I live 20 minutes from Mount Melleray. Unfortunately there are rumblings of some very dodgy goings-on regarding one of the current monks, I won't give any more details but prayer needed for that monastery. My mother's uncle was a monk there several decades ago, he was from Donegal. He was known to bilocate on at least one occasion that our family knows of. Perhaps that's the monk you're referring to, Padraig. Br Columba. There was also a Fr Athanasius who was a mystic by all accounts.
I knew a Brother Columba and worked with him! He was a shepherd who used to train sheep dogs...but I don't think this is the same one? The one I knew was bald? I had never heard of a Brother Columba who was a saint, but maybe this was after my time. I did know of Fr Athanasius. I had a very,very high regard for the sanctity of the monks in general. Several of who were very,very holy indeed, indeed saintly.
It's wonderful to think on and to see very,very holy people, it keeps us so positive. The Father in our Church is very,very holy indeed, a true Spiritual Father. I have the highest regard for all who attend our Church, just from looking at them at a distance. A few of them might very well be saints, it would not at all surprise me. Certainly many of them are very very holy indeed. I don't mean to be negative, I would say any Catholic who can keep the Faith in these, dark, dark, dark days is worthy of the very highest regard. There are huge signs of hope really, it's just maybe you have to stay positive and look for them.
The Church now is very much like gold tried in the furnace, so to speak. I do see a much, much higher quality of Church goer. More golden, more 24 carat .... ..the badness, the evil that we see seems to be creeping in at the very top, I suspect. But to a certain extent we have often seen this in the Churches history , that our holy ones, our saints rested on the bottom rungs.
It's so lovely this to have so many sisters and brothers to look up to and admire, I do this each time I go to Church.
Probably not the same Br Columba as he would have been much older than your time but I'll try and find out.
Just imagine, being able to bi locate , Wow! Padre Pio was asked about bilocation one time and described it as , 'An extension' of spirit'. There was another monk whom I was told was considered by the other monks a saint. When I visited his monastery he passed me by and it seemed to me that his face was on fire with light. Amazing. Here is another monk who was most certainly a saint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprian_Michael_Iwene_Tansi
I asked my mother about Columba. Turns out he was her grand-uncle, not uncle, and he was Fr Columba, not Br. He probably died in the 1950s or so. Apparently he was very fond of snuff . The bilocation story is very interesting though, he appeared to my mothers aunt (his niece) in Donegal as she was entering a lake to drown herself in the middle of the night. She was suffering severe depression. He was carrying the blessed sacrament in a monstrance and told her "go back". So she went back. She was quite annoyed because he had a brother who was a far more illustrious priest, a doctor of divinity, and she thought he should have been the one to appear to her! Fr Columba was a bit too ordinary for her liking! But mostly she was puzzled at how he could be in Donegal when he lived in a monastery at the other end of the country.
That's some story! Thanks for sharing. This is edifying as well. Lucky you to pass him by...lots of good info.
This is addressed to laymen in Ireland (a message from Our Lady?) It’s happening, we will respond to Our Lady’s call to renew the Eucharist - YouTube
I love Robert's channel, he's such a soulful guy. Even though I'm American, I married an obelisk of an Irish woman. She's from the west coast of Ireland. We met in Germany where I was stationed with the US Army in the early 90s. We got married in a beautiful ancient church in Ireland in 96. I've spent a lot of time there, and the rapid pace at which Ireland is shedding it's Catholic identity is beyond staggering. My wife has grown in her faith, despite being in Wyoming, while the rest of her family is very much fallen away. The glue of her family was her mother, and when she passed away, the family just stopped going to mass. And they were by all accounts very Catholic. Sad....
The almost continuous release of reports of abuse scandals and the effete response of our bishops unfortunately turned away many who seemed unable to make a distinction between the personnel of the Church and its doctrinal content.
Irish people, in the main, know very little about Catholicism. When this ignorance is combined with witnessing the carry-on of many priests and their protection by their bishops, effectively a behaviour that represents almost all they really know about their Church, it is unsurprising that they should opt to reject it.
Would this be because of poor catechesis? It wasn't always so was it? I have felt that here in the US the coming of Vatican II turned many, maybe a majority of Catholics into cultural Catholics with very little understanding of their faith as well. And now they drift away.
I am of the opinion that communion in the hand has certainly fostered a lack of reverence for The True Presence. People receive like they are getting a piece of food. I kneel and receive on the tongue whether it's Novus Ordo or TLM. Cdl. Bernardin pushed the bishops for communion in the hand and lay ministers in the 70s. Perhaps that was his goal. I never finished the book A Windswept House, but it's plainly clear concerning certain accusations against Bernardin when he was a priest. I don't judge people who receive on the hand at all, but for me personally, only on the tongue and from the priest or deacon.
I was fortunate to get catechesis from the nuns, when they were still proper nuns. After that, it was mostly immemorable, modern teaching which treated children as imbeciles. The Irish continued to pack the churches for many years after Vatican II. The change seemed to coincide with the scandals, if my memory is correct. People had no cathechetical capital to shore things up when the authority of the clergy suddenly disintegrated.
