with his own ultimate testimony in mind. Paul wishes to be faithful in death as he has been in life. The Letter to the Ephesians is dense. It is the most synthetic text in the Pauline corpus. It presents the apostle’s teachings in a unified way, unmarred by the sharp tone we often find in earlier epistles, largely written in response to crises of one kind or another;. We all know it’s hard to remain objective in such circumstances. It moves me to hear Paul speak of his ‘task’ and ‘insight’. God, he says, has given him knowledge of his Mystery. He did so in order that all peoples may recognise that we, through Jesus’s love, can approach God ‘in complete confidence’. An apostle is someone who communicates that God is near, not remote. That is a message we shall only convey credibly if we constantly strive to live in God’s presence. We are gathered for our priestly convention to reflect on a range of practical and pastoral topics. Above all, though, we renew our thanks for the share we are given in the wonderful mission God entrusts to us, that of making God’s grace in Christ known to the world. God has set his seal on us. He has called us to exercise a vital ministry. Much has been given us; we know that much is expected. We wish to show ourselves worthy of God’s trust. To deepen our insight into the Mystery of Christ, we must freely say Yes to all it involves. In an earlier letter, the first he wrote to the Church in Corinth, Paul cried out: ‘I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified!’ (2.2). On that basis he pursued his itinerant, energetic apostleship. When now, in chains, he writes to the Ephesians, that intention has been fully interiorised. Union with Jesus’s Pasch has become the foundation for his entire worldview, which he would like the whole world to share. He wishes to proclaim it by words and silence, so that his whole existence may be an oblation brought with joy to the praise of God and for mankind’s salvation. As priests of the Lord we likewise seek to be fully one with Christ’s Mystery, that everything we say or do speaks of the transforming, freeing power of God’s grace. Amen. Rembrandt van Rijn, St Paul in Prison. Wikimedia.
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Today we celebrate the Feasts of St Simon and St Jude -1st Century Apostles. Saints Simon and Jude went together as missionaries to Persia, and were martyred there. This may explain why so little is known about them and also Read More 1 Likes
Today we celebrate the Feasts of St Simon and St Jude -1st Century Apostles. Saints Simon and Jude went together as missionaries to Persia, and were martyred there. This may explain why so little is known about them and also Read More 1 Likes
Please post your Parishes prayers in the graveyard this November here and for special Masses. Thank you. 5 Comments
Cloyne Diocese Carrigtwohill Parish November – The Month of the Holy Souls: During November, we are encouraged to remember our dead, to those Read MoreCobh ParishCloyne Diocese Parish of Doneraile
Today is the feast day of Saint Anthony Mary Claret, the 'spiritual father of Cuba' Anthony was ordained at 28 but was unable to carry out the duties of a priest due to ill health. He went on however to become one Read More 2 Likes
November – The Month of the Holy Souls:
During November, we are encouraged to remember our dead, to those Read More