Month: Aug 2020

Posted by Ciaran Walsh on August 22, 2018 http://www.curator.ie

 
A man of Vision: Fr Bartholomew Cavanagh ( 1821-1897), Parish Priest of Knock and Aughamore in 1879.

This is man who may have engineered an apparition using a magic lantern. The site of the “apparition” is visible in the background. Photo: Knock Shrine.
 
The latest post on the curator.ie blog examines new evidence supporting the claim that the apparition said to have occurred in Knock in 1879 was in fact a slide show engineered by the parish priest (pictured above).

It  builds on research into the Dublin Anthropometric Laboratory, drawing on an investigation of the role played by James Hack Tuke in the organisation of a survey of fishing Grounds in the West of Ireland in 1890. This survey laid the foundation for the programme of ethnographic fieldwork undertaken by the Laboratory in one of Tuke’s main areas of operation, Mayo and Connemara.
 
Sketch showing distribution of relief tickets in the turf market in Westport. From Illustrated London News, March 6th, 1880. Source Mayo Library.

 
Tuke visited Knock in 1880, 6 months after the apparition occurred and 6 weeks or so after the first report was published in the press. Tuke claimed that the “apparition” involved the use of a lantern projector to “depict” the Blessed Virgin as in a “vision.”

This connected with a conversation I had some time ago with Stan Mason, grandson of Thomas Mason, the man who recalled providing the parish priest in Knock with a lantern projector around the time of the apparition.

It seemed obvious to me that Knock was more slide show than apparition.

The announcement that the Pope was going to Knock as part of his visit to Ireland (2018) prompted a review of the literature on the apparition of 1879.

The findings are posted on Ballymaclinton, which is sort of appropriate given that the blog was inspired by a fictional village that was created as a showcase for the “Real” Irish during the Franco-Brititish exhibition in London in 1908.

The most surprising finding is that church authorities were sceptical of reports of an apparition and commissioned Francis Lennon, Professor of Mathematics and Natural Law in Maynooth, to investigate the possibility that a lantern projector was used.

He concluded that the “apparition”was created using some form of optical device but he was overruled.

John MacHale, Archbishop of Tuam, decided that the witness statements were trustworthy and set about establishing Knock as a site of Marian apparition and pilgrimage.

The story was published in the Tuam News in January 1880.
 
A lantern projector in action. Source: Martyn Jolly.

 
So, the question has to be asked: If the apparition was a slide show, as the evidence suggests, why is Pope Francis visiting Knock?

Maybe it is a case of history repeating itself and maybe it is a case of the optics of pilgrimage. For more go to Ballymaclinton.
 
 
Ciarán Walsh

https://ballymaclinton.wordpress.com/tag/knock/
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 

 
www.curator.ie 

PATS SAYS

I have been to Lourdes 28 times and everything it was special and special things happened to me.

I have been to Knock on fewer occasions and I have to say Knock leaves me cold and dry.

But, of course, my opinions and experiences are by no means definitive or final.

However, this projection / lantern story raises very serious questions about the integrity of Knock.

The fact that the PP had invested in a lantern before the “apparition” casts serious doubts about the apparition.

The fact that the PP himself did not go to investigate the apparition suggests that he knew more than he was letting on.

The fact that the Maynooth investigator favoured the lantern theory is significant.

Archbishop McHale had every religious and financual motive for wanting it to be true – as do his successors today.

What other Catholic site has gotten them 13.5 million in recent times?

The PP who had the lantern may have been a cynical and faithless cleric pulling a pastoral and financial stunt.

I’ve never been a Knock man and probably will never be unless Our Lady appears to me and reprimands me for my lack of Knock faith.

The hierarchy and clerics have encouraged mariology and indeed mariolotary over the centuries as their weapon of control over women.

All Catholic women must be like Mary – a servant and a virgin.

And hence women cannot be priests.

The humblest priest can do what Mary Queen of Heaven and earth cannot do.

She cannot command Christ to appear on earth – whereas the simplirst priest can.

A priest has greater power than Mary.

And Mary still does Father Dick’s bidding everyday at Knock.

And she is a great money maker.

Woman’s Body”” Poem by Frances Croak Frank

Woman’s Body

Did the woman say,

When she held him for the first time in the dark of a stable,

After the pain and the bleeding and the crying‘

This my body, this is my blood’?

Did the woman say,

When she held him for the last time in the dark rain on a hilltop,

After the pain and the bleeding and the dying,

‘This is my body, this is my blood’?

Well that she said it to him then,

For dry old men,

Brocaded robes belying barrenness,

ordain that she not say it to him now.  

JOHN HUBERT GOUGH ESQ

“Knock is a miracle that keeps giving. In just three years, this small shrine on the periphery of Europe has raised a whopping €13.4m in donations and pledges to finance a much-needed structural and spiritual revamp. Some €11.4m has been used to refurbish the 40-year-old basilica which had become dated and worn”.

(Sarah Mcdonald – Irish Independent)

Dick Gibbons is the RCC PP of Knock and the general manager of “Knock Casino”.

In the video above Dick gives us an insight into the way he thinks:

The two referenda – same sex marriage and abortion – represent Ireland turning down a bad, non Catholic road.

Knock is the primary Defender of The Faith of Our Fathers.

Irish RCC resurgence will come from Knock with Mary being the new Queen Maeve.

Knock will defeat the referenda heretics and schismatics.

Saint Dick himself, like Louis Marie De Montfort before him, is Mary’s 21 st century social and spiritual warrior.

The 13.5 million raised by Dick is part of raising up the new Blue Army of which he is the 4 starred General.

Its weapons of Mass reconstruction will be Novenas, missile like candles, extra powerful holy water from Mayo bogs, jet arrivals into Horan by bishops, cardinals and popes and all the Marian weaponry, primed and hidden in underground basilicas.

The Holy Water Hens will continue to fund the war with Mass Offerings, Novena Enrolments, the purchase of pictures of Frank and the appropriate clauses in wills.

The Ireland of Garrett Firzgerald, Enda Kenny (the local heretic) and Lovely Leo will be crushed under General Dick’s stirrups and Mary’s heel.

John Charles McQuaid and Eamon Devalera will rise from their tombs to reinstall the 1937 Constitution.

Noel Brown’s corpse will be uninterred and strapped to a Legion of Mary banner and displayed at the 15th Station.

And Ireland will return to the holy, pure, chaste, child loving, Magdalen loving place it was from 1923 until 1970.

The Christian Brothers will be flooded with new meat eating members from the Kerry and Mayo mountains.

Kilnacrott Abbey in Cavan will reopen as the National Shrine of Saint Maria Goretti for youth.

The Kremlin will announce that Annie and Peter Murphy were Russian propaganda inventions and Eamon Casey will be the patron Saint of Catholic orphanages country wide.

Mary will reveal that Michael Cleary’s kids with his housekeeper were immaculate conceptions.

Dick will be made Bishop of Galway and later succeed Kevin Doran as archbishop of Dublin.

Dick will sell archbishop’s house to the GAA for 300 million and pay off DM’s air flight bills with interest.

Sean Brady’s Dundalk interviewees will be made Papal Counts and publicly forgive Brady on Paddy Reilly’s Bridge in Ballyjamesduff.

Amy Martin will elope with the Armagh child safety officer Gay Gordon and have a same sex marriage in the former Loreto Chapel in Dublin presided over by humanist solemniser Ryan Tubridy with Mary McAleese and John Waters as witnesses.

And they will all live happy ever after…NOT!

CARDINAL GIBBONS

Cardinal Gibbons once told a very shocked cleric that he didn’t believe the pope was infallible.

“Why”? the shocked cleric asked.

“Because every time he meets me he says Hello Cardinal Gibbins” said Gibbons.

A low-ranking parish priest who agreed to give evidence against an archbishop accused of concealing child sexual abuse was mysteriously summoned to the Vatican before he was due to testify and allegedly quizzed by the Pope about what he was planning to say in court.

As the priest emerged from the 2016 meeting, Cardinal George Pell was allegedly waiting outside. “Look what I have done for you,” Cardinal Pell said, and lifted his hand for the priest to kiss his ring.

According to The Altar Boys by investigative reporter Suzanne Smith, there’s no allegation Cardinal Pell intended to put pressure on Father Glen Walsh not to give evidence.

The explosive claim about the papal meeting, contained in The Altar Boys, indicates that the pressure brought to bear on priests who betray the brotherhood extends right up to the Vatican, and has prompted calls for a police investigation.

Father Walsh was a Crown witness in the case against Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson when he met with the pontiff on February 9, 2016.

Archbishop Wilson was accused of failing to report to police the allegations of two former altar boys who claimed they had been abused by a priest in the Newcastle-Maitland diocese in the 1970s. At the time he was the highest-ranking Catholic ever to be charged with concealment offences.

Father Walsh later told confidants that the Pope asked him why he was involved in a court case against an archbishop, what he was planning to say in court, and who was walking with him on the journey. Father Walsh said he did not trust the interpreter and offered scant detail.

It was the pinnacle of what Father Walsh perceived as a sustained campaign by the priesthood to get him to toe the line on child sexual abuse. He was allegedly frozen out of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese after he defied the bishop to report a fellow priest for child sexual abuse in 2004 and was not welcomed back until early 2017.

But on October 24, 2017 – a little over two weeks before the archbishop’s trial was set down – Newcastle-Maitland Bishop Bill Wright told Father Walsh he had no future in the diocese, according to an email Father Walsh sent to a friend. The email didn’t say that this decision was because of his giving evidence.

“[Bishop Wright] will look overseas (Third World) where I can live out my days in the service to Christ and his poor, preferably as a contemplative to a leper colony,” Father Walsh wrote.

Two weeks later, before he could give evidence, Father Walsh took his own life.

Archbishop Philip Wilson was found guilty of concealment charges in May 2018 on evidence that included statements by Father Walsh, but the conviction was overturned on appeal.

NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge said the book’s revelations showed the need for a police inquiry into Father Walsh’s death that would consider the actions of the Catholic hierarchy, including Pope Francis.

“Pope Francis must explain why he recalled Father Glen [Walsh], one of more than 400,000 priests from across the world, to the Vatican to answer questions about what his evidence would be in the criminal prosecution of Archbishop Wilson,” Mr Shoebridge said.

“Given the Pope’s authority over Glen, these actions can clearly be seen as an effort to intimidate him in order to protect the church.”

Bob O’Toole of the Clergy Abused Network, who wants a coronial inquiry into more than 70 alumni of Newcastle’s Catholic high schools who have taken their lives, said Father Walsh had been treated appallingly in the lead-up to his death.

“It’s entirely inappropriate for Glen to be instructed to take a trip to the Vatican to speak to the Pope about what his evidence will entail,” Mr O’Toole said.

Cardinal George Pell and Bishop Bill Wright were approached for comment.

PAT SAYS

Ot looks as if Father Walsh was treated disgracefully by Francis and others in the church.

Those who harassed Fr Walsh are surely guilty in Australian law of attempts to disrupt the course of justice.

The RCC hierarchy have told us they have changed and they now “get it” when it comes to abuse.

Thats a lie.

They are liars.

Anyone who covers up abuse is a deliberate and accomplished and professional liar.

The lives of the abused don’t matter.

The life of Father Walsh doesn’t matter.

What matters is the preservation of the “reputation” of the RCC and, of course, its monies.

A line from todays gospel sums it up.

Get behind me Satan.

Having considered Dermo’s legacy earlier in the week, let’s consider his potential replacement.

As he leaves, Dermo’s legacy is becoming clearer.

On the PLUS side is his handling of CSA.

On the CONS side are:

1. His disastrous relationship with the Dublin clergy.

2. His Big Spender behaviour and his gabit of selling off church property way short of market value.

So it looks as if his replacement will have to

1. Heal the relationship that priests have with AB house.

2. Mend all the broken finances.

Those two projects will be enough to keep any new AB occupied for years.

So who are the runners?

PAUL TIGHE

I think that Paul Tighe would be a bad choice. He is a long time personal friend of DM’s and DM will have complained to him about the disastrous priests of Dublin.

Tighe would be as cold as DM.

BRENDAN LEAHY

Leahy is a Dublin priest. I don’t think that he has the charisma or presence to be the archbishop of Dublin. He would be a friendly face but lacks substance.

KEVIN DORAN

Kevin believes that being Gay is like having Downs Syndrome.

PHONSIE CULLINAN

Phonsie’s name has come up as a contender. Handing Dublin to Phonsie would be madness. Phonsie is an Opus Dei Catholic and is quite mad when it comes to social and sexual matters.

ALAN MC GUCKIAN

Alan has been spoken of as an outsider. But he is 67. Recently he has failed victims of abuse in Raphoe. He has also become somewhat austere.

LEONARD MALONEY SJ

The Irish provincial has been mentioned. Like Francis he is an SJ. But I had dealings with him with regard Paul Prior and the SJs and discovered that he does not acknowledge or reply to letters and emails. That smacks of of arrogance and contempt.

A DUBLIN PRIEST?

Maybe Dublin priests could suggest a Dublin priest that might make a good archbishop?

Mind you, the precedent for that is not good. Dermot Ryan went from priest to archbishop and turned out to be a proper arrogant and ignorant bugger.

I was his aide de camp on the day he was installed as archbishop in 1972 and he treated me like dirt.

So who will succeed DM?

And will he just be another disaster who will continue to preside over the managed decline of the RCC in Ireland?

DERMO NOT ATTENDING MONSIGNOR CONWAY’S FUNERAL.

I was very surprised to see that DM did not attend and preside at the funeral of Monsignor Seamus the former PP of Booterstown yesterday morning.

I do know that he attended the reception of the remains on Thursday evening. But I don’t think that is good enough.

Seamus Conway had given 57 years service to the archdiocese of Dublin.

He had even been the Vicar General for a short time.

He had served in parishes, seminaries and prisons.

I think that every priest deserves that his bishop preside at his funeral.

Of course, it makes sense for a priest friend of the deceased to preach the homily.

But for the bishop to be absent from the funeral of a priest, except for the gravest of reasons, in my opinion is unforgivable!

by JD Flynn Denver Newsroom, Aug 22, 2020 MT (CNA).-  

If you think you’re a priest, and you really aren’t, you have a problem. So do a lot of other people. The baptisms you performed are valid baptisms. But the confirmations? Nope. The Masses you celebrated were not valid. Nor the absolutions or anointings. And the marriages? Well…it’s complicated. Some yes, some no. It depends on the paperwork, believe it or not.

Father Matthew Hood of the Archdiocese of Detroit learned all this the hard way.

He thought he’d been ordained a priest back in 2017. He’d been doing priestly ministry since then.

And then this summer, he learned he wasn’t a priest at all. In fact, he learned he wasn’t even baptized.

If you want to become a priest, you must first become a deacon. If you want to become a deacon, you must first be baptized. If you’re not baptized, you can’t become a deacon, and you can’t become a priest.

Of course, Fr. Hood thought he had been baptized as a baby. But this month, he read a recently issued notice from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The note said that changing the words of baptism in certain ways makes it invalid. That if the person doing the baptizing says “We baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” instead of “I baptize you…” the baptism is not valid.

He remembered a video he’d watched of his own baptism ceremony. And he remembered what the deacon said: “We baptize you….”

His baptism wasn’t valid.

The Church presumes a sacrament is valid unless there is some proof to the contrary. It would have presumed that Fr. Hood was validly baptized, except that he had a video showing the contrary.

Father Hood called his archdiocese. He needed to be ordained. But first, after three years of acting like a priest, living like a priest, and feeling like a priest, he needed to become a Catholic. He needed to be baptized.

In short order, he was baptized, confirmed, and received the Eucharist. He made a retreat. He was ordained a deacon. And on Aug. 17, Matthew Hood finally became a priest. For real.

The Archdiocese of Detroit announced this unusual circumstance in a letter released Aug. 22.

The letter explained that after he realized what had happened, Fr. Hood “was recently validly baptized. Furthermore, since other sacraments cannot be validly received in the soul without valid baptism, Father Hood also was recently validly confirmed and validly ordained a transitional deacon and then a priest.”

“Let us give thanks and praise to God for blessing us with Father Hood’s ministry.”

The archdiocese released a guide, explaining that people whose marriages were celebrated by Fr. Hood should contact their parish, and that the archdiocese was making its own efforts to contact those people.

The archdiocese also said it was making efforts to contact other people whose baptism had been celebrated by Deacon Mark Springer, the deacon who invalidly baptized Hood. He is believed to have invalidly baptized others, during 14 years at St. Anastasia Parish in Troy, Michigan, using the same invalid formula, a deviation from the rite clerics are required to use when performing baptisms.

The guide clarified that while absolutions performed by Fr. Hood before his valid ordination were not themselves valid, “we can be assured that all those who approached Father Hood, in good faith, to make a confession did not walk away without some measure of grace and forgiveness from God.”

“That said, if you recall any grave (mortal) sins that you would have confessed to Father Hood before he was validly ordained and you have not yet been to a subsequent confession, you must bring them to your next confession explaining to any priest what has happened. If you cannot remember if you confessed any grave sins, you should bring that fact to your next confession as well. A subsequent absolution will include those sins and will give you peace of mind,” the guide said.

The archdiocese also answered a question it expects many Catholics will be asking: “Isn’t it legalistic to say that, even though there was an intention to confer a sacrament, there was no sacrament because different words were used? Won’t God just take care of it?”

“Theology is a science that studies what God has told us and, when it comes to sacraments, there must not only be the right intention by the minister but also the right ‘matter’ (material) and the right ‘form’ (words/gestures – such as a triple pouring or immersion of water by the one saying the words). If one of those elements is missing, the sacrament is not valid,” the archdiocese explained.

“As far as God ‘taking care of it,’ we can trust that God will assist those whose hearts are open to Him. However, we can have a much greater degree of confidence by strengthening ourselves with the sacraments He has entrusted to us.”

“According to the ordinary plan God has established, the Sacraments are necessary for salvation: baptism brings about adoption into the family of God and places sanctifying grace in the soul, since we are not born with it, and the soul needs to have sanctifying grace when it departs from the body in order to spend eternity in heaven,” the archdiocese added.

The archdiocese said it first became aware that Deacon Springer was using an unauthorized formula for baptism in 1999. The deacon was instructed to stop deviating from liturgical texts at that time. The archdiocese said that, though illicit, it had believed the baptisms Springer had performed to be valid until the Vatican’s clarification was issued this summer.

The deacon is now retired “and no longer in active ministry,” the archdiocese added.

No other Detroit priests are believed to be invalidly baptized, the archdiocese said.

And Fr. Hood, newly baptized and newly ordained? After an ordeal that began with a deacon’s liturgical “innovation,” Fr. Hood is now serving at a parish named for a deacon saint. He’s the new associate pastor at St. Lawrence Parish in Utica, Michigan.

PAT SAYS

This story, to me, shows a very legalistic approach to God’s grace and the Sacraments.

While on the one hand I recognise the need for some rules around the question of who can celebrate a Sacrament and the use of traditional and laid down texts I also think that its very difficult to be totally black and white in the realms of grace and spirituality.

In the old 1917 code of canon law there was a canon 209 which said that on occasions the church SUPPLIES in cases where the recipient of a sacrament believes they have received the sacrament but for some reason for nothing to do with the recipient the sacrament was invalid.

I don’t know if canon 209 was retained in the 1983 code?

If a man unknowingly confessed a moral sin to someone pretending to be a priest and later died, would God send the man to hell because in canon law the sacrament was invalid?

I don’t think so.

Surely God would reward the penitent for his sorrow expressed in his experience of confession?

And this thing of saying “we” instead of “I” invalidates a baptism.

If two priests are jointly celebrating a baptism and they say “we baptise you…” how could that be invalid?

If they had said “we nless you” it might be fifteenth.

Cahal Daly removed my “faculties” in 1986 and I told him I would be taking my faculties from then onwards from a much higher source.

I don’t have even the slightest doubt that God recognises and blesses the sacraments I perform.

Canon law is often the refuge of scoundrels!

.

Yesterday I heard of the death of Monsignor Seamus Conway pastor emeritus of Booterstown, Dublin.

Seamus and I had a difficult and unfortunate relationship in Clonliffe Seminary from 1970 to 1973.

He was the Dean.

At the time I was very immature and tried to cover up a huge self-consciousness by being a messer and a prankster.

Seamus was a very serious, rurally reared recently ordained priest.

He had been chaplain to Mountjoy Prison before coming to Clonliffe and we used to joke that he had not realised he had been moved 🙂

My pranks and my denial of them got me into trouble with Seamus – and really he had every right to be agitated with me.

I was very immature and at the time seminaries would not have had the understanding to cope with such immaturity.

There were 120 of us in Clonliffe and obedience, order and submission was expected.

Seamus was really too serious and young for the job. In fact he, as a very young nan in Clonliffe, was hospitalised for cardiac issues. I’m sure the stress of supervising and disciplining 120 young men played a large part in his ill health at the time.

He also had to report regularly to the college president Bishop Joe Carroll who was bumptious and authoritarian.

So Seamus was caught between a rock and a hard place.

The biggest prank I pulled off was to throw a ceramic potty from a four storey window one night having been spurred on to do so by others.

The potty crashed into the central tarmac space at the front of the college at 10 pm at night.

We knew there would be repercussions so we all jumped into our pajamas in our own rooms pretendingbto be asleep.

Soon Seamus Conway was on our corridor and had us all lined up in our stripped pyjamas like prisoners of a concentration camp.

Conway was shouting: “Who threw the vessel”.

Nobody owned up.

The class was put under class punishment.

Seamus interviewed us all like the FBI would.

Nobody turned me over.

But Seamus knew I was the culprit.

The day after Seamus was presiding over Benediction on the college Chapel. When it came to the Litany of Our Lady Seamus prayed out loud: VESSEL OF HONOUR, SINGULAR VESSEL OF DEVOTION and we all fell around the Chapel laughing.

Every year there was a semiarian’s concert where we all had a good laugh at all the staff.

The next concert we introduced the presentation of a potty as the BALLYMOREUUSTACE PERPETUAL TROPHY to honour the student who has caused the most laughs during the year.

Seamus was a native of BALLYMOREUUSTACE in Co. Kildare.

In 1973 I was expelled from Clonliffe with a reference for another seminary.

Their giving me a reference was generous of them. They believed I had a vocation but thought I might do better away from my home city.

I always blamed Seamus Conway for my expulsion.

But I was wrong.

Monsignor JJ Greehy who was the scripture lecturer in Clonliffe, and on the seminary Council, told me years later it was not Seamus Conway.

Then in recent months DM provided me with the minutes of the Clonliffe Council meeting and I discovered it was Greehy himself who was my undoing!

I have been thinking of writing to Seamus Conway in recent months and weeks.

Now its too late.

I celebrated a requiem Mass for him yesterday at 5.30 pm.

I’m sure we will have our chat sometime in the future in a better place.

IS THIS THE BOOTERSTOWN PARICHIAL HOUSE SOLD FOR E 91,000

CLONLIFFE CENTENARY 1959

The Archdiicese of Dublin sold ALL the land to the GAA for 95 million.

The GAA then sold HALF the land, that cost them 47.5 million for 105 million.

Thats a GAA profit of 52.5 million and they still owned half the land.

If the GAA sold HALF for 105 million, then it means the land could have been worth 210 million.

But the ARCHDIOCESE sold for 95 million what was potentially worth 210 million?

Thats a church LOSS of 115 million?

Who were the GAA and the Archdiocese of Dublin negotiators?

Who in the archdiocese finally signed off on the 95 million?

Was it Diarmuid Martin?

Update on the development plans for the Clonliffe College site

Thu, Jul 9, 2020 The Green Party

If you didn’t get to make the briefing from Hines Ireland today on the developments planned for the Clonliffe College site please find a summary of the key points below.

Please note that this is an early stage plan. Lots of positives in the plan but also elements that we feel could be better.

The shortage of good quality housing in the city has not gone away so it is incumbent on us all to make sure the best possible use is made of the site.

If you have any thoughts on the below please don’t hesitate to get in touch with Neasa Hourigan TD, Cllr. Janet Horner or Cllr. Darcy Lonergan

Roughly half of the site is being developed by Hines for residential use (circa 7 hectares), half by the GAA (circa 5 hectares).

In addition to the hotel the GAA plan to develop a sporting ground comprising a Clubhouse and two pitches.

A masterplan for the Clonliffe lands can be found here

The latest plan contains 1,650 apartments broken down as follows:

30% studio

30% one bedroom apartments

35% two bedroom apartments

5% three bedroom apartments

There will be no co-living on the site i.e. all units will have own kitchen

No apartments will be sold by the developers:

80% will be private rental

10% will be affordable rental

10% will be acquired by the council under Part V for social housing

Height

The buildings will be mainly 2 to 10 storeys

Two of the buildings are planned to be 13-15 storeys.

There’s a focus on keeping the existing trees and adding more trees.

A dog park is planned

There will be a riverside walk which will be part of a route that surrounds development
Green public open spaces.

Allotments are being considered.

Pitches – will be open to schools.

Will provide a large crèche (circa 5,000 sq ft).

There will be an option for a bridge over the Tolka near the Tolka park.

Still a lot of detail to work out on that with Dublin City Council.

Lands are currently zoned:

Z12 – zoned (residential with 20% public access)

Z9 – zoned along the banks of Tolka

Timelines:

Lodge planning as a Strategic Housing Development with An Bord Pleanála (APB) at the start of 2021.

While Dublin City Council are involved in the ABP application the application will not go through the typical Dublin City Council planning process

2023 – first residents to planned to move in

All complete 2026

DIARMUID MARTIN’S APARTMENT IN CLONTARF?

How is it that Diarmuid Martin moved out of archbishop’s house and has been living in a church owned apartment in Clontarf, Dublin. 3?

Was a large amount of money spend on ABs house to house Dermo, including a Euro 50,000 kitchen because he enjoys cooking?

Was the move to Clontarf a pre retirement strike?

Is that going to be his Dublin base in the future?

Will his successor live in ABs House?

IS THIS PAUL CALLAN’S HOUSE?

Reader – Dublin priest ? Writes

“Pat have you heard about the recent meeting of VF’s in the Dublin Diocese.

It was a very happy affair (not) The Archbishop was full of his usual praise for the VF’s and the other priests of the Diocese (Not)

At least one was fired after the meeting for being bold and not agreeing with the Boss.

The other VF’s were not asking questions about the financial agreements made with 43 members of staff in Archbishops House who have been made redundant in the last two weeks, some of whom got at 100K settlement.

The poor VF’s were not at all happy, but the spineless shits said nothing.

Will someone who knows what is actually going on in Dublin call the Charities Regulator or better still CAB”?

PAT

The above comment, obviously from a Dublin priest, says how many Dublin priests feel about Dermo.

While he got a good reputation on the handling of abuse his record on the care of priests seem abysmal.

But how can the priests at the recent meeting, representative of the 360 plus priests sit there and not challenge Dermo?

Does he instill that level of fear?

Even in his dying says?

Is it true that he sacked one VF for standing up to him the other day?

And these 43 being made redundant.

How have they suddenly become redundant?

Were they in 43 positions created by Dermo for his pets?

Are they getting up to 4.3 million in redundancy payments?

Even John Charles McQuaid, tough as he was was famous for being very pastoral and caring for his priests.

Has Dermo bought a new pad in Dublin yet?

Will he be spending more time in Rome?

The new archbishop will surely have to make the care of the priests Priority Number One.

DUBLIN VF WHO RESIGNED AFTER MEETING WITH DIARMUID

Father Andrew O’Sullivan

Aug 20, 2020 by John Raby, The Associated Press

 
In this Feb. 21, 2005, file photo, incoming bishop of the Wheeling-Charleston diocese, W.Va, Michael Bransfield pauses in his new office, in Wheeling, W.Va. Bransfield, a former Roman Catholic bishop in West Virginia has issued a backhanded apology two years after resigning amid allegations of sexual and financial misconduct, and the diocese said Thursday, Aug. 20, 2020, that he has repaid $441,000. (AP File/Dale Sparks)

CHARLESTON, W. VA. — A former Roman Catholic bishop in West Virginia has issued an apology two years after resigning amid allegations of sexual and financial misconduct, and the diocese said Aug. 20 that he has repaid $441,000.

The Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston on Aug. 20 released a letter from former Bishop Michael Bransfield on its website.

“I am writing to apologize for any scandal or wonderment caused by words or actions attributed to me during my tenure,” Bransfield wrote in the letter, dated Aug. 15.

Bransfield said he was reimbursed during his time as bishop for “certain expenditures that have been called into question as excessive.” He said he has paid the money back to the diocese “even though I believed that such reimbursements to me were proper.”

The $441,000 repayment is far less than the $792,638 sought by the church that was presented to Bransfield last November. Current Bishop Mark Brennan said the final repayment was approved by the Congregation for Bishops in Rome and that the money will be placed in a fund to pay for counseling victims of sexual abuse, added to money already set aside by the sale of Bransfield’s former residence.

A church investigation in 2019 found Bransfield misused diocese funds for lavish spending on dining out, liquor, vacations, luxury items and church-funded personal gifts to fellow bishops and cardinals in the U.S. and the Vatican.

The investigation also found sexual misconduct allegations against Bransfield to be credible.

Brennan, who was named West Virginia’s bishop in July 2019, has said the diocese incurred significant expenses arising from the investigation of Bransfield and “various legal issues” involving the diocese. An audit released in February listed spending on investigations and lawsuits at $1.5 million.

The diocese announced in August 2019 it had confidentially settled a lawsuit filed by a former personal altar server accusing Bransfield of molesting boys and men. The filing asserted Bransfield would consume at least half a bottle of liqueur nightly and had drunkenly assaulted or harassed seminarians.

And a lawsuit filed by West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey accused the diocese and Bransfield of knowingly employing pedophiles and failing to conduct adequate background checks on camp and school workers. A circuit judge dismissed the suit until the state Supreme Court decides whether it violates rules about the separation of church and state.

In his letter, Bransfield said that “there have been allegations that by certain words and actions I have caused certain priests and seminarians to feel sexually harassed. Although that was never my intent, if anything that I said or did caused others to feel that way, then I am profoundly sorry.”

Bransfield concluded that he hoped the letter “will help to achieve a kind of reconciliation” with diocese followers. The apology was part of the plan presented to Bransfield at the request of Pope Francis last year.

In a separate statement detailing the approved plan, Brennan said the diocese is aware that some individuals also have received a letter from Bransfield. The statement did not indicate what that letter said.

The leader of a national group that supports victims of clergy sexual abuse said Thursday that Bransfield’s letter was “written more as a defense than a true apology.”

“A true apology from Bransfield would not contain any equivocation or whines about his intent being mis-perceived, but a simple and straightforward acceptance of his wrongdoing,” said Zach Hiner, executive director of the St. Louis-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP.

Hiner said the sex allegations against Bransfield “are not things that can simply be waved away with an apology.”

Brennan said Bransfield will received $2,250 in a monthly retirement stipend, far less than the $6,200 typically given to a retired bishop.

“This is in accord with the discretion that I have … to reduce or eliminate additional benefits for a predecessor who did not retire in good standing,” Brennan said.

Brennan said Bransfield also has complied with a request to buy the diocesan vehicle he has been using in retirement.

PAT SAYS

Another case of sexual and financial misconduct to add to the long list of such cases being revealed monthly.

How did Branston get the $ 800,000 in the first place? Was there no diocesan financial oversight.

How can a retired bishop be in a financial position to pay nearly half a million dollars back? How has he such a large sum of money in his account?

Its also quite revealing that a bishop’s pension is $ 74,000. Is that the normal bishop’s pension in the USA.

Do our retired bishops have a 70,000 pension?

If their pension is 70,000 how much is their salary?

All interesting questions?

KILMORE, CAVAN

Kilmore recently spent Euro 215,000 on this house for retired bishop Leo O’Reilly

I’m sure there are lots of empty presbyteries in Kilmore?

GALWAY

Galway recently did the same for Dennington

Do we know where Buckley of Cork lives? McAreavey of Dromore, Walsh and Field of Dublin? Lee of Waterford, Murphy of Kerry, Clifford of Cashel? Smith of Meath, Brady of Armagh? Boyce of Raphoe? Duffy and McDaid of Clogher? Jones of Elphin? Walsh of Killaloe? Kirby of Clonfert? Magee of Cloyne?

If they all got 215,000 houses – thats about 3,500,000.

Fr Andrew Pinsent Catholic Herald

August 14, 2020 at 8:10 am

As a physicist and a priest, I am sometimes asked how I can accept what the Church teaches about miracles, or revealed doctrines such as the Assumption of Our Lady. My response is always along the lines of “Why not?” Physics is about what happens for the most part to fairly simple systems in nature. But physics has nothing to say about divine actions that exceed the productive power of nature, to use St Thomas Aquinas’s definition of a miracle (Summa Contra Gentiles 3.103; Summa Theologica 1.110, art. 4).

If I catch a falling apple, I interrupt the ordinary course of the laws of physics, so there is no reason to suppose that the omnipotent God cannot also intervene and work a miracle. Contemporary physics has stretched our imaginations dramatically as to what is possible even without special divine intervention. For example, many things can and do co-exist with us without any effect on us, such as the 100 trillion neutrinos travelling through each of us every second. That demonstrates how entire worlds could be close to us even if they are ordinarily inaccessible and unnoticed. So not only are miracles not excluded by physics, but the training and experiences of physicists have acclimatised us to the extraordinary.

What about metaphysics, traditionally understood as those matters left over after the study of physics and other particular subjects?

From this perspective, the main inference (Psalm 15(16):10), which also applies to the physical Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Acts 2:27), is that it is unfitting for that which is utterly without evil to decay. Since Mary was not only sinless but full of grace (Luke 1:28) and carried God Himself in her womb, it has long been felt as repugnant that her body should decay in the ordinary way.

Our theology teaches, however, that the Assumption is not merely about the preservation of Mary’s body, but that God has raised her body and soul into heaven.

In Munificentissimus Deus on November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII declared that “… the immaculate Mother of God, Mary ever virgin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven”.

The Holy Father drew on millennia of arguments, the witness of churches and liturgies dedicated to the Assumption, and the Ark of the Covenant, the symbol of Mary in the Old Testament, which is described as taken up into heaven (Ps 131:8; Rev 11:19-12:1).

Although Catholicism still regards as open the question of whether or not Mary actually died, some older Catholic practices as well as the Orthodox Churches refer to the Assumption as the “Dormition of the Mother of God.” This gentle term, “Falling Asleep”, underlines that Mary was preserved from the pains of death.

Why, then, does this doctrine matter for us? If by the Ascension, Jesus Christ has become a bridge linking earth and heaven, then the Assumption teaches us that one created human person has already crossed that bridge, body and soul, as a pledge of the future general resurrection.

In addition, Mary’s Assumption reinforces a lesson of the Ascension, namely that the saints are not intended to remain as disembodied souls but to be resurrected into a place, not a mere state, of eternal joy.

PAT SAYS

Traditionally the RCC has gone way OTT when it comes to Mary.

It is interesting to see the piece above connecting Mariology to paganism.

For a Christian GOD is the primary and exclusive focus – particularly God made visible in Jesus.

I do believe there are elements of paganism in the worship of Mary and the saints.

Mary was simply a human being who co-operated freely with God.

She is not and has never being a divine being.

The emphasis on her perpetual virginity is part of an old social and religious hang up and sex and the body.

The New Testament speaks of the brothers and sisters of Jesus and I believe Mary had more children than one.

The dogmas of the immaculate conception and the assumption were introduced for political reasons. As the pope lost his political powers he tried to introduce new spiritual powers to boost his personage and office.

Its interesting that the RCC does not insist that Mary never died.

If Jesus, who was God had to undergo death, why would Mary, a human being not have to undergo death?

The current new preoccupation with Mary among the traddies – wanting to call her the Co Redemptrixt and the Meaditrixt of all Grace’s is theologically unsound.

There is a lot to be said for thinking of Mary as Saint Mary.

From what we know of her, she herself would not want to be getting in God’s way or placed at the same level as God.

The whole talk of Mary as Queen is pure fantasy.

FATHER PAUL PRIOR

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