AS SOME READERS WILL KNOW I SPENT FROM THURSDAY UNTIL SATURDAY IN TRALEE, KERRY – THE PARISH IN WHICH KING PUCK (AKA FATHER SEAN JONES) WAS APPOINTED CURATE.
In spite of a lot of pressure not to the bishop of Kerry – a certain Ray Browne – ordained King Puck – who had a certain reputation in Maynooth.
We met several people who now know King Puck – one being the choir mistress of the parish Chamber Choir – Martina.
Martina – who also works in Cassidy’s Restaurant in Tralee served us a beautiful meal there on Friday evening.
By the way, if you are ever in Tralee the two best eateries are Cassidys and Bella Bia. Lovely food, great staff and very reasonably priced.
King Puck joined the Chamber Choir as a singer last week.
On Friday evening we joined Tim Landers – the Tralee native who is a well known Irish actor – having had parts in FAIR CITY and GAME OF THRONES.
We joined Tim for a drink in Paddy Macs pub in Tralee.
SHORT BLOG TODAY
My blog today is a bit short as I have the funeral of a priest of The Oratory Society, today, Sunday in Larne – Father Graham Colby.
I’ll tell you about Father Colby on Tuesday.
Tomorrow – Part 11 of the Tralee blog.
BISHOP PAT BUCKLEY 
140 replies on “IN THE STEPS OF KING PUCK – NOT SAINT PAUL”
Pat Mullaney would have preferred if you came to eat at the Cafe Bum Bum. Also very reasonable prices and good food. Can’t say anymore Pat Mullaney doesn’t like us talking to you so he doesn’t.
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11:47
Brendan Marshall, your constant comments about Mullaney are tiring and repetitive. Why don’t you move on with your sad “journalism” life. You will never make it! Journalism requires talent and hard work. Stick with Grindr, FatBottomBoys and those intimate memories of Ronan Sheehan and Sean Hickey.
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Yes, didn’t think fatboy Marshall possessed the intelligence for journalism. He uses Twitter to report on the weather, fallen trees, road closures etc. That’s the extent of his journalistic capabilities.
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Marshall battered Sean Hickey in bed. Kevin Connolly was sent by Mullaney to his parents and actes as a mediator.
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12.00 Wellsaid! These posts are tiresome and boring. It’s clear the poster is employing this website from vindictive motives. All very tedious.
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Ryan McAleer is a hot Belfast Methodist gay twenty-something. Is your name a homage to him?
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The best food is in the pros ref in Maynooth.
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Pat
It must anger you so much that Bishop Ray Browne had the courage to stand up to you and ordain Sean Jones. You could not push him around like you did with the soon to be Emeritus Archbishop Diarmuid Martin.
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Some people out there realise the great men that Bill Murphy passed over. Men who were very suitable but being straight they didn’t fit in. Maynooth and Bill left Kerry under pressure for priests. As did Donal O’Neill.
That is the only pressure impacting on Raymond Browne.
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More tiresome whinging retaliations!
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It’s a pity you weren’t lifted by the Guards Buckley when in Tralee and given a damn good pasting. That’s what you deserve going to spy on this man in Kerry.
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He wasn’t spying. He was down in Kerry to celebrate a Traveller Wedding in Tarbert.
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The Kerry Guards are handy with the fists. They don’t muck about.
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RIP Fr. Colby.
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Yes. May God receive his soul.
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More cloying sentimentality from MC.
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9.15: And receiving a fancy stipend from the wedding couple…..!!
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@11.55
I am unclear why you posted your comment as a reply to me. But since you did;
A Kerry priest would have taken a stipend too.
Pat has frequently observed that he does receive money for weddings, but is understanding when people cannot afford a stipend.
Pat like any other priest is entitled to earn a wage.
Finally; 11.55, get a life
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To all who knew Fr Graham. May his passing leave you bathed in trails of glory that edify your spirit and assuage your grief.
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Holy Goat at 2.11: The 9.15 comment which I responded to at 11.55 is from Lanterns Hotel! Are you that poster? Strange….Pat is entitled to a wage, like all clergy but Pat’s fees are rather exorbitant. I know that for certain. So let’s not pretend he’s a charity when he amasses quite a hefty sum from his services.
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He also has a paid security guard accompanying him.
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That is a well rehearsed untruth 😀
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How did the traveller wedding go in Tarbert?
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It went very well, thanks for asking.
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Why did the name ‘king puck’ land on Fr Sean Jones?
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It should be King Lear.
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King Liar
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I met Graham @ your 40th requiescat in pace Fr Tom
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Mark Moriarty gave Puck the Jock Strap in Maynooth. Mark Moriarty knows where to buy erotic male clothing garments.
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So moved to read Father Grahem has passed away .
Rest in peace dear friend and Priest ! I will remember
the times we had Mass together , your love of Liturgy .
The fact your continued as a Priest with all the ups and
down , and all the struggles . No goodbye dear friend .Until
we meet again ! – Prayers for all at the Oratory – Father Richard
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Sean Jones aka ‘King Puck’ is more of the same about which we were talking yesterday in respect of Deacon Byrne. During his formation years he showed himself unsuitable to be ordained a priest, evidenced by his refusal to undertake the promise of celibacy which is required of its priests by the Roman Catholic Church. I would have thought that in itself was sufficient reason for his bishop to recommend that he found an alternative way of life. But, yet again after a suitable period of time away for ‘prayer and penance’ his bishop has decided that , voila, he has suddenly taken to the celibate life and all is okay now. Well, let us wait and see. King Puck and Byrne will return to their secretive gay sex lives, I guarantee you. It will eventually all come out, and then their bishops will be stuck with them, and we will be stuck with supporting them through endless rounds of ‘therapy’, ‘discovering themselves’ ‘retreats’ etc., all at our expense, and no doubt in warm and sunny places where they can ‘affirmed’ in their vocations ! Another one is Rory from Armagh. What a pleasant and comfortable life these men can look forward to !
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8.40: Just mind your own business. Go to your Church today and beg mercy for your own sinfulness. Leave these 2 men alone to at least prove that with God’s gracecthey will find strength to live in God’s ways, albeit with difficulty and struggle. I hope you are as hard on your own sinfulness and misdemeanours as you are on others. Spare us your faux outrage. Look to your own soul.
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There is always the Kilaloe answer to this issue. Once ordained send them back to Maynooth for post grad studies in Moral Theology…. yeah… Because that is sure to work.
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His bishop and benefactors must be confident he will now lay off the creamstick, either willingly or not.
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I’d say now, 8.40 few people will be getting very far on contributions from you and your ilk.
The only thing your contribution does is to express a prurient interest in the sexual lives of other people.
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Ray Browne is not right in the head. He is a very thick and stubborn man. I personally thought at the time of his consecration as a Bishop that he himself was totally unsuitable to hold that Office. Browne is not off the hook yet because if Puck goes astray sexually then it’s Browne people will soon look for and demand answers. Browne went against several senior clergy who warned him that this man was unsuitable for Ordination.
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Isn’t it amazing how so many contributors set themselves up as judge, jury and executioner about other people’s lives. Surely the lives of Fr. Jones and Michael Byrne have been torn apart on this blog sufficiently that we should let them get on with their lives. There is a heartless and vindictive bitchiness levelled against them. There is always the possibility of people changing and being renewed, a moment of awareness that I need to refocus my priorities and, with God”s grace, begin anew. That opportunity should never be ck9sed to any person. The relentless stripping apart of individuals on this blog is utterly distasteful and un-Christ-like. Who are we to make such definitive judgments on others? If each of us searches our conscience honestly, we might not like what we find.
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Depending on the capacity of a priest change following a new start was the logic applied to Brendan Smith and many others. That approach is now out of favour.
What is important here is that neither man has denied what they were accused of or attempted to defend themselves either publicly of legally. This infers guilt by omissions. An in the Catholic Church one is guilty until proven innocent. That is the Church’s own standard of practice.
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Guilt by omissions (sic) and sick. 10.18. What a gem of jurisprudence!
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Clogherhead will not have them.
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When it comes to sexuality people dont change^ period,
Theraphy prayer penance only shade it ,it will shine through eventually,its called been human.
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You can’t beat nature.
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@ 10.03
The time to change was BEFORE being ordained. Why ordain someone entirely unsuitable and foist them on unsuspecting parishioners and vulnerable people in the HOPE that they will change? Any other profession you have to prove your suitability BEFORE entering training, and certainly before graduating and being professionally certified. Unjustifiable!
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What alternative did he have, No rush of vocations in Kerry.
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Kerry not having a rush of Vocations tells you something in itself and explains a lot. For them to be so desperate to ordain a clearly unsuitable character tells us lots and holds Ray Browne up as a laughing stock and a fool.
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10.54: Utterly stupid and inane. Just wondering why such nastiness to write people off so dismissively. Could you imagine what may have happened to the woman caught in adultery if Jesus had turned his back? Despite our concerns about the life of some newly ordained men, the continual subjecting of these men to such vitriol is unwarranted, inexcusable and smacks of a witch hunt.
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10:54 You know nothing about recent history. Your posting exhibits sheer ignorance.
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11:43
That woman had an encounter with Jesus; Mr Sean Jones with Ray Browne.
Can you work the rest out on your own now?😆
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Sad to hear about Fr Graham. May the earth rest lightly on him.
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King Puck looks good in a jockstrap……how is he getting on in Tralee?
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This blog is even weirder than usual today. I suspect that the nasty bullying is coming from people not at ease with their own sexuality.
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Any update on Cloyne?
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Indeed. What has Bishop Willie Cream been up to?
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Yes Bishop Pat,spill the beans on the clergy of cloyne ,there seceret and seedy lives need exposing as happened in killdollery,the priest there was well known locally not just for excessive drinking and drug abuse but also for permiscous homosexual behaviour with young lads over 18,just,there are more like him in cloyne.
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An update would be good. We heard nothing.
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1.40 Update your spellcheck.
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The Cloyne PP and his Eastern European male live-in babe were the subject of a meeting you had in Cloyne Pat these last few days. Any update? There is also a Priest in the Midlands living with his male Asian babe so perhaps it’s time these guys were exposed and rooted out. Who is paying to keep these babes?
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6.54 Another busybody with a prurient curiosity in the sexual lives of others.
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Pat, is it possible the bishops are ticking boxes by pretending celibacy is a requirement for seminarians but in practice they don’t actually believe it’s necessary in this day and age?
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What’s the craic with the riot in the graveyard of the Catholic church in Park, Co Londonderry? Is it travellers up to their tricks again?
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Probably.
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That is exactly the situation. I think then this question needs to be opened up in a public forum after decades of denial. If we go on pretending priests are “higher than angels” in Newman’s absurd phrase ( never understood why that man is revered ) the scandals will persist as they are essentially failures of truthfulness.
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Terry Eagleton, a sloppy writer, says that Newman thought priests were “higher than angels,” but this seems to be wrong.
One of his sermons has the title: “Men, not Angels, the Priests of the Gospel”: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/discourses/discourse3.html
In another sermon he says that thanks to our Redemption we are ALL higher than angels:
“Let us steadily contemplate the mystery, and say whether any consequence is too great to follow from so marvellous a dispensation; any mystery so great, any grace so overpowering, as that which is already manifested in the incarnation and death of the Eternal Son. Were we told that the effect of it would be to make us as Seraphim, that we were to ascend as high as He descended low—would that startle us after the Angel’s news to the shepherds? And this indeed is the effect of it, so far as such words may be spoken without impiety. Men we remain, but not mere men, but gifted with a measure of all those perfections which Christ has in fulness, partaking each in his own degree of His Divine Nature so fully, that the only reason (so to speak) why His saints are not really like Him, is that it is impossible—that He is the Creator, and they His creatures; yet still so, that they are all but Divine, all that they can be made without violating the incommunicable majesty of the Most High. Surely in proportion to His glory is His power of glorifying; so that to say that through Him we shall be made all but gods—though it is to say, that we are infinitely below the adorable Creator—still is to say, and truly, that we shall be higher than every other being in the world; higher than Angels or Archangels, Cherubim or Seraphim—that is, not here, or in ourselves, but in heaven and in Christ:—Christ, already the first-fruits of our race, God and man, having ascended high above all creatures, and we through His grace tending to the same high blessedness, having the earnest of His glory given here, and (if we be found faithful) the fulness of it hereafter.”
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5:56
Eagleton was referring to the DARK angels, and to the fact that, though priests are undoubtedly higher than these, it is only marginally so. 😆
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Did the mad puck goat study German in Maynooth?
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He may have studied GERMANS at Maynooth: the male variety. 😅
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Nein
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Ja! 😆
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Brendan Marshall is my go to Twitter account for fallen tree updates.
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Clogher diocese is en fete. Just another week until we get a new Bishop Duffy. He has to be an improvement on that athiest and ocean-going bollox Joe Duffy. Too bad that the Veritas shop staff in Monaghan have been thrown on the jobs scrapheap.
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Joe Duffy is horrible.
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Joe Duffy is a repressed saint! 😆
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The hottest sex I ever had was with an STL postgrad in Dunboyne House in Maynooth in 1988.
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I hope you got tested. That STL died of AIDS. Meath diocese.
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3.37. No need to be so sensational.
There was no Meath STL living in Dunboyne in 1987-88.
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Nobody dies of Aids anymore you complete imbecile. Thankfully treatment has moved on and prevents that these days. There are anti retrovirals and now Prep.
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3.11. Can you remember whether it was before or after the summer?
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It was before the summer break. I was in 3rd Arts, living in New House so it just a quick hop across Joe’s Square. We initially bonded over a mutually shared interest in Coronation Street.
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Have you been able/interested enough to follow the career path of your hot companion?
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With regards to general seminarian standards, I don’t think clergy have any idea of the negative impact that non celibate seminarians and their subsequent ordination have on the faithful. The impact is horrendous and the responses are far reaching but generally I find in silence.
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Dear 3:32, would you say that similar ‘negative consequences’ apply in the case of non-celibate (i.e. married) priests?
Until well into the second Christian millennium non-celibate priests were the norm. So enough about your negative effects on Christian communities.
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3.58 the negative effects result from the breaking of the rule of celibacy. The pope and the bishops teaching one thing to people but allowing transgressions among their own ranks.
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The point is, 9.54, the rule about celibacy is not absolute. The married former-Protestants are the best-known example of that conclusion. You are elevating a pragmatic norm into an absolute principle and that is the problem. There’s no negative effect of these serving Catholic married priests.
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3:32
Effect on the faithful? What is there left to effect that isn’t now widely known, and accustomed to.
Expect absolutely nothing from these perverted Christ-betrayers, and you’ll never be disappointed.
Oh! And stop giving them money. Let them work for a living…like everyone else.😆
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You are soooo right. These homosexual priests and bishops will have a lot to answer for at judgement, they have caused such disillusionment and almost despair among ordinary Catholics. But in the end, they will be spat out.
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There’s no talking to Ray Browne. He’s thicker skinned than a rhino.
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Ray Browne will do the usual thing, he will leave another Bishop to come along and clear up all the crap after him including the Puck situation. Browne has his favourites in all the plumb parishes and if you open your trap you get punished.
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Very saddened by the news about Graham. I met him in 1980 and kept in touch. To read this all of a sudden is a great shock. Could you please, dear bishop, give us some information already, before the Tuesday entry you have announced? Thank you and God bless you, He will be good to Graham.
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Francis has said he does not agree with optional clerical celibacy. It’s highly optional in Kerry, Cloyne, Dublin, Galway and D&C.
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It certainly is in Galway. A cosy cartel has the whole thing sewn up. Anyone that speaks against the favoured ones and their misdemeanours will be punished.
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Martin Drennan was shocked when he became bishop of Galway. Even though he’d been on the staff of Kilkenny and Maynooth for decades it had not prepared him for the vice of Galway diocese.
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I can well believe Martin Drennan was shocked 5:58. Galway has some very sick clerics that are not been dealt with. For example, there is one, hinted at here before, that a religious congregation was only delighted to get rid of, and, boy, has he caused havoc in the diocese. He and his housekeeper sidekick are two extremely dangerous individuals, and together they are a Molotov cocktail. He has spread more lies about fellow clergy than you could believe and is notorious for finding a house or two in every parish he’s in where he goes and sobs on the couch how badly he is being treated by the priest and parish staff. Apart from him, you have the ones who have flaunted their infidelities for years with no correction. For the sake of balance though, thankfully, there are a handful of fine men. Sadly, these are suffering because they refuse to play the game.
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4:20. Where did Francis say that? Can you substantiate your claim?
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It’s on the Irish Catholic Facebook page.
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Have you reported it accurately?
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Mgr Cremin must be spinning in his grave thinking about the Kerry presbyterate.
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Aul Cremin, who was more liberal than his detractors thought him, was very innocent about sexual matters, despite being the Professor of Moral Theology in Maynooth. I heard him wonder aloud why the Good Lord had chosen to make reproduction so complicated, messy and the occassion of so much sin.
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Terry Eagleton is a name to conjur with and I’m surprised Pat has not featured him. He’s not of the antique disposition but he is an English academic born of Irish Catholic parents living in England and he has some probing observations on that experience.
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6:12
What experience?
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Being an Englishman brought up by Irish Catholic parents living in England. He writes very well.
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7:54
Thank you.
Don’t know how to say this, so better just say it: was that really worth writing about? What’s the appeal? 😕
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Excuse me but I did have a relationship with a Meath STL student. Out of respect to both him and me can’t I acknowledge that? Maybe I got the year slightly wrong but he was the student who died of AIDS and that wasn’t commonplace. As an aside, Amy Martin had been made Director of Sacred Music the year in question, despite Amy being a IV Divine. Fr Sean Lavery his predecessor was forced out of the college following an indescretion in the Junior Infirmary.
I remember all this because my Meath companio
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What ‘indescretion’? And with whom?😕
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Unbelievably gaylord Ledwith sent Lavery packing when Lavery was found by Frank the nightwatchman with a sem music student in Lavery’s Junior Infirmary bedroom. Join the dots.
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Magna I thought you were in Maynooth in the 1980s. Do you not remember all that stuff?
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7.49
You may be jumping to conclusions. There are other versions of the account of Lavery’s departure. Others who were more directly involved would be able to comment and correct you. In any case it would have been most unusual for the particular night watchman to have been in a professor’s suite of rooms, much less his bedroom. But paper never refused ink and the dead cannot defend themselves.
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Because my Meath companion used to deplore Amy’s choice of Protestant hymns for the Maynooth college chapel Mass and he used to say that in the choir’s case repitition was the mother of learning.
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8:04
‘Twas much later than that.😀
But thank ee anyway.😆
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Not all of the personae of MC were in Maynooth. Some of them may have been ON Maynooth.
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Now now, MC, to be a good liar you need to have a good memory and at least one of you was DEFINITELY in Maynooth for some of 80’s 😉
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Yes you did get the year wrong then. Sean Lavery left in 1985, during the summer. At that point Eamon Martin had just finished II Divine.
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So why did Sean Lavery leave? Frank the nightwatchman was a notorious gossip but he did not tell lies. He also told me about sems misbehaving out in the Graf at night.
And Amy was undoubtedly made Director of Sacred Music, his taste for Prod hymns notwithstanding. He used to complain bitterly in the ref that he was expected to do the job free even though Fr Lavery had earned 30,000 punts a year for doing it previously.
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Eamon was in charge of the college choir. No one is disputing that. The question concerned the timing and dates around contemporary events and was not helped by the incorrect years put forward by the original poster who was himself directly involved.
As for Eamon’s complaining bitterly about a student (himself) not being paid a professor’s salary, it is not remotely credible. Not least because he always had a sense of dedication and commitment to his vocation, to sacred music and to Maynooth.
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9:26
Even Magna, though undoubtedly brilliant intellectually, is stumped by your comment.😕
Could you elucidate?😆
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If it means nothing to you, you know nothing about Maynooth and you are a sham and a fake.
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People died of the Aids in the 1980s.
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I am obliged for the correction at 5:56, as it was indeed in Terry Eagleton’s review in LRB of John Cornwell’s “Unquiet Grave“ that I picked this up. Eagleton does generally have a lot to say relevant to current concerns. Newman did have a high view of the priesthood as he thought that people should be attracted by priestly example. Some hope!
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Actually @5:56pm, if you look at Newman’s Discourse 3:43 in full, it is clear that Eagleton’s interpretation is correct, that Newman is talking about the Ministry of the Ordained Priesthood, not of the faithful in general, though we could all learn from the shining example of these clerical paragons.
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Yes, Newman was not unknown for writing total tosh. 😕
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How much of JHN have you actually read?
How much of what you may have read have you understood?
How much of what you may have understood have you emulated?
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Actually, it’s hard to think of anything Newman wrote that could be described in those terms. He weighed his words. You could learn something from him.
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9:08
And you’re addressing whom?😆
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What a tosser JH Newman was!
What else could he be, with that humiliating third from Oxford? 😅
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Whatever about his churchmanship, Newman’s prose is sublime.
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Exam results are the primary indicator of how well one has mastered the skill of beating the system.
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I referred to one sermon on priests which says that priests are “men, not angels” and I quoted a DIFFERENT one in which the phrase “higher than angels” is referred to the faithful in general, not to priests.
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Quite so, and Discourse 3 to which Terry Eagleton refers is about the Catholic priesthood in which Newman is explicit that the power to enact the sacraments was given to men as ordained priests not to angels. His point is that men ( certainly not women in his view ) AS PRIESTS are raised higher than angels. Elsewhere he expounds greatly on the attraction that a priest ought to have as a model of holiness and Oratorian gentleness. Nice idea, but as Eagleton wittily observes, it is not a point of view popular in Catholic orphanages.
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102 comments even before Pat has revealed the strange goings on in Tralee.
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What about Cloyne? Any updates?
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It will just be more stories about priestly love of the pipe.
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Looking forward in anticipation Pat for the next instalment on Tralee.
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Has anyone got a pic of this ‘Frank’ who was the night watchman at Maynooth. He’s often mentioned by various ex Sems and he sounded a right nosey busybody. I bet his memoirs, if written, would have been a best seller.
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He died some years ago. In his day if you were coming back after 11:00 p.m. you had to sign your name. Many people often gave the name of the same seminarian from a southern diocese who lived a blameless life.
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To clear up Anonymous 7:127s confusion here is the full text of the sermon in which the phrase “higher than angels” occurs: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/parochial/volume8/sermon17.html
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In Discourse 3 Newman contrasts the sinfulness of the clergy with their exalted function that might lead one to think only angels could handle it. This is anti-Donatist and also against those easily scandalized by the discovery of clerical sins. The main point is that, being sinners, priests can understand sinners. It was a trope of old-fashioned preachers that the power of consecration was a power higher that of any angel. Newman does NOT use this trope. Eagleton does NOT refer to Discourse 3 in his parenthetical remark:”(he believed that priests were higher than angels, not a view popular in Catholic orphanages)” Is that witty?
“His point is that men ( certainly not women in his view ) AS PRIESTS are raised higher than angels. Elsewhere he expounds greatly on the attraction that a priest ought to have as a model of holiness and Oratorian gentleness. Nice idea, but as Eagleton wittily observes, it is not a point of view popular in Catholic orphanages.”
Newman was never asked to consider the possibility of women priests — no one was, at that time. The snide implication that he was a sexist is without foundation.
Newman says that the sacramental role of priests is in stark contrast to their weakness and sinfulness as human beings. Eagleton’s half-baked comment is the weakest moment in his generally rather trite essay. Ther’s a touch of “any old stigma will do to beat a dogma” in his condescending attitude.
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Why is Bishop Joseph Duffy coming in for such harsh criticism on this blog? Did he not administer Clogher for decades to some acclaim? Was he not responsible for the worthy reordering of St Macartan’s cathedral in Monaghan?
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Joe Duffy was and is an awful man and that is the consensus among the Clogher clergy. Unless you are a fan of knuck-knuck Joe has no time for you.
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Knuck-knuck? Who or what is that?
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@11:34am “knuck knuck” was/is the dog/pig ignorant and deeply childish/immature way in which mostly Northerners/mostly in fact Down and Connor (truth be told)/gay clerics, referred to and mocked the sounds and pronunciations of their and our native tongue – Gaeilge/Irish.
It was a sort of gay, West Brit/Quasi-Unionist/contemptuous/wannabe Little Englander/ridiculous manifestation of their own self-loathing, I always thought.
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Thanks for the clarification! Very well put. 😂
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