The Bishop of Limerick, Dr Donal Murray, has said that in diocesan parishes there ought not to be several Masses a day where there are only small congregations in churches designed to hold many people.
"In such a situation, the sense of being a gathered community is lost," he said.
He has asked the faithful in his diocese to discuss the time and number of Masses in each parish, with decisions on the matter to be reached by the end of May.
He also advised that such discussions take place in cluster groups (of parishes) bearing in mind, except in certain circumstances, that a priest should celebrate Mass only once a day. Bishop Murray made his request in a Lenten pastoral, To Rekindle the Amazement - Lent 2004, which was published at a press conference in Limerick yesterday. It was attended by representatives from the 60 parishes in the diocese.
He asked that in arriving at decisions, parishioners should bear certain principles in mind.Each parish should arrange Masses so that it has some possibility of being able to offer help to a neighbouring parish where the priest may be on holidays, or ill, or absent for any reason.
It would mean, he said, that a parish with more than one priest should be able to meet its commitments when one of its priests was away. It also meant that no priest ought to be saying three Masses on a Sunday as his normal commitment; no priest ought to be saying two vigil Masses as his normal commitment; and no priest ought to be saying two weekday Masses as his normal commitment.
It further meant that every effort should be made to arrange Mass times to facilitate assistance from one parish to another within the cluster. In particular, vigil Mass times should be more widely spread.
The starting time of Sunday Masses in any parish should be at least one and a half hours apart and any exceptions must be agreed by cluster. "It is, after all, the cluster which will have to provide cover when a priest is away or ill," he said.
Bishop Murray continued that "some of the decisions we face are painful ones. In many cases, people have become attached to particular Masses at particular times and do not like the thought that things cannot continue as they were."