Irish Priest Fr Brendan Hoban: Dissident or Apostate? Is This Priest Even Remotely Catholic?
Editor writes…
Leitourgos asks that we discuss the above Taylor Marshall video which features sentiments expressed by an elderly Irish priest which are “simply unbelievable, but all too believable, if you know what I mean.” Oh yes, I know exactly what you mean. Click here to watch a shorter clip from the above video…
But first, context being everything, here is an extract from Rev Hoban’s Wikipedia page where you will find the footnotes and links which have been removed from the extract below:
Fr. Brendan Hoban is an Irish Catholic priest in the Killala Diocese, columnist and author of a number of books. Fr. Hoban was born in Ballycastle, Co. Mayo in 1948. Educated in Ballycastle Boys National School, St Muredach¹s College, Ballina and entered St Patrick’s College, Maynooth in 1968 and was ordained for the diocese of Killala in 1973. He writes a weekly column in the Western People. He co-presents radio show Faith Alive on MidWest Radio each Sunday. [Ed: this is a feature of the modernist onslaught, as we’ve experienced it in Scotland. These dissenters are always given a platform in the media, print and broadcasting – both Catholic and secular.]
Fr. Brendan is a founding member of the Association of Catholic Priests in 2010, an organisation which states and publishes many controversial opinions which conflict with the doctrine of the Catholic Church
Your thoughts – Priests dressing in cassocks and talking about sin? And this is bad ? What about this priest – is he just another daft dissenter or an outright apostate?
St Patrick, pray for Ireland!
Comments (43)
It’s all so inevitable. These priests, in the ‘winter’ of their lives, are frustrated that their glorious vision of ‘springtime’ and ‘renewal’ coming from Vatican II just hasn’t happened – in fact, quite the opposite. They had, and still have, their own vision of the Church, and the fact that they see younger, more traditionally inclined priests and criticise them, shows the overweening pride of these elderly priests – that their vision of the Church which they imposed on the faithful – is slowly but surely being rejected. I was thinking the other day after hearing about the death of Abp Weakland that barely a month goes by now when we don’t hear about the death of one of the post-conciliar villains. It just brings home the shortness of life and futility of sin and trying to impose one’s own ‘vision’ on the Church.
westminsterfly,
It really is all so inevitable, as you say. As if the Church was going to buckle to the dissenters on the very teachings and morals so urgently needing to be preached today. They were “away wi’ the fairies” as the saying goes. What a sad priest.
Nicky,
Yes, he definitely backed the wrong horse. His problem is he’s in denial about it.
westminsterfly,
You are so right – the state of the Church today was absolutely predictable.
You don’t spent 60 years telling people that the “Company” you work for is rubbish and needs constantly to change, that it’s products are out of date, and then expect them to buy it. It’s utter madness.
“Father” Hoban is washed up and so are most priests in Ireland from what I can tell. The sooner they are all gone, the better. Those cassock-wearing preachers of sin will then have the freedom and energy to fix what they’ve broken.
Michaela,
It’s very interesting that priests like this one point back to the 40’s and 50’s to attack the Church, as if those decades were bad times in the Church when they were the opposite. The churches were packed with faithful attending the Mass, the TLM, and seminaries and convents were healthily receiving vocations and producing ordinations and finally professed religious, nuns and monks. Their contempt for that period in the Church shows that they are diabolically driven, IMHO. It’s yet another case of the truth being turned upside down, what was good is presented as something bad, and vice versa.
I agree that this priest seems to be washed up and the bitterness is showing that the hopes he had for a new Church which accepts sin as a “right”, hasn’t happened and won’t happen because of Our Lord’s promise that He would be with His Church until the end of time. When will these modernists realise that they are fighting a battle that they’ve already lost.
WF,
Winter of their lives or not, this one, Fr Hoban, has been given a leading role in the silly synod, can you believe. That’s the bad news…
But, here’s the good news. The young priests, cause of Hoban’s “despair”, have hit back…
https://thescotfree.com/ireland/young-priests-respond-to-fr-brendan-hoban-despairing-of-them/
Well that is a howl! What a clown! He’s sitting there looking like anybody’s grandpa, and rubbishing young priests who are guilty of nothing more than wanting to look like priests and preach about sin! That would be truly hilarious except for the fact that it’s men like him who have emptied the pews with their ignorant drivel.
To answer the intro question – he’s moved himself well out of the “dissenter” club and joined the apostates. That’s a fact. If he believes in God and his divinely established Church, he has me fooled.
Josephine,
I agree, the root of the problem is that modernists like Hoban don’t even believe in God, not the God of divine revelation. They have their own god, one made in their own image and likeness, and I say to them, good luck with that!
That is one sad priest. To think he’s wasted his life and priesthood, and been counter-gospel most of his life. How sad is that.
He gets away with saying the anti-Catholic things he says, while orthodox or traditional priests are punished. It’s scandalous, it really is.
The expression which first came to mind on watching this video is, ‘There’s no fool like an old fool’. I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. To laugh, that is, at such utter baloney from an old man who should know better. Or to to cry, for a soul of a priest evidently in deep, albeit unconscious, distress, a priest who has himself probably been betrayed by decades of misplaced episcopal tolerance of his dissent, and for all the souls that he will probably have misled along the way.
One of the spiritual joys of my life has been to meet with various priests belonging to traditionalist foundations. One in particular became a friend. What never ceased to amaze me was not only his personal enthusiasm for the priestly ministry, but the fact that it was pretty much the common denominator of his order, from the Superior General on down. And let me tell you, his life was far from easy. He would rise at 5 am for Matins and Lauds (all in Latin, of course, and very much longer than Paul VI’s Liturgy of the Hours). Then meditation followed by Holy Mass. Then breakfast and the day’s work — at that time academic research — punctuated by the Minor Hours until Vespers.
Yes, he worse a soutane (almost always, unless travelling plane) which, in case anybody here is unaware, is not a simple garb to wear. No, I am not talking about its practicalities, or the lack thereof, but of the heavy burden of responsibility in being always and everywhere recognised instantly as a priest. In his case it was even more accentuated by the wearing of his Roman hat and, in winter, woollen cloak. (Incidentally, just as the Roman Synod, convened by Pope John XXIII together with Vatican II, wanted the clergy to dress.)
Memorable too was his poverty. Under his soutane were threadbare shirts and under-garments darned and re-darned (by him!). Journeys were always by public transport or in economy class. He had no car.
To see priests like this trashed by a secularised old fool, into whom the world had found its way right to his marrow bone, is utterly galling. My friend lived out his vocation, heroically but joyfully; this priest seems to have lived out an anti-vocation, interposing himself between God’s holy people and revealed truth which is a very dangerous game to play indeed.
Where exactly does he get this rubbish about not speaking to people about sin? Jesus did so frequently. Can he really be so completely unaware that the first words which Jesus speaks in the Gospel of Mark are, ‘The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’ Repent of what exactly if not sin?
As for young priests being a throw back to the 1950s, what he fails utterly to understand is that the priests of the 1950s had a lot more in common with those of the 1850s, the 1750s, and way back, than those which came later. The flies in the ointment are those ordained from the 1960s onwards who thought they could invent a new Gospel and who have been punished for their pride by the utter failure of their enterprise which is, to turn a phrase, very much the work of human hands.
Leitourgos,
I’ve not corrected the mistake you made at login (god, instead of gos, in your username) – that’s why your comment went into moderation. I’m making the assumption, of course, that it really IS a mistake 😀
I have now emailed the link to this thread to Fr Hoban and to his bishop.
His Bishop is nearing his retirement. He’s a company man and knows a lot of secrets.
He supported woman priests if my memory serves me correctly. He’s under the thumb of metropolitan Archbishop of Tuam a new face months ago.
The problem is that we have far too many bishops, 26 in fact. 4 bishops would be enough for each province in Ireland.
Heard a priest who’s PP in knock who was/is spoken for. His Bishop is metropolitan Archbishop as he probably knows it. Things are coming out in the open slowly, drip by drip as we speak.
FDS,
Too many bishops is the problem we also have here in Scotland – and we only have eight! It’s still far too many for a small country like Scotland. So, why on earth Ireland needs 26, beats me – is it that much bigger than Scotland? I haven’t a clue, but I can’t see it needing 26 mitres, LOL!
Laura,
I couldn’t agree more – we don’t need 8 bishops. One each in Glasgow and Edinburgh, with another one for Galloway, one for Aberdeen & the Highlands, that’s plenty.
We don’t need Motherwell, Paisley and Argyll and the Isles and Dunkeld.
Laura, lucky you re 8 bishops. Wondering what’s the population for Scotland?
Here we have 5 M and growing etc.
Most bishops here arent necessary due to declining numbers of catholics. Its off the cliff as I think its irreversible. To be fair with you, I can’t see it coming back. For me, 3 or 4 is good enough or maybe 2 would be ideal.
Catholic bishops took over the British re vaccuum when British army left and also with the help of de valera Spanish ancestry born in the states(irish govt at that time). He became v good pals with Archbishop mc quaid to keep a very tight grip re Catholic Ireland. It’s like stasi of East Germany in my experience. Where almost everything get reported back to the bishops even tiniest sins. At that time, de Vakera met a seer from France who encouraged him to do so re Catholic Ireland. That’s far as I know.
Ireland of 1830s wasn’t the same as Ireland of 1900s. Lots of live in….
FDS,
The population of Scotland is over 5 million, but only because of immigration. Deaths have outnumbered births for over 5 years or so, now.
Since we have only one Queen for the entire UK, and only one First Minister for Scotland, I agree with Laura that we really don’t need 8 bishops. One would do, with Yours Truly as the Bishop’s Personal Assistant-cum-Secretary. The pay and conditions are sure to be better than this job – plus, I’d be guaranteed some friends 😀
Editor,
My eyesight — like almost everything else — is not what it once was!
Thank you, above all for the thread!
I read the comments and i personally have a different view as far as this Man is concerned. C.P.I.Name Only, but a very successful careerist it seems. Like the likes of the Jimmy Martins these mens lives would have zero significance if they didnt [ sometimes in this Guys instance ] dress up as a Catholic Priest. He writes books which are probably a lot of garbage except to those who read the horrible Tablet Etc. But write a book trashing the Catholic Faith ,and sign it as written by a so called Catholic Priest and Bingo you have a best seller. Personally as far as we are concerned i dont think we should give People like these the time of day. O i know ED that we have to know what the enemy is doing ,but in this Heretics Views i bet His thinking is . Their is no bad publicity , for Ian Paisley was a better Catholic than Hoban . And one certainly cannot address this Guy as Father . Also that He was the Founder of the Association of Catholic Priests says it all ,as they just want to have their own version of Catholicism which in reality is just another Protestant Sect, except the pays obviously better .
FOOF,
The ACP is so dreadful that it is far from accurate to call them “Protestants”. The Protestants I know believe in sin and Hell and many other doctrines long abandoned by that bunch of malcontents who gather under the title of the Association of (Anything-But) Catholic Priests…
I’d like to know how those “good and holy priests” TM refers to feel about this priest. Do they feel betrayed? Are they afraid to speak out against this disgrace because of repercussions from their bishop?
RCA Victor,
It is the evident human respect that we see in contemporary clergy, whether novus ordo or allegedly traditional, that makes it, in my humble opinion, a big mistake to describe ANY priest as “good and holy”. There may well be some who are apparently “good and holy” but it’s not possible to tell, really. We’ll uncover those at the Last Judgment and not before 😀
When people express amazement to me that Father X isn’t all they thought him to be, “and yet” he preaches excellent sermons, I always quote Saint Francis de Sales who answered the question Lord, is it wrong to speak better than we act by replying: No. If it were, we would all have to remain silent.
Don’t know about anyone else here, but I’m a genius at speaking better than I act. It’s no basis for a judgement on anyone’s spiritual state.
Editor,
I’m not so sure our contemporary clergy, in general, are getting much respect, thanks to the never-ending aftermath of the clerical sex abuse scandals and their constant and ongoing exploitation by the enemies of the Church (the “mainstream” media comes to mind). In fact, clerical sex abuse has replaced the Crusades as the favorite topic of the hit piece du jour against the Church.
Likewise, our contemporary hierarchy is certainly not getting much respect from traditionalists and conservative Catholics, thanks to the overt and shameless corruption and shameless groveling before the NWO elitists and their Satanic agenda.
I have a feeling TM just threw in that “good and holy” compliment as an obligatory caveat.
He’s practically a walking billboard for the manifest failure of the Vatican II experiment: no vocations, little faith, an explosion of degeneracy and abortion. It must be difficult for these men to accept that their priesthood in the new church has largely been a life wasted. Only by recognising their culpability for the moribund visible church can they repent for all those they have led astray and for the damage they have done to so many souls.
The Church will rise from the remnant. The young priests will have their work cut out but God will not permit the Church to fail.
My rule of thumb is to ignore the new religion that is younger than I am. The deposit of faith, found authentically and accessibly in the pre-V2 teachings, doesn’t change
You are very right.
I remember reading about the Association of Catholic Priests (Catholic Priests in inverted commas) a few years back. I thought they had disappeared from the scene, but obviously not.
It beggars belief that Hoban should think it is wrong to preach about sin. LOL! I’d tell him to wake me up when the climate change nutjobs stop talking about the weather, and then we can work on re-writing the gospels to take out every mention of sin.
The bishop must be on board, though, or he wouldn’t feel confident about talking such baloney in public.
Ireland has really gone down the tube. My deceased Irish relatives must be spinning in their graves.
I agree – there’s no fool like an old fool, and sorry to say the Irish priest in the TM video who looks like any other old man, not remotely like a priest, is coming across as an old fool. I know that sound uncharitable but if he is reading this, my hope is that it pulls him up short and makes him realise that he’s on the wrong side of the post-Vatican II battle for the faith. Modernists like him have all but destroyed the Church, humanly speaking, and they are risking their own salvation as well as likely being held responsible for the loss of the salvation of other souls. The good news is that they are a dying breed, so bring on the cassock-wearing priests who preach about sin!
Bernie,
The only thing that will pull these people up short is to be visited on Christmas Eve by three spirits….but even that much is a toss-up.
RCA Victor,
Around Christmas/New Year time, the population of Scotland is only interested in liquid spirits 😀
RCA Victor,
You allude to what is an important point.
These guys will never admit they were wrong. It would be like saying that they should never have been born.
However, my worry is that they will wage their war for still long enough to prevent a traditional resurgence among the younger clergy. These younger priests have to keep their eyes on the ball.
My own feeling is that in Scotland the bottom is falling out of the institutional Church. In ten years — perhaps less, because the decline is snowballing — the playing field is going to look very different.
Dear friends
This priest? and his remarks eg regarding sin etc are a concrete expression and reality of the insidious and corrosive effects of the heresy of Modernism promoted and sustained by a diabolical disorientation of the evil one.
It’s evident to me that he belongs to in his own mindset, a different faith and Church, certainly not the supernatural Catholic Church and Faith and all that pertains to it.
The rest of us are a repugnant historical aberration that should be confined to a previous era.
May God have merry on him and the poor souls he is leading into perdition.
Ave Maria!
Every blessing
Michael 🙏
This arrogance and blindness from this pitiful clergyman is a blessing really. As the devil likes to be in darkness. Many clerics are just like him but have never had the “courage” to come out and pronounce their dark drivel until their hero climbed onto Peter’s Chair.
Pray that Our Lord Grants them A Pauline Conversion before their coming death and judgement.
graeme taylor,
Speaking about conversions, I have just come in to post this video of Taylor Marshall discussing the conversion of the actor Shia, who converted playing Padre Pio in a film, and it was the Latin Mass that really won his soul. How does Fr Hoban explain that?
Graeme Taylor,
You are right. A lot of the clergy are like old Hoban, but a lot more are not.
There are a lot of priests out there who are alone, tired and dejected. Covid and lockdowns are only the latest phenomena to have taken their toll on them. Add to that almost ten years of Mad Fran, Benedict’s resignation, and the ‘springtime of the Holy Spirit’ delusion to which they must subscribe, or else! — when actually they know full well the roof is falling in as His Grace/My Lord unloads yet another parish on them — and you have a very unhappy band of brothers indeed. Add also to the mix that a lot of them were deprived of serious formation — spiritual as well as intellectual — in the first place, and you have a recipe for disaster, not least in the mental health department.
And there are still those out there who have the gall to wonder why there are so few vocations (which, by the by, suits Mad Fran and His Idolators just fine) … as Editor is wont to say, ‘Gimme a break!’
Lily, indeed how could that spiritually blinded clergyman see?
Bishop Barron is another one who gives me the creeps, invited to the Usher Hall 2019 I think to blow his horn to the Catholics in Edinburgh, my pp at the time asked me if I had gone to hear the travelling bishop, I explained that when clergymen spout that we can expect hell to be empty – I pray for them -as they spread their honey laced with poison.
Now the media savvy bishop publishes this little film with a nod to the Apostolic Mass – I fear he is just being that – savvy.
The Bishop in question is a wee bit too slick for my liking.
Try googling ‘Barron and Gloor’. You will not believe it.
That’s amazing about Shia LaBeouf’s conversion through playing Padre Pio – I didn’t even know there was a film being made about him.
Well, that’s more than a little interesting, that the TLM should draw someone who has lived the life he’s lived. Priests like Fr Hoban can’t seem to see that by creating a Mass to fit in with pop culture, they have driven people away. God is way above popular culture and he made our souls to be nourished by things supernatural, i.e. things that are way above pop culture.
I’m wondering if there are any converts at all who came via the new Mass. I mean people who were so touched by it, that they wanted to convert. There will be people who wanted to convert out of conviction about the teaching of the Church and then attended the novus ordo not knowing anything else, but I’ve never heard of anyone attending the novus ordo and being so touched by it that they wanted to become a Catholic. I’d be interested to know if there are any cases.
Fidelis,
Excellent point! I for one have never heard of anyone converting because of the Mass of Paul VI.
The new Mass was conceived in the late 1940s/early 1950s and went live in the early 1970s. Unfortunately, it bears all the hallmarks of its time. But liturgy should be timeless.
I wish these ageing priests would just retire and prepare to meet their Maker. If they gave that some serious thought, it just might lead to their conversion and repentance. We should pray for that for Fr Hoban, for his sake.
Josephine,
They have created God in their own image and likeness, and if there is no sin there can be no repentance.
Leitourgos,
That’s a crucial point you make – if they really don’t believe in sin, they won’t see any need to repent. I didn’t think of that, so true.
When I saw your comment, I remembered a short video I’d seen of a nun speaking about repentance, so I went to get it to post here. Two things stand out to me about it. Firstly since the priests are mostly not preaching key doctrines, religious, like this nun, and also lay people are left to do the work but secondly, this nun said a lot in just over 4 minutes, whereas too many priests ramble on for more than 20 or 30 minutes and are all over the place, teaching nothing, really, that we didn’t already know. I like this Sister, partly because she looks like a nun!
Josephine,
Thank you for that beautiful video.
I have never underestimated the role of women religious — both active and contemplative — in the Church. In my experience they have a reach which goes beyond that of the clergy.
Sad that there are so few of them. Here again the promise was that if we only get rid of veils and habits, and look like the world, the world will listen to us.
What actually happened was that the world converted vast numbers of female religious to itself. Now they just look like any old group of old women (except that they are usually not short of a bob or two) and nobody listens to them. And here again the endgame is, ‘I’d rather have nothing’.
I thought Fr Hoban’s comments were a wonderful expose of the mindset of priests of a certain age.
Of young conservative vocations, he says “I’d rather have nothing”. And so there you have it.
He hates the Church and Catholic faith so much, that he would rather it disappeared completely than to admit he and his generation of apostates are ‘wrong’ about so very much.
Lashing out at authentic Catholicism and the people it attracts is no doubt a welcome distraction from surveying the devastation caused by decades of his ideas being put in practice.
Gabriel Syme,
The ‘I’d rather have nothing’ mindset crosses the modernist Church from literally from top to bottom, illustrated by the fact that entire dioceses are quite prepared to let themselves be obliterated rather than ask, ‘What went wrong? We were promised a springtime of the Holy Spirit, but what we got was a devastated vineyard.’ It really is an exercise in intellectual dishonesty on a massive scale, if not in collective delusion.
In priests such as these the Catholic faith has withered and died, probably a long time ago. They may have a vague attachment to Christ, but the Church — and by implication the priesthood — is a mere expendable accessory. ‘I’d rather have nothing’ means either no priesthood (and therefore no Mass, no confession, no confirmation, no anointing of the sick) or an utterly shameless moving of the goalposts to create a Protestantised Church.
Who mentioned the Synod? Not me.
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