Irish Mef Hermit Nun Desperately Needs Vocations

[Chiquitunga]

still need to watch this... but I heard of her while I spent time living in Ireland. I don't know anything else about her though. Someone just mentioned, there's a hermit nun on Croagh Patrick. Perhaps it isn't her though. I need to watch this. I have seen her site before years ago. I think it's very interesting RTE did this program... They did one on the Poor Clares in Galway a few years ago too.

 

Thank you reminiscere for finding & posting that too!! 

 

for a final check it would probably be best to contact the Diocese directly :like:

[Chiquitunga]

okay, watched it. yes, this was the hermit I heard of....

 

Anyone interested in discerning with this Sister might want to double-check about her current status within the Church. I'm not sure her plans for a community have the endorsement of the local Church authorities any longer...though hopefully she personally remains in communion with the Church. 

 

Still, I think her initial vision for a community of penitent hermit-nuns in Ireland was a really beautiful one. (But speaking for myself, she lost me when she started talking about the post-Vatican II era Church as a separate religion.)

 

she lost me at that point too...

 

I wonder if she is aware of the many communities nowadays receiving lots of vocations, that have the Traditonal Latin Mass. I hope someone will enlighten her on this point. If she had had a good FSSP priest for instance, things may have gone very different here ...

 

I agree with many of her statements, but disagree with others, especially "Post-Conciliar religion" :(

 

She spoke of chastity as the hardest thing.. which is/may be true more for men, she had a good point there. But I always hear the vow of obedience is the hardest...  although she was especially talking about the secular priesthood there I think. I wish she had represented the beauty of chastity in consecrated life a little better though, especially on a secular TV station like this, as a spousal relationship with Christ instead (not meaning to make reference to the other thread, it's just something I thought of watching the video) The Galway Poor Clares did a very good job at portraying this on the RTE program on them.

 

Let's all pray for her, she has wonderful intentions, I wish a community like this would have flourished  :pray:

[Chiquitunga]

oh man, I just missed it for editing that last post (it's so short now, like 3 minutes!! it's used to be an hour)..... oh well. I meant to cut out the whole middle section. I don't mean to say anything negative about her. I greatly respect her and think this could have been a very good thing....  it still could be I think, nothing is impossible with God :pray:

[truthfinder]

Chiqui,

 

I think when she was discussing chastity, it was more a general observation.  Violations of chastity are easy to make as well as conceal.  Obedience, imo, tends to manifest before another person.  But, she was also talking about priests, who although promise obedience do not vow it (diocesan), and do not live out their obedience in quite the same way as a member of a religious community.  Further, I imagine the practice of obedience when you're a solitary hermit to be different than if you were in community as well. 

[inperpetuity]

I corresponded with Sr. Irene in 2005.  She was legitimate then and still is.  She suffers for the Church and her cross may be to never have her desire for community fulfilled similiar to Bl. Charles De Foucauld.  To those who grew up with the Novus Ordo mass and revised sacraments her statement about a new religion would sound strange, but those whose faith was formed and nourished by the Traditional Latin mass and sacraments and who were able to remain attached to them, the Novus Ordo mass too closely resembles a Protestant service to them.  I myself grew up with the Novus Ordo mass.  There are many books on this phenomenon that Sr. Irene is talking about.  Michael Davies' books which you can google who was the founder of Una Voce International http://unavoce.org/about/ and who had a close relationship with Cardinal Ratzinger  before he was elected as Pope Benedict wrote a book about the history of the mass and about Archbishop Cramner of England who stated among other things that the mass needed to be presented as less of a sacrifice and more as a meal so that Protestants could be more comfortable with it.  Here's the the link for the book, "Cramner's Godly Order",  here    As Catholics know God allows suffering in the Church and the world not only as a consequence to sin and as a means of purification, but because He knows how to bring a greater good from it. He only asks us to be faithful.

Edited July 29, 2013 by inperpetuity

[Benedictus]

I just watched this -  she makes some valid points but I think she places the emphasis on the negative too much. It's not to say there isn't problems (there always is I suppose) but it helps to look and see where good practice is happening and have some hope. This is just my reaction, rather than a critique of her personally.
God maybe calling her to permanently live as a hermit within a diocesan context, even though she seems hopeful of founding a community. I'd imagine she'd find it easier if she moved nearer to communities that could support her and where she'd be more fulfilled.
She'll find it hard to get people to join her as it's an unusual situation and her opinions are specific. I'd think women considering it would maybe wonder, or want to find out, why her entrance in past orders didn't work out to ensure it's not a personality or psychological issue. I'd think, by now, she'd be fairly set in her ways so a new addition would be hard. 

[TIWW]

Why We Exist: To offer ourselves unceasingly to God as Little Hosts for the Catholic Priesthood, the Triumph of Mary's Immaculate Heart, the honour of Saint Philomena, and the return of the Catholic Church to the Traditional Catholic Faith and Doctrine.

Given the above statement, and after reading through her website, I would be surprised if she were supported by a Bishop of her diocese. It sounds that she does not recognize the Church post V II. Some questions that come to mind are: What kind of formation she had to become a “Benedictine?” Is there anyone else besides her ? Does she have some kind of arrangement with the Bishop to have Adoration in her home? If she does not recognize the Post Vatican II Church, does she even recognize the local Bishop?

[TIWW]

from a recent Irish Independent article about her:
Monday 5 August 2013

AFTER years of back-breaking work and an outlay of hundreds of thousands of pounds, a "hermit nun" has announced she is abandoning her dream of a religious colony in a valley near Croagh Patrick in south-west Mayo.
The departure of Sr Irene Gibson, who styles her Mount Tabor Hermitage at Drummin, Westport, on the strict enclosed rules of the 12th century Carthusian Monks, estimates she has spent in the region of £250,000, donated by wellwishers, on her project in the last nine years.
The Dublin-born nun said yesterday that her main reason for closing the hermitage down was the difficulty in finding priests who will say Mass in the traditional Tridentine (Latin) rite. Sr Irene has renovated a cottage and built four chalets, which she calls "monastic cells", on a remote four-acre site which she bought from Coillte Teoranta in the early 1990s.
She announced this week that it was with regret she was selling the hermitage because she and the other sisters were "not being given the privilege of living a full sacramental life in the valley, as other enclosed nuns are given".
Yesterday Sr Irene, who has placed the sale of the hermitage in the hands of a Westport based firm of auctioneers, said she had agonised over whether to sell for the past two years.
"It has been a very difficult time and I have shed a lot of tears," she said.
Sr Irene said even problems associated with the location a lack of clean drinking water, flooding from a nearby river, transport expenses and the cost of having to regularly re-surface an approach road had not been enough to make her sell up.
She stressed that the central reason behind her decision was the non-availability of the Tridentine Mass.
"The local priests won't do it," she claimed. "There is a hatred for the old Mass amongst the Hierarchy. Very few people are tolerant towards the old Mass, especially the Hierarchy. They don't want to hear about it," she said.
After selling the property Sr Irene said she would probably move to Athlone, where a Tridentine Mass is celebrated every Sunday.

[SNJM]

This is a sad situation. Prayers.

[reminiscere]

That's not a recent article, even though it seems so. The date on the website changes with every day. That article is several years old already. 

[Benedictus]

Given the above statement, and after reading through her website, I would be surprised if she were supported by a Bishop of her diocese. It sounds that she does not recognize the Church post V II. Some questions that come to mind are: What kind of formation she had to become a “Benedictine?” Is there anyone else besides her ? Does she have some kind of arrangement with the Bishop to have Adoration in her home? If she does not recognize the Post Vatican II Church, does she even recognize the local Bishop?

I did assume she was recognised as a diocesan hermit by her bishop :unsure:  If that were true then she could wear a habit of a style agreed with the bishop, which in her case seems to be Benedictine in style. But I'd assume, if this is the case and she took public vows, then the bishop would have questioned her and done some formation work over a long period. I would have thought her views on the Ordinary rite and Vatican ll would make a bishop uncomfortable, at best.

Diocesan hermits are consecrated in that state and don't usually intend or desire to found an institute. So I don't understand why she wasn't content to live alone. It could be she wanted to create a hermit foundation where other diocesan hermits also live, which some have done elsewhere, mostly in the US, but that isn't a religious institute in the strictest sense or necessary for the hermit vocation. 
She seems frustrated to not find a priest but its probably not very realistic to expect to find a priest to say mass, in the extraordinary form, on a daily or weekly basis for one person or so in an isolated area. Communities of sisters (especially enclosed nuns) often have a priest chaplain say mass, but it's at their own arrangement and/ or expense. I'd imagine her views would make some Priests hesitant whether to associate with her or say mass, unless they were retired or sure it was appropriate.

Her disregard for the Ordinary rite and Vatican ll seems to get muddled with the problems of liturgical abuses, music usage and lax doctrine which I think are separate problems.  She also seems to not acknowledge that there have been different rites in the church, even used at the same time. There was never just one mass rite, even if one predominated. There was the Carmelite, Carthusian (which is still used) and so on.

I'm confused but sending her prayers :smurf: 

 

Edited August 5, 2013 by Benedictus

[TIWW]

Benedictus, I agree. I was confused by the date thing as well. As someone who grew up in the 60's, I LIVED the Pre V II Liturgy, literally. I played all the Latin Masses with and for the nuns in our parish and on my own in the summer when they went off to school. I loved all of it and still do. I am thrilled when we do Latin in our Liturgies, I feel so much of our tradition was lost to the generations following me. That said, my concern is not just with Sister Irene, but others like her who create and promote their own personal preferences, and then try to draw others into these practices, whatever they may be. Where and how she chooses to pray is her own choice, but I become concerned when these folks do not recognize the legitimacy of Rome today, because they got stuck somewhere in their own theological dilemmas, without support of their local Church.