Chai Brady
Two more bishops have decided to join colleagues and forge ahead with First Holy Communion and Confirmation ceremonies this month as Ireland’s bishops remain sharply divided on the issue.
Bishop Donal McKeown of the Diocese of Derry and auxiliary Bishop Michael Router in Armagh archdiocese, which both straddle the border, confirmed to The Irish Catholic their dioceses will be allowing the sacraments to go ahead in parishes in the south despite it being contrary to Government guidelines. The ceremonies have been taking place north of the border without a reported incident for months.
Meanwhile, Dublin City University social scientist Prof. Eoin O’Malley has rejected a claim by Health Minister Stephen Donnelly that the Church is putting lives at risk.
“It really isn’t,” he said referring to the claim. “We really need to get a grip. There is no point in having great vaccination take-up rates if we can’t benefit from them by allowing people [to] get back to doing the things people want to do,” he said.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin also criticised the bishops for permitting the small socially-distanced ceremonies with up to 50 people despite the Government giving the green light for 40,000 people to attend the All-Ireland final in Croke Park.
Bishop McKeown has now informed his parishes in the south that they are entitled to begin with First Communion and Confirmation ceremonies from the middle of August onwards if they so choose.
“We’ve all tried to act responsibly and we were aware that the problem was never going to be what happened in churches, it was going to be the social events afterwards that we were concerned about,” Bishop McKeown said.
“But when the Government gave the go ahead for wedding receptions to have 100 people in an enclosed space, which can last three, four, five hours, that argument seems to collapse.
“It’s important that politicians retain the confidence of the electorate. If decisions are seen to be unreasonable then people will simply just choose to ignore. It is advice, it’s not a Government regulation,” he said.
For Bishop Router in Armagh, he said each parish south of the border have their own Covid-19 committee that do a risk assessment on each church to ensure regulations are kept.
“There was a bit of a push there at the beginning of July but we went along with the Government guidelines at the time. But I think once schools begin to open up again there will be a need to have First Communion and Confirmation ceremonies and at the moment our feeling is to allow that to happen as long as each parish makes their decision based on what they can organise and to ensure that the churches are safe,” he said.
The two bishops join Bishop Phonsie Cullinan of Waterford and Lismore, Bishop Kevin Doran of Elphin, Bishop Alan McGuckian SJ of Raphoe, Tom Deenihan of Meath and Larry Duffy of Clogher diocese in allowing the sacraments to take place this month.