Colm Fitzpatrick
Colm Fitzpatrick examines if lay-led services are the future of Irish Catholicism
In light of a prominent politician taking the lead at a Saturday night Eucharistic service after the parish priest failed to show up to offer Mass, questions have been raised as to what parishioners should do in such situations, and how they can be prepared for them.
These questions arise following the debacle with Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Josepha Madigan who recently conducted an impromptu Eucharistic service with two other readers in St Thérèse’s Church in Dublin’s Mount Merrion.
The following day, speaking on RTÉ’s Today with Seán O’Rourke about what happened, she said: “I wouldn’t quite say ‘saying the Mass’, we obviously didn’t do any of the Sacrament of Transubstantiation or anything like that,” although it is important to note that many media outlets described her as having “said Mass”.
Such a blatant error points to a general failure in today’s Ireland to grasp what exactly Mass is, and invites the question as to whether it’s about time dioceses began training people to lead services when there is no priest available
Fallout
Fr Eamonn Fitzgibbon, director of the Institute of Pastoral Studies at Mary Immaculate College, is certainly in agreement with this idea, noting that he found the “fallout” of the Madigan incident “interesting”.
“It was maybe a bit hyped, but it’s interesting that if somebody takes the lead now in public prayer that that can be misinterpreted as the person saying the Mass. That reflects the fact that we’re so unused to and unaccustomed to lay people taking on a leadership role around prayer and liturgy whereas if that was more the norm that situation wouldn’t be there,” he told The Irish Catholic.
“Nobody would be going home thinking ‘Oh well, we had Mass this morning. It was led by a layperson’,” he added, noting this misunderstanding reflects the broader reality that the Irish Church haven’t enabled all the gifts of lay people to be brought forward and used.
One way these gifts are being realised in the diocese of Limerick is through lay-led liturgy services which take place, usually during the week, throughout the county in different parishes. Following a diocesan synod two years ago, there were strongly expressed wishes that the liturgy be connected and delivered by “ordinary folk”, especially given the declining number of clergy in Ireland which in time will inevitably necessitate lay people leading prayer and liturgy in their own parish communities.
These desires were translated into concrete practices, and just over a year ago lay people throughout the diocese began being trained in such things as the centrality of Sunday Mass and how to lead services during the week. A year on, the idea has taken hold and is used widely in the Limerick diocese.
“Different parishes have been using it at different times depending on if the priest is away – it’s really during the week I suppose and more so than the weekends they would be lay-led,” Fr Fitzgibbon said.
“Now we’re looking at developing and offering some training around funeral services and funeral liturgies in terms of prayers in the funeral home, prayers in the home of the deceased…” he continued, adding that he is hoping to develop training on leading public prayer in the context of funerals.
The training is particularly useful in parishes that are “fairly stretched” in terms of priest availability, he stressed, with lay people being “open” to learning about the important role they can play in Church life.
“People are very open, very receptive. I suppose realistically that’s the way we’re going in terms of the future. Were just going to have to have far more lay involvement in leadership and public prayer but I think people are open are to it, they can see the need and recognise the times are changing. The people themselves who were doing the training were very positive about it and they enjoyed it,” he said.
Indeed, a Church that is “far more lay-led” is going to be reflected in the future across the country, Fr Fitzgibbon said, adding that it would be a shame if parishioners didn’t know what to do when facing clerical absenteeism because they were being solely “priest dependent”.
He notes that if such an occasion arises, parishioners can still pray together and should gain the confidence to lead the prayer.
“Well okay, let’s pray the Rosary here together or let’s just take the readings and somebody will read them. It’s almost having the confidence to do that rather than, I think, not knowing what to do or not being able to do something. It’s really a kind of confidence thing I feel because in a situation like that if people are gathered on a Sunday morning and the priest is unavailable, to my mind it would be a shame if everybody thought there was nothing we can do together here, we’ll just go home,” he said.
Practices like these in the Church aren’t novelties. Lay-led liturgy services are commonplace throughout Europe and afar, where they are not met with such confusion and unsureness as they are here.
Of course, this is partly due to an Irish propensity to be over-reliant on priests, as Fr Fitzgibbon pointed out, which is why little training on these types of services have been carried out.
Such services may take the form of the Liturgy of the Hours. This has been considered the daily liturgy for Christian people and even predates the Mass as a daily liturgy. During the Middle Ages, clerics and religious were confined to using it but following the Vatican II reforms, the lay faithful were also encouraged to adopt it.
Likewise, the Liturgy of the Word, which takes place when Mass is not possible, celebrates the importance of the Scriptures and Christ’s message for the world. If prepared correctly, it is even possible to have a Communion service in which people receive the Eucharist which has already been consecrated and reserved in the tabernacle. This was very popular in the early Church where persecuted Christians couldn’t receive the Host because it wasn’t possible for Mass to be held.
Services like these certainly do take place in Ireland but need to become more well-known so that parishioners know exactly what to do in a situation where there is no priest.
In this way, we will have Faith communities that are more “confident” in leading a service, as Fr Fitzgibbon puts it, but lay people will also garner a greater understanding of the Mass.
“[We need to] provide the training and the support and I suppose also to work with people in parishes and communities so that they are accustomed to seeing this and recognising this…valid public prayer is something worthwhile and if we can’t have Mass on a weekday or whenever, we can still pray together as a community.”