NOEL TREANOR OF DOWN AND CONNOR ORDAINED 9 NEW PERMANENT DEACONS IN BELFAST LAST SUNDAY.
Catholic Ireland.net
Bishop Treanor ordains first permanent deacons for Down and Connor
By Sarah Mac Donald - 16 October, 2018
Nine new deacons include two prominent barristers, one of whom was raised a Presbyterian before he became a Catholic.
Bishop Noel Treanor ordained nine men as permanent deacons on Sunday in Belfast, the first cohort to serve in Down and Connor since the permanent diaconate was reintroduced into the Church after Vatican II.
The nine new deacons are: Joseph Baxter, Terence Butcher, Brendan Dowd, Brett Lockhart, James McAllister, Gregory McGuigan, Patrick McNeill, Kevin Webb and Martin Whyte.
The group includes two prominent barristers serving in Northern Ireland.
Brett Lockhart QC represented the Omagh bombing families. He was raised as a Presbyterian and was an Elder in his Church before he joined the Catholic Church.
The group also includes two teachers. Brendan Dowd is a religious education teacher at St Malachy’s College in Belfast and Martin Whyte is principal of St Oliver Plunkett’s Primary School in Toomebridge, Co. Derry.
Speaking after the ceremony at St Peter’s Cathedral in Belfast, Rev Lockhart said he was “overjoyed”.
“I was a Presbyterian and became a Catholic 20 years ago, and this has been an extraordinary journey. I am still loving parts of the Presbyterian background that I come from but being received into the Catholic Church, and now being able to serve the Church, is just overwhelming and brilliant,” he told the Irish News.
Gregory McGuigan QC was also ordained at Sunday’s ceremony.
Speaking ahead of the ordinations, Bishop Treanor said he welcomed the arrival of the permanent diaconate to the diocese.
“To these men, and to their families, I express heartfelt gratitude and appreciation and I assure them of the prayers and support of myself and of the priests and peoples of Down and Connor.”
Permanent deacons can celebrate weddings and funerals and they can read the Gospel at Mass but they cannot hear confessions or celebrate the Eucharist.
The deacons will take up pastoral work in parishes across Down and Connor.
I watched the recording of the ordination on St. Peter's Cathedral webcam.
I was very impressed with the music. Well done whoever was responsible.
I skipped through Treanor's homily as it is my opinion that he is some kind of functioning atheist or agnostic.
HOLY ORDERS FOR MIDDLE AND UPPER CLASSES?
Great emphasis was placed on the fact that two of the new deacons are barristers, one a Catholic school principal and one a Catholic teacher.
Nothing wrong with that per se.
I was just left wondering what occupations the other 5 have?
Was there a labourer, a street sweeper, a chef, a joiner or a plumber among them?
Are any of them on Job Seeker's Allowance, Personal Independence Payments etc?
Or are they all "professionals"?
Maybe someone can let us know?
It would not be nice if all permanent deacons were only from the middle and upper classes.
THE ONE NOT ORDAINED:
There was one of those who started out with these 9 who was not ordained.
The reason?
His best friend was married in a registry office and he asked this prospective deacon to be his best man.
The prospective deacon agreed - not because he agreed with registry office marriages - but because he was his lifelong friend.
As a result of his kind and compassionate action, he claims, the deacon training diocesan priest Darach Mac Giolla Cathain and Noel Treanor dismissed him from the diaconate preparation course.
Was this a Christlike thing o do?
I think Jesus would have been best man for his beloved friend.
Of course, the Pharisees of Jesus time would have condemned him too for his compassion.
To paraphrase Jesus:
"THE PHARISEES AND THE POOR YOU WILL ALWAYS HAVE WITH YOU".
I presume that these deacons took a vow of obedience to Noel Treanor. (God help them, and bless their self-serving stupidity, prominent barristers or not.)
ReplyDeleteIt's disappointing that one trainee deacon was dismissed, simply because he attended a civil wedding.
It is grossly disrespectful, not to say arrogant, of the institutional Church to dismiss civil weddings as non-sacramental and, therefore, invalid. Where there is genuine love, there is grace. And where there is grace, there is sacrament.
I wonder whether Cathain and Treanor know anything of Roman Catholic Church history. The fact that marriages, for the first thousand or so years, were entirely civil contracts and accepted by the Church as valid?
Institutional Roman Catholicism is nothing if not inconsistent. (Witness the recent volte face on capital punishment, by tradition, morally acceptable to the Church.
What a pity that certain clerics are capable of operating as mere legslistic automatons, functionaries of the Code of Canon Law...but nothing else.
No heart. No compassion. No ability to think, and feel for others, outside a man-made box.
There's a word for this. Pharasaism. 😕
Pat, your comments are those of a jealous, stupid, foolish and childish trouble maker. You are so thick. God bless all the new Deacons. You have nothing to show for your years of supposed change and renewal. Your own life is in need of renewal. You are so envious, malevolent and vicious a person. Nothing is ever right for you that is CATHOLIC in nature, tradition or truth. You detest and hate anything and anyone of Catholic identity. You have NOTHING, zero to show for your decades of protest. GOD HELP YOU.
ReplyDeleteWhy did you needlessly (and wrongly, in one instance: 'Deacons') capitalise letters?
DeleteWere you making points, or just being petulant?
09 36: What are you talking about Magna? I capitalised "Deacons" - not wrongly but rightly as recognising a definite group of people. Otherwise my large printed words are enforcing my feelings. I'm assuming you are in agreement with me at 00.56. What a joy!
Delete'Deacons' was indeed wrongly capitalised.
Delete'Deacons' is a common noun in plural form, and common nouns do not take an initial capital letter. You may as well use an initial capital for such common nouns in plural form as 'plumber' (Plumbers), 'doctor' (Doctors), 'shopkeeper' (Shopkeepers) and so on as these, too, denote 'definite groups of people'. These groups are identified through the plural forms of their commomn nouns alone. Initial capitals for such words are not, therefore, required.
The rule is that an initial capital should be used for the particular and a small letter for the general.
No, I am no more in agreement with anything else in your post than I was with your wrong (or overuse) of capital letters. 😆
Mad Magna Caca at 09:36
DeletePolly, you're early doing your Granny Grammar today.
Were you making points, or just being a pedantic auld fart as usual!
Evviva Maria!
Oh! There's the holy, traditional RC at 13:39. You can tell by her words.
DeleteYes, you make Jesus and Mary glow with pride.
Boy! Are you in for a shock one day?
Mad Magna Caca at 14:34
DeletePolly thank you so much for that comment,so kind and very much appreciated. Unfortunately for you, it is you who are in for a really big shock, when you are called to account for your Apostasy and satanic comments. I have already told you, long after you've been burnt to a crisp,and long forgotten, Our Holy Mother The Church will be here 'till the end of time. Evviva Maria!
12.35: Isn't Wikipedia wonderful? We don't require a lecture Mugsy Dear. DEACONS are a definite group within the Church. I respect them by using a capital "D". Nothing wrong. Just respect. A respect which you don't deserve...
DeleteAww! Sore loser, 19:51. 😆
DeleteI notice Gerry Adams got his hair cut and beard trimmed for his surprise ordination and photograph with N-T.
ReplyDeleteHe's still four-eyed though.
DeleteSo will you be "four-eyed" (your expression) @ 9.33 in a fifth decade of your life. You spoke unwisely, friend, and karma will wend its way to you.. (The soothsayer)
DeleteThe talk of barristers is not to draw attention to the barristers, it's to make the church look middle class because they can get barristers to serve the church.
ReplyDeleteDid you know two of the deacons were barristers?
Pat, you know full well most working people would be way too busy for this sort of thing lol
Like most priests and seminarians, will permanent deacons also be mainly gay, Bp Pat? For example, have you ever met a straight one.
ReplyDeleteThey seem mostly to be married with children.
DeleteYezs Pat One sees ones comment about the middle class Deacons and one thoroughly agrees. The church needs to return to reality. Jesus ate with unwashed hands so why shouldn't that lad be best man at his friends wedding. Double standards if all this supposed impropriety within is going ignored
ReplyDeleteWhy is it Pat you find fault with everything in the Catholic Church? You can't bring yourself to applaud any new ideas or movement. Thank God for these new Deacons. God bless them I would love to see Women Deacons and Women Priests. Hopefully one day but please stop finding fault with Bishop Treanor and with the new Deacons. Why don't you pray for them and speak encouragingly of them. Your observations are cynical, opportunistic and do not inspire. The backgrounds of each man is irrelevant. What matters is that these men will be, under God's grace, ministers of service to the People of God. What are your hermits doing?
ReplyDeleteTo your comment "The Pharisee and the poor you will always have with you", I say "Pat and his Pharisees are always with us".Pat, you are no saint, no apostle, no prophet. Sadly, because of your moral and spiritual blindness, you fail to see your own Pharisaism and it can be very ugly.
ReplyDeleteThese man are nothing more than pseudo-priests. Unfortunately since the Church is so short of Man power it has decided to dispense with the proper formation process. They study part time for three years (are they properly qualified in Philosophy and Theology, have they the same academic qualifications as transitional deacons and priests?) There preaching is poor.(I have yet to have heard a decent sermon in my own home diocese by any permanent Deacon) They live and work at home and only attend the seminary part time during the three years of training. Even formation for our separated Protestant brothers and sisters is at least 3 years full time and is more substantial.
ReplyDeleteIf the Church believes that this level of formation is okay for permanent deacons, why not reduce the formation process for transitional deacons and priests? The answer is because it is inadequate.
As for the Deacon dismissed because he stood as best man for his friend. This show the ignorance and lack of knowledge that these men have. He should have had the wit and knowledge to know that he could not be witness to a pseudo- marriage. He was rightly dismissed as he was meant to uphold the Churches teaching on marriage, not be a witness to the sham in a registry office- does this not highlight the inadequacies of permanent deacons?
The Anglican training for ordination is short. Most full time courses are two years (those under 30 do three).
DeleteA lot of those being ordained are as clergy who will still work their secular jobs and be part time. Their training is by weekend courses.
Then a few years down the line they suddenly realise that they have a call to be full time and end up being put in parishes with little training. So it's not just permanent deacons getting a short cut.
Formation process?
DeleteYou forgot the most important part of the so-called, much-vaunted 'formation process', didn't you? It didn't get so much as a look-in in your post.
It isn't theology or philosophy. It isn't adroitness in homiletics. It certainly isn't the Michael Voris style judgementalism you express in your final paragraph (about the dismissed deacon).
Have you any idea what it is?
Do you know that without it all the things that are important to you for the 'formation process' aren't worth a penny?
You haven't a clue, have you, 09:25? 😕
"Their preaching..."
DeleteHmmm... nothing there big Mick Lomansey would fancy. All old hens.
ReplyDeletePermanent deacons, married priests, women clergy... does anyone anywhere have positive experience of these either in the Catholic or Anglican Church? As far as I can see, there have been no discernible benefits save the bare fact of having them in the first place, but I should be very glad to be wrong. I do suspect, I am afraid, that they are essentially middle-class hobbies. I particularly find it difficult to take seriously these husband and wife clerical teams: how convenient that both partners should have discerned a vocation. I sometimes wonder whether we should just put up with the queens.
ReplyDeleteHopefully these deacons, having lived in the real world, will bring a bit of common sense to the diocese of Down and connor and I wish them well. No surprise that Mac Giolla Cathain was picked to mentor them. He's an arch conservative, Treanor lecky and many of his parishioners want to see the back of him. The fact that a prospective deacon was dismissed for participating in a civil wedding is shocking. It could have been worse. He could have been ordained and had an affair. But then there's one rule for the chosen few and another for the rest. Typical Treanor arrogance and hypocrisy.
ReplyDeleteThe real world?
DeleteThat’s the problem with men like that; there’s their world... and then there’s the real world.
The same applies to Fr Marsden.
10.18: You are a nuisance of a malcontent. WaveringCatholic - I thought you said you have left the Church, so why don't you find another spiritual home, perhaps in Larne. So what if the former is is an arch conservative? Your view, since you've left the Catholic Church, are now irrelevant. Utterly so. Find a new place to call "home". Be happy then...but I'm not too sure!!!
DeletePermanent Deacons are boring, life would be so dull without the excitement that the cabal brings. People like Brendan/Stephen/Magna/Georgous/Diarmuid
ReplyDelete... and Mick too, mind.
DeleteStalker sissy @ 10.46
DeleteI know, stop stalking those sissys mentioned above, GROW UP!
Delete@16.15 Mullaney is frightening us.
DeleteThe Fed's on the case in Philadelphia
ReplyDeletePat Mullaney on the rampage here in Gaynooth. We’re soooooo scared to leave our rooms nobody knows what we’re going through.
ReplyDeleteHas Fr Marsden sent another anonymous letter? I wonder.
DeleteFor God sake come on. Has anyone ever met any one felt they had a vocation to the permanent Deaconate??
ReplyDeleteNo.
This is a sham in the Church.
Permanent deacons are as much use as a chocolate teapot.
ReplyDeleteTrue.
DeleteI have no more regard for Roman Catholic diaconate than I have for Roman Catholic priesthood.
But hey! At least these deacons won't be sponging off the laity. 👍😆
You are wrong MC. They do sponge off the laity - its called 'Expenses'. They love the title 'Reverend' but love it even more when people often mistakenly refer to them as 'Father'.
DeleteI once heard a Priest refer to Permanent Deacons as Glorified Altar servers and Wanabee Priests.
ReplyDeleteThat priest may have repented of his hostility towards deacons since then... We hope so anyway..
DeleteNoel surrounds himself with idiots like MacG Cathain. A weak bishop. Mc GC a total prat and another little Hitler.
ReplyDeleteThe whole reason for permanent deacons is the priest shortage, so they in effect have allowed men who can baptise, perform weddings (with no mass said), and what else? So much for helping the priests.
ReplyDeletePreach the gospel, okay, but they do not hear confession, celebrate mass, visit the sick, give last rites - so in effect they are useless right?
They will not be on pastoral call if people need them. They will not be living in the parochial houses.
I do not see the point, permanent deacons are just a useful tool to bring in those married men to make the church look a bit better and family friendly. Years of buggering and raping children have cause PR problems, and they hope this will help ... it won't.
It is the same with the so called "ordinariate" priests. Anglicans who really were Roman Catholics at heart and wanted to become Roman Catholics. Married clergy of these orders stick out like a sore thumb in the Roman Catholic church and have been side lined recently.
Catholic witches like Joanna Bogle loves the order, but few others really care, and the same will be for the permanent deacons.
The answer is not permanent deacons, it is we need more priests, and the shortage will continue until Pope Frank decides to allow married clergy.
I think married deacons are the thin end of the wedge .. In another ten years.... Change drippeth slow but the drips become a flow...
Delete18.53: What school of learning did you attend? You ignoramus. You haven't a clue about the history of Deacons/Deaconnesses in the Church. You have a very skewed understanding of Church. Presently, Deacons carry out lots of responsibilities, mire than you can comprehend. You are simply, a phillistine. Go back to school and learn properly. Or, if you have brains, study theology and church history.
ReplyDelete"Deacons carry out lots of responsibilities, mire than you can comprehend ..." - maybe they could help you with spell check?
DeleteSorry, I am from the Anglican church tradition. Mixed marriage you see. Catholic and Protestant can come together. Sorry that my knowledge of your church is not great. Thanks for judging me on ONE comment.
So please, enlighten me. Instead of telling me off, educate me. Tell me what they do. Thank you.
Deacons do Baptisms and with regard to the evening before a funeral, they receive the remains into the Church. They can also do the graveside part of the burial the following morning (which may be of help to an elderly priest who wants to escape that part of the burial in the cold winter months!) I think they can do the pastoral side of chaplaincy as far as I know.
DeleteTo anonymous at 13:04. I'm ecstatic!! Seems like you are the one who isn't. 😉
ReplyDelete14.14 St Stephen.
ReplyDeleteNot all deacons are middle class. One Dromore deacon was a fireman and that is just one I know. There could well be many others.
ReplyDeleteThey've also had many applications from toilet attendants.
DeleteDown and Connor it seems has no shortage of not particularly bright dictatorial clerics who can never be found in their parishes by their parishioners but who are always involved in some self-serving scheme or other to aggrandise themselves. Noel Treanor is surrounded by these lick arses. These new deacons will be used in places like St Patrick’s, ligoniel, Sacred Heart, etc. so that incumbent incompetents there will continue to swan around doing whatever the hell they like and be absent from their duties as much as possible. The whole things a joke.
ReplyDeleteIs the magic of these deacons as strong as that of priests who (supposedly) conserve their semen and sexual potency? I still don't feel that they are the real Gandalf but rather a cheap version of what priests are understood to be among the laity. For example, a 24 year old straight out of seminary and the Kremlin will still trump a 50 year old barrister when it comes to fighting vampires or taking central stage on the altar or in a procession. Perhaps it would be easier, and more Christian, to get rid of this caste of magicians and one could start with celibacy, the distinctive feature that marks them off from the unwashed laity who probably make up 0.1 percent on the official litany of saints.
ReplyDeleteMournemanMichael:
DeleteSarcasm speaks, in words so true
of this 'magic caste', and their hullabaloo.
At these 'magicians', bend the knee
give them cash, to live for free.
Shut up: pay up, we silly sods
allow this caste promote their God.
At His behest, they weave their spell.
Believe or else, you'll go to Hell.
Smoke and incense: carrot and stick,
Believe or else. And best be quick.
'Oul Nick' will come, as Father Time.
And that's the end. And so's my rhyme!
MMM
Pat two questions for you that you might be able to answer.
ReplyDeleteThe first is why do you copy and paste the work of others on your blog so much. Almost day after day we see this done. I feel that some might have a copyright problem with you doing this. Why not give us your views in your own words and if you want to use the articles of others as a back up to what you are saying then just give us a link and we the reader can click on it if we want to read it.
My second question is in relation to Permanent Deacons. Is the ministry open to single or widowed men or is it just for the married men who feel they have a calling to serve the church. It would be a pity if single or widowed men were not allowed to become a permanent deacon because they might not feel they had it in them to do the extra studies to go on and be ordained a priest. Maybe if single or widowed men did express a view of becoming a deacon and it was allowed I have a feeling that a bishop or vocations director might try and talk them into going further in their studies and going the full hog.
The permanent diaconate is open to single/widowed men. The reason being that the vocation to being a deacon is a specific call.
Delete