On any normal Sunday about 20% of the Catholic population of the
Archdiocese of Dublin is present at Mass - a significantly lower number
than in any other diocese in Ireland.
This is according to Most Rev. Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin,
who was speaking at the Dublin Diocesan Liturgical Resource Centre
Spring Seminar this weekend at Holy Cross College, Clonliffe.
He added that in more than one parish, the Sunday practice rate is
about 3%.
This very low level of practice is not in depopulated inner
city parishes but the poorer ones on the outskirts of the city.
Attendance is highest in middle class parishes.
“These statistics are, to say the least, a cause of great concern,”
he said.
“Even more alarming is the fact that these statistics take no
account of the age profile of those who attend Mass regularly. The
presence of young people is clearly much lower, despite the fact that
family Masses account for a not insignificant proportion of Mass
attendance in some parishes.”
He said that for many Catholics going to Mass is not very high on
their agenda.
The phrase “go to Mass” gives some hint of the issues.
Also there is the issue of the obligation to attend Mass on Sundays and
Feast Days.
The Archbishop explained that the Eucharist is
“irreplaceable nourishment given to us to accompany us on our life’s
journey. Every Christian needs that nourishment.”
So we do not simply “go to Mass” nor is the liturgy a “performance”
but an action in which God’s people actively participate.
The liturgy
is in the first place the action of God, according to the Archbishop who
warned against the "disneyisation" with banal interventions by the
priest or of a musical group or even of guest speakers.
“Our society today has its many hungers. Eucharist is nourishment on
the path of our journey that helps us to encounter something that
cannot be encountered in any other way. It is in the Eucharist that we
encounter Jesus Christ, who reveals to us who God is. In the Eucharist,
we encounter Jesus who paradoxically in becoming one of us revealed the
total otherness of God from us.”
“Our encounter in the liturgy with transcendence, with that total
otherness of God, radically transforms our hungers and our sense of
community,” he said.
He also explained that the Eucharist is the sacrament of unity where
we encounter Jesus in the Eucharist always together with others.
“There is no communion with the Lord which does not involve communion
with others. The communion, which is generated through the Eucharist,
is not a sociological phenomenon. It is in sharing the one body we
becoming one body. Eucharistic community fosters and shapes a totally
new life-style of communion, which we then take with us back into our
everyday life, in family, in community, at work and in society.”
He concluded be hoping that seminars like the one he was speaking at
will help form a true Eucharistic culture that would stress the
significance of participation and a renewed Eucharistic devotion, and
make Eucharistic celebrations “a space where people will be elevated
prayerfully and mystically and where they will we receive that new life
which only comes when we lose our lives for Jesus sake.”