Don’t ‘hide behind fear’ say motor Mass priest

A Kerry priest who is celebrating car park Masses for people struggling or unable to watch online Mass has said “we can’t let fear dominate us”.

Fr Kevin McNamara PP of Moyvane, who started celebrating outdoor Masses with his congregation, who stay in their cars throughout, said there has been a “great response”.

“They’re seeing their priest and I see them as well and even though we’re apart, at that time of Eucharist we’re together. We start at 7.15pm with the Rosary and then we go straight into Mass every evening,” he said.

“Rather than closed doors and places being sealed off, there is this little venture, and of course we have to be very realistic and very, very cautious.”

Some of his parishioners don’t have access to streamed Masses, so “they’re cut off”, Fr McNamara explained, “we’re giving people encouragement that we’re moving in the right direction, the country’s opening up a little bit, we have to walk before we can run in this situation so again the difficulty’s there”.

“Again I suppose, the one thing I would be saying is we can’t let fear dominate us either, we can’t go to a stage where we hide behind fear and deliver nothing, we have to strive to be faithful to what we’ve been called to do and that is to bring people together and bring Jesus to people.”

Communion

There have been up to 50 cars in the carpark of the Church of the Assumption for Sunday Mass, according to Fr McNamara. There is no distribution of the host, and similar to online Mass there is a spiritual communion.

“The big challenge that we’re going to have, whether it’s a month or two months or five months, is how to get people to receive Holy Communion because that’s the biggest heartache and pain, people can’t receive the bread of life and there is a real genuine spiritual hunger for that,” Fr McNamara said.

Previously the parish set up a ‘drive through’ Stations of the Cross on Good Friday in the carpark.