Bishop Denis Nulty Bishop Denis Nulty of Kildare and Leighlin invited all parishes in the diocese to use the month of September for reflection on how the parish can be more welcoming to those who are slower to return to regular worship.
Bishop Nulty made the invitation while speaking at Mass in Saint Conleth’s Parish in Newbridge on Sunday 22 August.
“I, like others, am somewhat concerned that there are people who haven’t returned to Sunday worship not really because of a fear around the pandemic but because Mass has simply slipped off their radar,” Bishop Nulty said during his homily.
“When a prudent decision was made at the beginning of this pandemic to remove the Sunday obligation, it gave permission in some ways for these people to stop attending and other attractions such as hill walking, golf, cycling, or simply staying in bed longer, has become the order of their Sunday morning. There is no anger there, no walking away, just slipping out of the habit and when we do, it’s hard to reintroduce a practice, simply put it’s hard to start going again.”
The bishop said that in his opinion, reintroducing the Sunday obligation is not the solution, saying that it would be a “missed opportunity”.
“We must teach people why Sunday is so special that they will want to go to Mass rather than feel compelled to attend Mass. People need to be reminded that a Sunday without giving God time is a Sunday less well spent. However it is up to our parish councils, liturgy teams, our priests and faithfilled parishioners who have returned to reflect on how we might reintroduce Mass gently into the lives of these good people – our brothers, our sisters, our sons, our daughters, our grandchildren, our friends.”
Mass on Sunday is a “way of affirming that life has meaning,” Dr Nulty said, continuing “and no matter what we’re struggling through, we have value before God.
“During the depths of the pandemic when we had no public worship, there was much talk about Eucharistic starvation, as if the Eucharist was a prize to be possessed rather than a missionary mandate to go out from Mass and heal the sick, bandgage the wounded, welcome the stranger.”
Bishop Nulty said that the diocese of Kildare and Leighlin has a long tradition of “reaching out”, and in keeping with that, invited the Faithful of the diocese to write to him directly with their thoughts and ideas.