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The Father Willie Doyle Association

Father Willie Doyle Association

Official site for the canonisation cause of the Servant of God Fr Willie Doyle SJ

13 October 1916: Fr Willie’s struggle against his dominant defect

Fr Doyle wrote the following in his diary on this day in 1916:

Lately the desire to be trampled on and become the slave of everybody has grown very strong. I have resolved to make myself secretly the slave of my servant and, as far as I can, to submit to his will e.g to wait till he comes to serve my Mass and not to send for him, never to complain of anything he does, to take my meals in the way he chooses to cook them and at the hours he suggests, to let him arrange my things as he thinks fit, in a word, humbly to let him trample on me as I deserve.

O’Rahilly notes that Fr Doyle took these steps as part of his Ignation spirit of taking the offensive against his faults, precisely because he was naturally inclined to want his own way with things. This was part of Fr Doyle’s dominant defect, and we see here his strategic and practical struggle to overcome it. Fr Doyle did not make a truce with his faults, but struggled right to the end to overcome them.

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October 13, 2026

1 Comment

on 13 October 1916: Fr Willie’s struggle against his dominant defect.
  1. Sister M. Michele S.C.M.C.
    -

    No doubt Father Doyle knew well the virtue of humility and sought to grow in this virtue with great prayer and work.
    No one can be a saint unless one is humble, and since Father Willie made it his life goal to use the grace of God and become a saint, he started with that one essential first step-humility.
    Father Doyle, intercede for us that we grow in humility and a daily desire for sanctity.

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