Thursday 22 June 2017

"POVERTY - CHASTITY - OBEDIENCE"

PRIESTS, BROTHERS AND NUNS IN RELIGIOUS ORDERS TAKE THREE VOWS - POVERTY - CHASTITY AND OBEDIENCE.





ARE THESE VOWS BEING LIVED FAITHFULLY IN THE IRELAND OF TODAY?

IN MANY, MANY CASES - THEY ARE NOT!


POVERTY:

A religious priest, brother or nun is required by their vow of poverty to own absolutely nothing. Everything they have and use, according to this vow, belongs to their community. 

In my experience the nuns live this vow better than the priests or brother do - but even the nuns can be personally very well off.

Surely this vow prohibits a priest, brother or nun having a private bank account and credit card? 

Yet I know and know of so many religious priests, brothers and nuns having private bank accounts and credit cards!

I had one Jesuit friend who told me that he had a bank account with £5,000 in it and his own credit card!

I am not a religious - and therefore have no "vows" but in my whole life I have never had anything like £5,000 in my bank account.



Yesterday I spoke to a secular priest friend of mine who has a brother a priest in a religious order. He confirmed that his brother not only had a bank account and a credit card but has flown BUSINESS CLASS and FIRST CLASS for years with money provided to him by benefactors. 



Image result for priest in first class

Regularly in the Irish newspapers you see nuns and religious selling land for multi million pound amounts.


·         INDEPENDENT.IE

·         NEWS
o     
Wednesday 21 June 2017
Nuns will get millions from sale of former hospital land.
Image result for nuns with money

The Order of the Sisters of Charity is to receive a multi-million euro settlement as part of its exit from the St Vincent's Hospital complex in south Dublin, it was confirmed yesterday.
Members of the religious order are to sell the site of the former private hospital on the campus grounds to St Vincent's Healthcare Group for which they were receiving rent.
They were paid €14.6m in rent from St Vincent's Private Hospital over 13 years.
The rent paid by St Vincent's Private Hospital to the order is listed as €1.2m in 2015, the most recent year for which accounts are available.
A total of €14.6m was paid to the order over the years 2003 to 2015 inclusive according to accounts.

The rent went up from €1m per year up to 2007 to €1.2m since 2008.

MONASTERIES:

In many modern "monasteries" the religious priests and brothers live very well indeed:

1. They have no bills to pay. All the bills are paid by the "bursar".

2. They have very comfortable accommodation. I'm told that when Clonard Monastery in Belfast was recently renovated in a multi million pound spend, each priest got a "suite" - sitting room, bed room and bathroom.

3. Their meals are cooked and served.

4. They washing and ironing are done.

5. They have access to a fleet of "community" cars - no car repayments, no road tax, no car insurance.

6. They get a monthly allowance.

7. They are given money for holidays, trips and courses. 

8, They have private health insurance and can enter private hospitals at the drop of a hat.


Can anyone tel me how this is LIVING POVERTY?


CHASTITY:

When it comes to chastity I think that nuns are generally better in the observance that religious priests or brothers - but many nuns have priest and lay lovers.

All I hear about religious priests especially is that they have a better sex life than most married or unmarried men.

I know of one Irish religious priest who had THREE FEMALE LOVERS:

1. A nun he was "spiritually married" to and with whom he could go ALL THE WAY.

2. An unhappily married women he could have NON PENETRATIVE SEX with.

3. A widow he could have NON PENETRATIVE SEX with.


Image result for priest and nun lovers cartoon


Number 2 came to see me in quite a state and I sent her tp Father's Superior. He listened to her. Gave her tea. But did nothing.

It turned out that Father Superior was compromised himself!

I know of nun and priest lovers who own a caravan or a holiday cottage together.

GAY:


Image result for gay priest and lover

These days of course, more than ever before, religious priests are inclined to be gay.

Many of them have at least one male lover and are even to be found in the gay pubs, clubs and saunas.


Image result for gay monks

I even know of one ENCLOSED !!! Cistercian monk who lives a wealthy gay lifestyle and is known by a woman's name by his fellow monks. 



LIVE IT - OR LEAVE IT:

What I am saying today is that in so many cases the vows of Poverty and Chastity are not being lived by those who profess it.

Would it not be more honest to leave the order than to pretend you are living in a way you are not?

BUT - where would you get the same lifestyle - roof over your head, good grub, money, car, sex etc - so easy?

44 comments:

  1. One little point I would like to make with regard to the vow of "poverty" with regard to Sisters in religious life. The nun will understand the particular way in which she is meant to interpret and understand the vow fairly loosely described as "poverty". This vow means that she has to forego her right to "individual ownership" of most property and even objects like books and clothing. Everything is owned in common and the prayer book may bear the writing "for the use of Sister —------" even though she alone has used it for years. That is not to say of course that extravagance would be regarded as acceptable. I think mostly it would not. But I merely make the point about agreeing to regard property as being in common.
    I am certain" celibacy "is meant to be interpreted as exactly that - - a chaste and single life underpinned by prayer and sacrifice.
    " Obedience "is first and foremost obedience to one's vows and the Rules of the Order and also obedience to the requests and direction of one's rightful superiors particularly with regard to things like being sent to do a certain kind of daily work for a time or to help out in a different community or as to the structure and shape of the day of prayer and work. In other words, "obedience" is generally a means of showing your respect and co-operation. Many other professions also practice it, even if only in part.


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  2. What use are these convents and monasteries to the greater cause of twenty first century Catholic Christianity? At the personal, private level, there is potential, as elsewhere, for the monk or sister to develop their spirituality. However, aside from that, what purpose do they serve, now the state has taken over whatever roles in health and education that remained to them? Are they still prayer factories? Whatever role they once had was specific to the conditions of those days. The modern world does not need them.

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    1. I think there are exceptions like the enclosed orders - Poor Clare's etc. As Christians we do believe that prayer is important.

      Of course even in these places people can be selfish and neurotic / psychotic.

      But a lot of other orders - their members are just using the orders to cover up a selfish and using lifestyle.

      Most ordinary people live better poverty and chastity.

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    2. @8.36. According to the Carmelites there are more contemplative outside the cloister. The world is full of masked contemplative. Ordinary people who work, bring up families, pray constantly, put their faith in God and just keep going. Their poverty is the same as Thomas a Kempis. They are aware of their total dependence on God's mercy.

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    3. One can contemplate the beauty of God in nature and in life around one. One does not need the prayers of a special caste of magician eunuchs when one has God every moment of creation. In the past, monks would wrestle with the devil in their cells whereas today those who wrestle with similar demons do it in padded cells. Monasticism was for another time. Today demands a different type of Christianity.

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    4. There is the monastery of small children. The constant demands of small children is a great discipline, as is the need to be kind and gentle when they have pushed you to the brink of insanity with sleep derivation. It rubs a lot of rough edges off you and brings you nose to nose with the devil within.

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    5. Hear,hear! (--end of tether teacher)

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  3. If this is what poverty looks like when can I take the vow?22 June 2017 at 10:16

    I applied for a job in Ealing Abbey as a "houseman". Basically a servant. They were put up in a house the Abbey owned and cleaned and cooked and served meals in the refectory. The monks had exquisite furniture in their rooms.

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    1. Do people really base their vocation decision on the idea that they might land themselves in a room where the "free" furniture was actually better than the furniture which was in their own bedroom at home? I don't think so! I think there's a little more to it than that...

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    2. Well of course English Benedictine Congregation monks are said to be 'well fed, well bred, well read'. Tbh judging by Ealing's safeguarding history I would be more bothered by anything going on sexually there.
      Another aspect of the servant thing for male religious is that it has tended to be accepted (except in the more poverty-obsessed ordees) that men don't do for themselves. Of course I'm not saying this is right, but it has been a reflection of societal norms that men would have someone else to look after them - frequently a woman - and that therefore men don't/can't do these things.
      This attitude also got subsumed into religious life in the idea that the priests were freed up to do the order's 'work' by not doing cooking and cleaning, etc. In some orders the domestic work was done by the lay brothers, but the EBC didn't really have lay brothers so staff simply had to be hired.
      Naturally you won't see any of this envisaged in the Rule of St benedict...

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    3. One time on a retreat the preacher said of priests:

      "THEY WENT OUT TO DO GOOD - AND THEY DID WELL" :-)

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    4. If this is what poverty looks like when can I take the vow?22 June 2017 at 14:45

      EBC = Every Bloody Comfort

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    5. Should people be punished then with deprivation if they decide to try put their vocation - - yes?

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    6. In a lot of monasteries in the developing world they make the novices sleep in a dormitory - simply because people join up to sleep in a room of their own, often for the first time in their lives. The reality is people do join religious life to get a better standard of living than they have known, and while deprivation is not the answer they should be reminded what the life should be about.
      I used to be a Benedictine novice myself, and my standard of living then was better than it is now, twenty years later, earning the most I ever have, as a quite senior member of my profession.
      Therr is another pattern in monastic life - it always dies out in corrupt forms and is reborn in more radical forms. The EBC had a meeting of its 'younger' ( ie below 50) monks a few years ago and what struck the participants most was the divine office in choir with the other monks. This should be the daily work of Benedictine monks and if that could come as a revelation, mark my words the EBC is on its way out.

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    7. I suspect that in the third world it is also the best way to a good education,status in the community and an opportunity to travel. Until recently most people did not have access to universities and I think for a devout clever little altar server the chance to be a priest would have been well worth taking. At one time the only educated people in the village were the priest, the doctor and the solicitor. When I think of the great work the Jesuits did in my home town Preston in the 19th century when it was riddled with poverty and horrible diseases, I am quite awestruck at how much they did in the area for the working classes. They and some nuns really heaved people out of poverty. They did all the good work that the state does now. I was taught by nuns who went to Oxford in the 1960s. Most of the girls came from the terraced houses with outside toilets..

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    8. Sorry, I don't quite understand the point you are making about what conclusion the monks under fifty years came to?? Please clarify this a little for us...

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    9. My point was the divine office is THE work of Benedictines and I got the impression they'd lost sight of that fact!

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    10. I suspect that a number of religious orders have become very lax which is why there are more contemplatives outside the cloister. Perhaps there is nothing like the uncertainties in the secular world to focus your prayer life.

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    11. @20.06
      I see. Thanks for explaining that.

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    12. Heard recently about a prominant Dom who was allegedly greeting female students with a kiss before a recent Graduation Mass in a D4 school. The same Dom has a high profile with Youth 2000. Frim your blog, he joins a Dom with HIV now in their HQ, a Dom removed from Maynooth and a second level Cork boys school and now in a parish and others. By contrast , the older Doms gave the Church such a positive academic contribution. Many worry about the trainibg and influence the current young ones are recieving from the above Doms who are known to be very influential within the Irish Doms.

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  4. Pat , did u read the Belfast Tele today.
    Dublin priest quizzed pupils in de la sal college about sexual matters in Confession in 2013. What was that all about?

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    1. I did. Maybe someone could tell us the Dublin priest's name?

      He was clearly "getting off" in confession by asking the boys about their masturbation and pornography.

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    2. Bishop, by what logic and particularly with what evidence did you arrive at such an obscene conclusion? 13:20

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    3. There was a similar case in 'Christian College' in Cork city in 2012. It was reported but the child protection officer of the priests order took no action.

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    4. I read the original article and there was no suggestion he was getting off on it.

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  5. I wonder how Bishop Treanor flies on his, er, 'fact-finding' missions for Trocaire?

    And what hotels does he, and his fellow 'junketeers', stay in while gathering these, er, facts abroad?

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  6. I knew a community based Sister whom I considered a friend and knew the real me. When I left the church she disappeared into the woodwork. She since has left religious life. I would not say she had a lavish lifestyle but all basic needs were covered by the "company"

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    1. Sean, you say of your community based friend that she knew "the real me".
      The question is -did you know "the real her"?

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    2. 19.03 Not in the biblical sense if that is what you mean. We shared a common work circle. Her family also lived in the general area. What I know of her is from general conversation and reflection. No real deep stuff as such

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  7. 14.15 By disappearing into the woodwork I mean I did not get any support or encouragement. If roles were reversed I would like to think I would have been more positive

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    1. What's the big deal about her disappearing into the woodwork? You sound so hard done by Sean!

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    2. I think a so called friend disappearing into the woodwork is a big deal.

      Especially when the friend is a "Christian"!

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    3. There can be many reasons unknown to us why they've disappeared into the woodwork, you judge the person harshly. Many family members disappear into the woodwork for a whole variety of reasons, I hardly think they need to be called "unchristian" for doing so. I don't think I'd want you as my Judge at the end of time. There are many unknown reasons with mental health only being one. I think you and Sean Page are the unchristian ones for judging people in this way.

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    4. 14.33 I didn't intend to make a big deal. It just came back to me prompted by the blog. At this point in time it's neither here nor there but I tend to agree with Pat in principle. However I'm not loosing any sleep.

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  8. (Sadie on the sofa) Ach I know what Sean means - - when something is goin'on with you, there's people don't know how to handle it. They wouldn't be sure what to say to you and so they do a bunk and disappear..

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  9. In Sean's case I wouldn't blame anyone loosing contact. MANY were badly burnt by him.

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  10. 16.33
    Thought that you, Pat, had agreed to no post negative personal posts.
    The nun, Sean, prob had her own misgivings going on re her vocation

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    1. It wasn't negative, or not as negative as Sean's own judgemental post about someone disappearing into the woodwork. I just made a factual comment that may had been badly burnt. If you wish I'll give you chapter and verse but then that would be unkind.

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  11. Let's have some scandal for a change.

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  12. listen to Pat Buckley. never has a man been spot on with so many issues. he tells things how they are. prophet of our time.

    rc_2016eire

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    1. So long as no one challenges Pat's own double standards and hypocrisy. He's not nearly as anxious to debate that.

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  13. I think there's rarely a day goes by that Pat is not challenged by some poster or other! There are some excellent, knowledgeable and sincere people out there.

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    1. Pat is very adept at controlling the conversation through the way he decides which comments are allowed and which are not.

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  14. You didn't exactly tough yours out for long Pat.

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