Want a Communion for your child? Then do it without a ‘bash’

‘IT’S okay to have a bash in the Merrion Hotel with 50 people present. But it’s not possible for parents to take their child in to receive the sacrament.’ If this was a comment by a caller to a radio programme, it might just about be understandable.

The speaker, you might think, is clearly a person who doesn’t see any great distinction between a ‘bash’ and a ‘sacrament’. You’d also be forgiven for thinking that the speaker was unaware that it is, indeed, possible for parents to take their children to receive the sacrament, so long as they’re happy to do so without a lavish knees-up having to be part of the deal. There’s nothing at all stopping parents contacting their local parish priest and arranging to present their child at the altar rails themselves – indeed, reports over the weekend suggest that many devout families have been doing so for some time.

So it is all the more surprising that the person who compared a Church sacrament to a ‘bash in the Merrion Hotel’ was the Archbishop of Dublin, Dermot Farrell.

The Government was, of course, an easy target for his populist outburst; it had just emerged that 50 of our most privileged and well-connected citizens had been wined and dined in the five-star venue by Katherine Zappone just before she had been due to take up her appointment as a UN envoy (a role she ultimately rejected). But where is the connection between a posh party for 50 and one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church? The others are Baptism, Confirmation, Matrimony, Holy Orders, Penance and Anointing Of The Dying. Hardly all ‘bashes’, really, so why single out First Communion for comparison with a hooley? Unless this is a tacit admission by the archbishop that, for a lot of families, that is all the Eucharist has become, and unless they get the party, they won’t take the sacrament.

Atmosphere

This pandering to the whims and fleeting engagement of the so-called Bouncy Castle Catholics – the ones for whom First Communion is simply an excuse for a party – has long troubled certain less elevated members of the Church. And now the Association of Catholic Priests, often at odds with the hierarchy in the past, has suggested a simple solution to the unseemly secularisation of the sacraments of First Communion and Confirmation: take the preparation out of schools, away from the classroom and the competitive atmosphere of children comparing clothes, parties, and financial benefits, and return it to the parish.

‘Children are presented for both sacraments even though many of them rarely, if ever, attend any celebrations of the Eucharist either before or after the big day,’ the ACP observed. In simple terms, that means neither these kids nor their parents ever go to Mass before the ‘bash’, and they have little intention of doing so afterwards, either.

But that’s arguably an inevitable consequence of making the preparation for the sacraments part of these children’s school experience, rather than leaving it up to their families and their parishes. In these circumstances, the First Communion becomes something akin to a school outing: everyone else is in, they’re all talking about what they’ll be wearing and what they’ll be spending, so why not you?

Never mind that you’ve never darkened the door of a chapel since your Baptism (which was probably quite a good party, too), who cares about that?

Well, the ACP, for a start, which resents the turning of these events into ‘bashes’. And so it advises ending the in-school preparations, and inviting parents who want these sacraments for their children to make contact with their parish so as to arrange the necessary preparation and fix a date.

Meaningful

Yesterday, one parent explained to a newspaper how he did so, saying: ‘I went to a local church, had a chat with a priest and said I was looking to get a Communion for my daughter, and he said, “No problem”… I believe a lot of parents and children have done it within the last four of five weeks in the same church.’

So the absence of a ‘bash’ didn’t stop these committed Catholic parents from getting the sacrament for their child and marking the day in a way that was almost certainly more meaningful than the Mardi Gras-type celebrations that would have accompanied it in normal times.

It is, for sure, hard on the children of these true believers that they didn’t get to celebrate an important rite of passage in the company of their friends. But in the end they prioritised the event, and its significance, over the party. So if you want your child to make their First Communion, contact your local priest. If you just want to give them a big day out, bring them to the zoo.