Public worship should be restored as soon as the current Level 5 restrictions begin to be eased, according to the Catholic Bishops of Ireland. Currently, public worship will not be restored until Level 2, which could be months away. In the EU, only Slovenia, Slovakia and Ireland have a total ban on public worship at present.
On February 19th four of the bishops met with An Taoiseach Micheál Martin, but in a statement released yesterday, they said that none of their concerns have been addressed.
Being deprived of public liturgies during Holy Week and Easter, for the second year running, is particularly painful they said.
They added that the current 10 person limit for attending Funerals is a severe restriction that is causing untold grief to families and that limit should be increased with immediate effect.
Meanwhile, Fr Chris Hayden, the former editor of Intercom, a magazine of the Bishops’ Conference, has asked why restrictions can begin to be eased on April 5th, Easter Monday, and not the day before, on Easter Sunday.
Writing in the Irish Times on the same day the Bishops’ statement was released, he said: “What is it about the day after Easter? Is there some symbolic significance to beginning a partial reopening on a bank holiday, a day on which, incidentally, people tend to get together?
“And what is it about the first four days of April – Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday? Why could it not be regarded as fitting that on those solemn days, limited numbers of Christians should gather in their churches, subject to all the careful procedures and protocols put in place after the first lockdown?
“What is the epidemiological significance of those first days of April? How is it that we will all be so much safer for having continued to outlaw scrupulously controlled and sanitised public worship for those days?”
