Over the summertime, I got the pleasure of kicking off the Irish Dominicans’ new Angelic Warfare Confraternity with a series of talks on ‘Digital Media and the Family’. Fr Maurice and I went on a tour around the four corners of Ireland, travelling to Cork, Dublin, Sligo and Newry and, despite the summer heatwave, managing to gather a great audience (check out the talk below)
The confraternity starts next weekend, so any father’s and sons aged 8 to 17 that are interested in taking on this challenge can sign up below 👇
History of the Confraternity
Every night before the talk, Fr Maurice told the story of the origins of the confraternity in the life of one St Thomas Aquinas. According to the legend, Aquinas family imprisoned him in order to prevent him from joining the Dominican Order, which was a comparatively poor religious order. His three brothers, who were all soldiers, kidnapped the angelic doctor and imprisoned him in the tower of Roccasecca Castle to coerce him into recounting his decision.
However, despite his imprisonment, Aquinas was unwilling to back down on his decision to join the Dominicans. So, running out of options, his brothers decided to hire a ‘woman of the evening’ and send her into the tower to break St Thomas’s vows of chastity. But rather than succumb to the temptation, when the woman entered the room, St Thomas took a poker from the fireplace and chased her from the room, branding a cross on the back of the wooden door. After he branded the cross, he knelt in prayer, and two angels appeared to him and placed a corded belt of purity around his waist. In reward for his rejection of this temptation, it was promised that St Thomas’s chastity would never be tempted again.
Based on this tale, in the 16th century, the confraternities began for laypeople to practise the virtue of chastity like St Thomas. It was popular in Ireland in the 19th and 20th centuries post-Catholic emancipation. However, eventually the confraternity went cold and has since stopped in Ireland for many years. This 2026 event organised by Fr Maurice represents the re-ignition of the confraternity in Ireland to take on the challenge of virtue and purity today. The confraternity offers an amazing opportunity and guide for father’s and sons to take on a challenge together and grow in faith and virtue, in a culture that is pretty much dead set on the opposite…
The Virtue of Chastity
C.S. Lewis once quipped that ‘chastity is the most unpopular of all the Christian virtues’, which I’m sure most of us can empathise with. If chastity seems ‘old-fashioned’, ‘repressed’ or overly conservative, then you should consider reading some of Bishop Erik Varden’s magnum opus, ‘Chastity and Reconciliation of the Senses’:
‘...chastity is not a denial of sex. It is an orientation of sexuality, of the whole vital instinct, towards a desired finality. It is a function of the wholeness sought and healing found’ (Varden, 2023, 17).
In this book, Bishop Varden reframes the virtue of chastity not as a restrictive set of rules all about not doing something, but rather as a necessary practice for a life that is integrated, joyful and free. In other words, chastity is the equivalent for sexual drives that temperance is for eating – moderation leads to wholeness, happiness and the redirection of human energies in the right direction. It’s not about not doing something but about sacrificing a short-term pleasure for a long-term good:
‘Ordinarily we think of freedom as scope to do what we feel like. We think in terms of freedom from, not of freedom unto. In Christian terms, freedom is about enabling commitment. The Biblical view of human nature, evidenced in Christ, regards the human being as essentially relational, oblative and covenantal. On this account, unhindered pursuit of momentary inclinations is not freedom. It is enslavement to whim, which, empirically speaking, rarely produces lasting happiness. Sensational thrills can come of it, true, but they are not much of a foundation on which to construct a life’ (Varden, 2023, 113).
The Challenge: Industries of Sin
There is no shortage of industries today whose basic business models are the seven deadly sins, and lust might be the most profitable one there is. Lust is big business, especially in today’s world; it’s hard to avoid, and young boys who grow up in this world are totally unprepared to face the challenges of this new environment.
We desperately need social and educational institutions to prepare young men to face these challenges. But unfortunately in the secular world post-sexual revolution, regulating one’s appetites is seen as old-fashioned and repressed. This is the worst of both worlds: a massive increase in temptation and a massive deficit in the cultural and educational response…
Initiatives like the confraternity are incredibly important in filling this gap. To prevent young people from growing up as addicts by default. The government isn’t doing it; schools aren’t doing it, so the responsibility falls to parents and communities and parishes to develop these core skills necessary to grow up in the current environment.
A yearly pledge might seem like a small thing, but in the delicate process of growing up, it could make a big difference in a young man’s life – preventing access early is the key. So if you are a father with sons between the ages of 8 and 17, I highly encourage you to sign up for the confraternity and to fight back against the corruption of the human soul 👇