Cork, Ireland: 4-5 Feb – TLM course for priests

From a reader:

The Latin Mass Society of Ireland will run a second course for priests wishing to learn to say the Latin Mass (Extraordinary Form) in Cork in February. The course will take place between Wednesday, February 4 and Thursday, February 5 at St Dominic’s Retreat Centre, Ennismore, Cork.

The course director will be Father John Emerson FSSP. For further details, see www.latinmassireland.org or e-mail Maurice O’Brien at mauriceandjaneobrien@g mail.com or Vicky Nestor at vickynestor@gmail.com

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16 Comments

  1. John says:

    Woooohoooo for Cork!

  2. Dr. Eric says:

    This is good news. I never met such anti-Catholic-Catholics than those I met in Ireland.

  3. Paul says:

    Well done LMSI! Numbers attending the twice-monthly TLM in Cork are slowly increasing and a few new priests would be most welcome.

    As an Irishman, I wish I could argue with Dr Eric’s comment, but…

    Paul

  4. jef says:

    So do I paul, So do I

  5. Martin says:

    ”This is good news. I never met such anti-Catholic-Catholics than those I met in Ireland.”

    That would be funny if it wasn’t so very sadly true. I am also an Irishman. Nice to see FrZ has a vibrant Irish following!

  6. Dr. Eric says:

    I was also very shocked to see that it was in my maternal ancestor’s city of Fermoy!!! :-(

  7. James II says:

    Catholicism in Ireland is in rapid decline. In a complete rupture with history Ireland is now being forced to import priests, which is shocking when you consider the multitudes we exported abroad throughout the centuries. In the fifties one in every six high school students proceeded to seminary. Nowadays entire dioceses go year upon year without a single candidate for the priesthood. The diocese of Ossory, for example, hasn’t had a vocation IN 15 YEARS. Many orders haven’t had vocations for two decades or more. In many urban areas weekly Mass attendance falls below 10%. The Church of Ireland had more than twice as many ordinations as Catholics in 2007, even though Catholics make up 73% of the population and Presbyterians constitute much of the rest. Irish Catholics are voluntarily doing what Elizabeth I, Cromwell and the Established Church weren’t able to acheive. Mass attendance is in freefall. A practicing Irish Catholic could well become an endangered species at this rate of going.

  8. Before condeming Irish Catholics as being anti-Catholic, I suggest you read some Irish history and the persuction they suffered by the English all for the love of Christ and the church.
    It is time to allow the usus antiquor to return to the old sod, and let the Catholics there to choose which form of worship they prefer.
    I am forever grateful to my Irish ancestors who were forced to tithe to the Church of Ireland, rather than give up their love of the church

  9. Charivari Rob says:

    I know the numbers are depressing, but I don’t think “anti-Catholic Catholics” is quite the right label.

    I don’t have all the perspective a resident would have, of course. Even my infrequent visits, though, are enough to have seen the empty churches. My mother’s hometown parish is one of those who has benefited from the service of priests from Africa (Lafayette, we are here!).

    My wife and I spent two weeks in Ireland this past winter, one touring with our choir and one visiting family. We were blessed to go many places and meet many people of strong faith.

  10. James II says:

    “Before condeming Irish Catholics as being anti-Catholic, I suggest you read some Irish history and the persuction “they suffered by the English all for the love of Christ and the church.”

    Nobody is suggesting otherwise. We are talking about Catholics in modern-day Ireland. The fact that Irish Catholics have been persecuted in the past makes the decline of the Church in the present all the more depressing. Let us not forget either the grave sacrificies made by the Anglo-Normans of Ireland (the “Old-English”) and the pivotal role they had in keeping Ireland Catholic during the Tudor era.

  11. Rose of Lima says:

    Yay! That is down the road from my Nana’s house!!

    I would like to say that it was an “imported priest”, St. Patrick, who baptized the island. Let us rejoice and be humbled by what God has given us through missionary zeal. I pray we see a resurgence of priestly vocations in my father’s land, and I see no better way of turning the tide on secularism than bringing back the Extraordinary Mass.

    When I lived in Cork, I stumbled upon an EM mass at Sts. Peter and Paul’s in the city center. It was my first experience of the EM. I can’t say I was much of a participant because I really did stumble upon it. I went in for Adoration and I received an even greater gift. If I were a male and I had gone to that mass, it would have had me discerning. The reverence of the priest and congregation was beautiful. The role of the priest… I feel that the true role of the priest is more explicit in the EM. Maybe that is why young (and old for that matter) men these days do not (or have not) considered the priesthood, they don’t know what it really is. This is the best step the Irish can make in restoring their faith to their land.

    For the record, I am not against the Novus Ordo. I just feel that too often priest are relaxed with the NO and there is a loss of reverence, which is felt in the congregation. I have been to NO that were celebrated with great solemnity and it captivated my heart.

    This post is getting too long. All I wanted to say was Yay for Ireland.

  12. TJM says:

    A sad factor which might account, in part, for the fall off in religious practice in Ireland is that Ireland is now a very prosperous country and young, intelligent people there have many, many career options available to them. I think the same dynamic has come into play in the US. Another sad factor is that Irish families, like US families, are not as large as they once were. When you had many children, parents were probably much more likely to encourage a vocation to the priesthood or religious life because they had enough children to provide them with grandchildren. I have heard this sentiment expressed many times by practicing Catholics. Tom

  13. jaykay says:

    “Ireland is now a very prosperous country and young, intelligent people there have many, many career options available to them.”

    Good insight, TJM, and yes, that IS a reason, but in fact the fall-off among young people began as far back as the 70’s, and accelerated through the 80s, when Ireland was expressly not rich and was haemorrhaging young people through emigration because of lack of employment opportunities. I can attest to that because I was one of them at the time, and of all my friends with whom I went to a religious school in the 60s/70s I am among the few still practising.

    The basic factor as I see it was, and still is, the all-pervading secularism whereby it’s perceived to be deeply uncool to be a christian and the absolute pits to be a catholic. Young people were buying into this myth hand over fist back in those days, and because being Irish means that you come with a built-in inferiority complex to start with then the myth was all the more powerful since the successful “role models” in the UK and US (the primary points of reference for youth culture) were seen to be anything but christian, if not actually scornful towards it. Then take into account that in Ireland, for a long time, the media have been slavishly aping their peers in the UK and US and Europe and you see many of the reasons for the fall-off.

    In most cases, certainly among those whom I know, it’s not really anything to do with a conscious intellectually-based rejection of the Faith. It’s just a lazy, “follow my leader” drift. (Well, maybe more of a gadarene rush these days). If the fashion were for strong religious practice, as it was up to the 60s, then the churches would be packed because of the
    strong peer pressure factor. It actually makes me reflect that maybe the Faith in Ireland was never that deeply based anyway, just a matter of doing what the neighbours do. And now that the neighbours aren’t doing anything, well…

    Anyway, lovely to see the news from Cork. I support the Dublin Latin Mass Chaplaincy and was greatly heartned to see the impressive turn-out at the 7pm Missa Cantata for Epiphany.

  14. Richard says:

    “Ordinations” in the Church of Ireland? That just shows what you know or understand about the situation of the Church in Ireland. The Church of Ireland does NOT have valid orders. The anti-Catholic Catholics in Ireland are the rump of the great libbie movement of the 1960s to “re-found” the Church. Just try the country side and the ordinary people in the towns and you will find that the faith is vibrant in Ireland. Its greates threat at the moment is the ultra-modernist clergy who sold their souls in the 1960s and who used the church to carry forward a social transformation which, now sadly in ashes, has no more use for the Church and have discarded her.

  15. James II says:

    Richard, calm down! Assuredly I do not believe that the Church of Ireland has valid orders. My point was that Anglicans constitute such a small percentage of the island yet can muster up more clergy candidates than we can, even though 73% of Ireland’s population belong to the Catholic Church. I was employing the word in a colloquial manner. It is customary for Catholics in common parlance to collectively refer to the eastern schismatic churches as the ‘Orthodox Church’ and its adherants as ‘Orthodox Christians’ even though we deny them these titles in the theological sense. The very fact that you are willing to refer to the Anglican institution as the ‘Church of Ireland’ when it is a mere ecclesial community shows that this logic is not altogether alien to your mind.

  16. Richard says:

    James II !

    Simile simili similiatur !!

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