Notes in haste – January 2025
We have a new school principal in our Catholic school, which rejoices in having our bishop as its patron. The chair of the board of management almost crowed at the Catholic attributes of the new principal; he would be a squeaky-clean leader of our school, in addition to already being a resident of our parish and having a daughter in First Communion class.
I wonder how his Catholic credentials were explored by the board of management? What kinds of questions can an interview board ask to establish the faith qualities of an applicant for such a position? I have never chaired a Board of Management, which means I have never sat on such an interview board. (I did have a brief period as a patron’s representative on a board, but this did not exactly whet my appetite for chairing the board, what will all the considerations of plumbing issues and electrics, and with ethos or faith-related issues never on the agenda.)
I only ask about the mechanics for determining the faith-stance of an aspiring principal because a flaw emerged a little while later. The afore-mentioned child had indeed been enrolled for First Communion in the school to which her parent had just been appointed, and was looking forward with her class to receiving the sacraments. The only problem was: she hadn’t been baptised. A discreet phone call from the slightly embarrassed principal revealed this troubling bit of information.
I know that our school principal is not unique in finding himself in this situation. Each year seems to bring forward at least one or two unbaptised children seeking sacraments, and I expect we will see more of them as the COVID children come of age. But this causes a little problem in small rural parishes without an RCIA group in place to process applicants for the ‘Rite of Christian Initiation for Children of Catechetical Age’, as the rite is laboriously titled. Some of us are inclined to baptise discreetly and hope the religious education programme in the school will take the place of the catechetical element of the rite. But when we are allowing these children to be taught in ‘Catholic schools’ where the principal has himself neglected to have his child baptised, what hope of Christian formation is there?
I would like to thank The Irish Catholic for allowing priests to write anonymously on this page, thus giving us a voice. This allows us to be honest in a way we rarely get to be. I just hope lay people will not be over-scandalised at our forthright honesty. So often pages in The Irish Catholic are full of nice and worthy thoughts, with the result that what priests really feel may go unreported. Our honest feelings may not be as well varnished as is read on other pages – readers, tolerate this please!
There was a time when the First Friday was a special day in Catholic parishes. Not only was it the day when Communion was brought by the priest to the housebound, it was also a day on which many people tried to attend Mass (and Confession too, many many more years ago), as part of the ‘Nine First Fridays’ devotion, now largely disappeared.
In a more recent development, the First Friday seems to be becoming the day on which marriages are held in the church. Certainly that was the case in December, and I hear of it happening in the months of spring too. Friday of course facilitates those who travel to attend and who hope to enjoy the three-day event marriages have now become.
But marriages on the First Friday mean that the traditional faith observances fall apart. Communion cannot be brought to the sick because the marriage held at 12 or 1pm disrupts the monthly schedule of calls (and what priest wants to be greeted with “You’re late” when he calls with Communion!). The first Friday Mass is disrupted too, as flower-masters need the church to themselves on the wedding day morning, to transform the church into a flower-filled paradise, which the regular weekday mass would surely interrupt.
In December I attended one marriage in a ‘flower-potting’ capacity, looking beautiful while merely observing — and I got to actually “do” one marriage too. Actually presiding is a more fulfilling experience, an opportunity to evangelise a group and an age of people rarely seen in church. It works when one is in good form. The priest not in good form will surely get into an argument with someone — photographer, videographer, over-zealous amateur photographer, unable-to-read Reader etc. May God send the grace to approach every wedding in a state of calm and grace — and may God thus prevent a marriage at which I preside from being remembered for all the wrong reasons!
January is one of those months with a holy day of obligation in it, one of those few which occurs when the school is open. Only the Immaculate Conception shares this fate. (The Assumption always falls during holiday time and All Saints often falls during midterm.)
Holydays that fall in school time give the school children the opportunity to attend the Mass, something that probably would not happen if the children were not in school. The unfortunate corollary of this is that if the holy day Mass is celebrated during school time, none of the parents can attend, in these days of full employment. Only the retired and the unemployed can fill the church, along with the children, which is hardly completely desirable either. And no sane pastor will have two Masses on a holy day now, since the one Mass is so poorly attended.
Of course, things were even less simple on January 6 past. The weather intervened and snow-ice warnings dotted the country, many lasting till noon or after. The question was asked whether the Mass times should be changed to account for the fact that many children would not be arriving in school till noon because of the warnings, and if the Mass time were changed, how would the word be got out to the rest of the parish?
The pity is that schools open at all on church holydays. Holy days are part of what makes our Catholic faith distinctive; opening schools on holy days implies that holy days aren’t that special really. Whoever agreed to this in some far-distant bishops-and-Department-of-Education negotiation dropped the ball.
There is one further aspect of holy days that seems to have slipped from our memory. At some stage in the past, there was a suggestion that holy days occurring on Saturdays or Mondays might not continue to have the obligation to attend Mass attached to them. I don’t know what happened to that most commendable idea; it was never implemented in Ireland, even though it seems permissible in other parts. Priests who spend a week preparing their Sunday homily, only to have another homily expected of them the following day, with no time to prepare for it, would surely shout “Hurrah” if those holy days were dropped. (The more radical among us would probably prefer to reduce holy days to public holidays; I am sure we would get along quite well if holy days were reduced to St Patrick’s Day and Christmas.)