What is a Catholic Mass in Ireland like?

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Priscilla Duck

It depends on the particular church and the service you go to. In my area, mass in the Cathedral is a very 'High' affair - lots of operatic singing by the choir and a well-stocked altar of priests and servers. In the smaller church in the same town, it's very folksy and happy-clappy with a youth choir and guitars and lots of audience participation. In my village, it's a 25 minute max service with one priest and no choir (very popular among Sunday golfers). Special occasions more of an effort is made and a choir of dying cats is hastily assembled to make mass more festive. I find that singing by the congregation is quite rare in my part of the country, I can't vouch for anywhere else.

Latin mass is very rare now, and you might find a CD of Gregorian chant music played over the sound system before the service starts, but you really have to visit special places like the abbeys to find that sort of thing in real life.

Kris......

Sorry, never go, like a lot of the population.

deburca98

most of the time it sounds like being in a creche with all the screaming kids, what ever happened to bringing them outside.

Misty Blue

My local Catholic churches say mass in Irish Gaeilge.They have hymns mostly and only very occasionally do they have guitars.Latin masses are few and far between.

answer girl

Its neither Contemporary or traditional its more or less non existent, The only other language I have heard at mass is the our father in irish. Don't get too excited.

alan m

Same as any group of religious people sitting together asking for forgiveness for all their errors.

lil miss badass

BORING BORING and BORING

mountjulietgolf

I go to the Cathedral in Waterford on Saturday nights, every second Saturday the Cathedral Youth Choir are there, they have amazing harmonies, piano and guitar - very enjoyable. While on Sunday mornings in Waterford cathedral you have more traditional pipe-organ hymns. Not as melodic but if you have never been to an Irish mass then it is worth seeing both.

lncrcrn

not sure, if some one was to wake me up, im fairly sure i'd be able to tell ya

agooddub

In the cities during the week it's normally a rushed affair lasting about 20 minutes. On Sunday the children's mass at 10 am. can have some group singing but the other masses are rush , rush , in and out.
Rural masses on Sunday usually have some sort of sermon, maybe a hymn or two and out the door.
Haven't heard a Latin mass or the Gregorian chant in years, but maybe they can be found in Cathedrals like Armagh on special occasions.
The ideal of daily mass and communion in Ireland was lost in the last 25 years.

when the sun goes down

as anywhere else the catholic mass is BORING and and kind of a work out with the kneeling then standing then walking for communion.
and oh no they won't let guitars because that might make people feel happy.

Orla C

Like a Catholic Mass anywhere else. Very few Latin Masses, but if you go to a Gaeltacht, you can experience the Mass in Irish, with lovely Irish songs. I'm a Pagan, but I found the Irish hymns that celebrate the divine in the land and the sea to be very moving. They were all in the Irish language.

It really depends on the individual church and their attitude to a more 'modern' Mass.

raver82

I've never been up in the balcony during mass in our local church where the choir sing the usual hymns but you can hear an organ (you can see someone playing that during communion, while I'm coming down from the altar) and a guitar, and I see the postman after mass every sunday with a trumpet, so he must play that at some stage. our local priest doesn't use any latin that I know of during the service, our priest talks extremely fast (mass is only 10 minutes long) I don't think any thing he says is in latin. it's just fast English.

bluebell

We don't have a Latin Mass in our parish, but there s a private school fairly local, and it is said there. Ours is in English, and on certain occasions some of the prayers are in Irish, particularly the Our Father. We have two choirs, the everyday one, up in the balcony with the pipe organ, and a folk choir once a month who use guitars and sing more contemporary hymns. Now and then we have someone playing traditional instruments - violin, flute etc. I haven't heard Gregorian chant for many years, except on CD or the radio. On Procession Day (Corpus Christi) the Latin hymns for Benediction are sung - notably by the older generation. I think it is a pity that the children are not taught them. They will soon be gone altogether, and I think we will have lost something unique, part of our heritage we all grew up with, something that contributed to us being who we are.

finb

i have only ever went to mass in the one chapel not different ones but i have never seen any people playing guitars.

slipstreamer

Same as a Catholic mass anywhere. I have not heard a mass in Latin in Ireland - but I have elsewhere (San Francisco of all places) And it's the same rather dull stuff no matter what the area/language. I am a lapsed Catholic at best, so I am only roped into mass at the holidays or when there are Aunts about. It's only fun-ish at the holidays when the robe colours change. Have never heard Gregorian chants other than on recorded music

Due baby no.3 on the 4th of June

Boring and nonsensical!! Repetitive and full of fundamentalist hypocrites!!!

I was forced into Catholicism but abandoned it to live a moral life!!

dollymix (now geeky for a month)

It depends. Where I live, the Church choir sings with the organ on Sundays and on Saturday vigil it's the folk group with the guitars and them little bongos. There's a gaeltacht out near where I live, and on their Sunday masses they have the traditional Irish music playing. In another town near where I live I think they have a Latin mass once every month or couple of months.

Sarah

There are only two churches that I have been to regularly, both in County Donegal.

When I was a kid, I would go to the chapel in Dunlewey. It was a small church, and being in the Gaeltacht, masses were held in Irish.

Where I live now, in Carndonagh, Inishowen (not a Gaeltacht) the masses are pretty much the same as they were in Dunlewey, but in English, and being a larger town (still small by many standards) there is a much larger congregation.

I know it varies from place to place, but neither of the churches (other than a carol service), had hymn-singing. In Carn, they sometimes have a single person singing, sometimes with an instrument, and the singing seems to go from Irish to English to Latin.

In neither of these chapels have I known the wine to be given to the congregation, but in some other churches I've been to it has been. Likewise, in other churches, I've known the congregation to enjoy a good old sing-song.

Dunlewey and Carn are in different dioceses, Raphoe and Derry, so the no hymns-no wine thing doesn't seem to be diocese specific.

Johnnydairishfella

as a 2nd generation Trish citizen, i grew up in England, and as a catholic, i have realised that the Irish catholic church services are alot different to the British catholic services.
in Ireland, they are a little more radical, in a sence of, alot more religious.

the latin chants are popular though,
most church servies are said entirally in english, except with the excuse of the latin, but very rarely in irish Gaelic. but most people in ireland wouldn't understand much of it any way, some old people (my grandmother), practise mass in irish and latin with a few others.

in my local church in england, the italians that go there say prayers and a substantial amount of it in italian.

but the irish catholic church could be described as a internal break away catholic church, sometimes called the Celtic Catholic or Christian, Church; like the Greek Byzantine Catholics, ( a freind of mine is one of them)

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