The Archbishop of Cashel and Emly, the Most Rev Dermot Clifford, has appealed to sporting organisations not to "run games at Mass times on Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings. Priests frequently complain about this."
He continued that "perhaps agreements could be made at local level to prevent such clashes so as not to face young people with a very difficult choice." He thanked the Tipperary GAA County Board for postponing their county final yesterday to facilitate the reopening of Thurles's Cathedral of the Assumption.
Archbishop Clifford was speaking at the cathedral's reopening, which followed a year-long, €2 million restoration.
He said that "the road to Mass is 'the road less travelled' now. The weekly attendance figure has declined gradually from a high of 91 per cent in 1974 to 63 per cent in 2002. The reasons for this are many and complex. There is the secularisation of the Sunday. From a day of religious observance and relaxation it has become just another working and shopping day scarcely different from any other day of the week. The abuse scandals have been a factor in the decline but not as large as some claim."
In modern Ireland, where both husband and wife frequently work outside the home and many have to work on Sundays, there was a great pressure of time. "In my young days people under pressure of work would exclaim, 'I haven't time to bless myself'. Today, a growing number of people haven't time to go to church. Some young people are anxious to be free of parental pressure, and do not react kindly to the notion of obligation, which by the way, is still there in black and white in the Code of Canon Law," he said.
When one thought of the generations which went before, "of the heroic sacrifices they made in Penal times and the huge efforts they made to erect worthy buildings for worship, isn't it sad that a growing number of this generation can drift away from the Sunday Mass? They would do well to remember an ancient Irish caution: 'An t-Aifreann ná tugaigí aon phioc, níl ar bith sa saol níos fearr'. (Abandon not the Mass for anything; nothing in the world surpasses it)."
But, he continued, it was "noteworthy that, despite the decline in attendance, a very recent survey reported that 90 per cent of Catholics over 18 believe that Jesus is the son of God and that 75 per cent believe that the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Jesus Christ at the consecration."
It showed "that faith in the Real Presence is still embedded in the psyche of our people even among those who no longer come to Mass."