Lack of solemnity in church

Dear Editor, I share with Helena Swords the feeling of offense at seeing our Catholic churches being increasingly used as concert halls with tickets being bought and sold at the door (Letters 01/01/2015).

“My house will be called a house of prayer,” Jesus declared (Mt 21:13) and “Stop turning my Father’s house into a market,” he said to those who were using the holy Temple for commercial purposes (Jn2:16). Jesus’ anger was directed against the religious authorities for robbing the children of Israel of their birthright as children of God. That birthright for which the Temple was built was holiness – knowledge of God their Father.

We also in our churches today are increasingly behaving like children who have forgotten that it is their Father’s house. With the emphasis being increasingly placed on the community gathering rather than on the Eucharist as our point of communion. We are coming to think of the church as just simply our house, the community’s, in which we can behave as we please! (Texting, loud conversations, applause, secular music and readings, reading newspapers, not kneeling, not genuflecting, concerts etc.)

Religious authorities have become like many parents today, afraid to say no to their children.

Yours etc.,

Fr Freddy Warner SMA,

Portumna,  Co. Galway.