Missionaries vow to call at Catholic homes in Downpatrick

7 September 2016

MISSIONARIES have pledged to visit each of Downpatrick’s 3,000 Catholic homes this month with the return of a traditional pastoral mission.

The ambitious challenge will be met by 19 volunteers from the Céilí Catholic Community as part of a major drive to refresh the town’s Catholic faith.

Parish Priest Fr John Murray says the town, which has just a 20 per cent regular attendance rate at mass, is “very much in need” of a mission dedicated to the renewal and encouragement of faith.

He said the three-week mission, which has been planned for over a year, will encourage a faith revival in the town with missionaries keen to issue personal invitations during their home visits to several events.

Such missions were delivered in the past, on an almost annual basis, by the Redemptorists and Passionist Orders but have become less common in recent years due to a downturn in vocations.

The September mission, which will begin on Monday, will be the first in the town for about 20 years and also the first delivered by volunteers from the Westmeath-based Céilí Catholic Community, which is made up of priests, religious sisters and lay people,.

Fr Murray said there were many reasons attendance at mass was low and said the aim of the mission was “to reach people and bring them back.”

He said the mission would seek to “renew” the faith of those in attendance, while “encouraging” others to come back to the community.

“Numbers at mass are not just down in Downpatrick, it is happening all over Ireland and in the western world and there are many reasons for that,” he said.

“The world we live in is a very secular world, which does not think of things in the way of faith.

“The parish needs it. When you start to take things for granted you become stale, we constantly need renewal and refreshment.

“We are reaching out to those who have a very superficial knowledge of the faith. Things become routine and you lose something of the cutting edge of what your faith is about.

“If there are 9,999 people who come to mass on a Sunday and there is one person who does not, the Lord calls us to go out for the single sheep who has wandered off.

“We want to bring everybody into the community of the baptised.

“People drift off for different reasons and certainly the clerical abuse had an impact but I think that is not the main issue nowadays. The main thing is modern life.

“Maybe they never really belonged. Very often kids come to first communion and you never see them again.

“We want to reach out and make sure people belong to the church where we feel they will be best served.”

By targeting the town’s six Catholic schools, Fr Murray said the missionaries were also hoping to reach parents through their children.

Because of the size of Downpatrick parish, he said two teams would engage pupils in assemblies and classes throughout the first week of the mission, while parents would also be invited to take part in various elements of the school visits.

“Because so many adults are not practising we are trying to reach them through the children,” he said.

The preached section of the mission will be held from September 24 and will include a number of talks within the context of a mass or service. Most events will be held at St Patrick’s Church.

Fr Murray said he was grateful to parishioners who had agreed to host the missionary team over the next three weeks.

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