To some families it’s a holy sacrament, to others it’s an excuse for a party, and to many it’s an exercise in hypocrisy and mass delusion. So why is First Holy Communion a tradition we can’t let go of?

SO YOU THOUGHT the meringue dresses, stretch limos and cash-stuffed envelopes were the worst of it? Think about the people behind the scenes. This weekend, the Catholic priests of Ireland will don their festive vestments, set their jaws to smile mode and pray they get through the season without having to arm-wrestle someone in the aisle.

First Communions can be trying affairs.

All the priests who speak to The Irish Times for this article mention the noise. That would be the loud conversations, the party atmosphere and the buzz throughout the ceremony. And that’s just the adults, the camera-toting wannabe Spielbergs, sussing out the best angles, strutting ignorantly around a church they use only for family rituals.

That’s not to mention the dilemma around the horse-drawn carriages. One parish worker wryly recalls being accused of discrimination against horses when she asked for them to be moved off the public footpath.

So do you ban them? Can you do that? With the moral authority of the Catholic Church eviscerated by scandal, is it wise for a priest to get uppity about people’s behaviour in what is clearly alien territory?

“We’ve had some really tough ceremonies. I remember concelebrating a First Communion a few years ago and coming in thinking I’d rather do 15 rounds with Mike Tyson,” says Msgr John Byrne, the well-liked parish priest of Portlaoise. “You’re up there on your feet thinking, What do I do? Throw a tantrum ? Say ‘Shhh’, which I hate? You don’t know whether to get mad, encourage them to be quiet or ignore it.”

Most parishes now have to police these occasions, says Fr Paddy Byrne, the 38-year-old curate in the vibrant Co Carlow parish of Bagenalstown.

How bad can it get? A priest based in a city admits to one incident involving “some, um, jostling around the altar”. This constituted giving a “small push” to a dad who was conducting loud exchanges while doing tracking shots up the aisle and who refused to sit down.

“Several nights afterwards, I woke up in a sweat, worried I’d be starring on Liveline,” the priest says with a wry smile.

Ann Buggie, principal of the 408-pupil Scoil Mhuire in Portlaoise town, attributes the increased noise and random movement partly to multicultural factors but also to a general social shift towards inappropriate behaviour. “It’s a reflection of what’s happening in the home,” she says.

“It’s to do with the number of people in the church who are not familiar with those surroundings any more and who are determined not to be respectful in those surroundings,” says Msgr Byrne. “I think there is a need in them to display their dissatisfaction with the church by not respecting the building.”

So why are they there? “They’re there for the child, and they’re not really interested. But it’s just not a lack of interest in the ceremony. They’re very uncomfortable at being there.”

“I think it’s a tradition that is followed – and the sense that, well, it’s not going to do them any harm,” says Des Sutton, principal of St Paul’s, the local 420-pupil boys’ school.

“I think there’s a touch of nostalgia to it, of ritual. I think it evokes memory,” says Fr Byrne, recalling his own big day in 1982, when he and his twin brother tore the knees out of their matching brown suits while pushing the car. It was a day ultimately distinguished by his first blissful memory of having chicken and chips at the Lord Bagenal.

THEY SAY NOTHINGof religion. That’s because, to many, this month’s First Communion ceremonies will represent an exercise in mass delusion and hypocrisy. Only a minority will follow basic Catholic practice.

The priests soothe their own nerves by focusing on the positive, on the family-centred nature of the celebrations, or on the belief that some adults’ faith is rekindled by their involvement.

“It would be very simple for me to come out and give you the line that First Communion is about children growing up in the faith, that it’s about the fulfilment of the baptism promise the parents made eight years previously, and how rearing them in the faith and bringing them to receive Communion marks a very significant step on their faith journey”, says Msgr Byrne. “But does that bear truth when you examine it against the reality of what’s happened since the baptism and what’s happening around First Communion? Is that just a load of pious poppycock?

“Around 98 per cent will have come for the child’s baptism. In doing that, they’ve bought into a contract that we’re part of this worshipping community. Yet the vast, vast majority of adults have made the choice not to bring that child to church on Sunday,” says Fr Byrne.

“More than 300 children will receive their First Communion in our parish this year,” says Msgr Byrne. “What always worries me is, when will they receive their second?”

Fr Paddy Byrne quotes a survey a colleague of his conducted on 84 Confirmation candidates; of the 84, just four had attended Mass the previous Sunday.

In Portlaoise, the town that showed the most explosive growth in the country during the property bubble, 247 young people were confirmed this year. “I wouldn’t wonder how many have been with us since,” says Msgr Byrne. “I’d be thinking not even 50 per cent. These are children who went through a preparation programme and a ceremony that said they are now full members of the church. So you have to cope with the question yourself [as a priest]: how much are you co-operating with hypocrisy and a lack of authenticity, or a lack of integrity? And are you exacerbating the problem by co-operating with that?”

All this is said entirely without rancour. In a recent column for the Carlow Nationalist, suggesting it was “time to get real” in how young people were prepared for the sacraments, Fr Byrne wondered whether it might be better “for many families to have a baby party, a second-class party and a pre-teen, rite-of-passage party packed with bouncy castles, music and dance and simply forget the Church altogether.”

He admits he was being “a bit provocative”, but few would disagree with the premise.

Msgr Byrne says they are caught with the current system. “So much of it is outside our control . . . Maybe First Communion and Confirmation would benefit from being pushed on by five years. I do feel it needs to be universally accepted that these are not school events and that it’s not automatic that you make your First Communion just because you’re in second class.”

ANYONE TUNED INTOthe public reaction around clerical child sex abuse might assume that parents would be withdrawing their children from such church rituals in huge numbers. Yet the oddest aspect of all this is that it is the parents who are fighting hardest to maintain it. Of the six Carlow schools in Fr Paddy Byrne’s purview, there hasn’t been a single opt-out.

So why do they do it? A city-based teacher whispers that the supplementary welfare allowance for First Communion (a discretionary payment that has been reduced) might have had a hand in it. One family managed to get a First Communion allowance for the same child in two parishes before being rumbled.

But the most common view is that opting out is unfair to the child. Anne Buggie, the principal of Scoil Mhuire in Portlaoise, believes it is more complex than that. “Grown women with several master’s degrees, who haven’t set foot in a church for decades, still insist on getting married in a white dress in a church – and then we’re asking parents who mightn’t even have finished secondary school to make that huge social leap and decide their children should opt out of their Communion day? Human beings are social animals. People need to belong, and only a very small percentage are going to behave completely differently to their socioeconomic grouping,” she says.

Yet, for those who rail against the church and all its pomp, the fact is that in many areas it was never easier to opt out.

Two years ago, Donal, an architect living in Dublin, and his wife decided that their daughter, who was attending a Catholic school, would not make her Communion along with most of her classmates. “She was in a class of about 26. Five of them, all Irish children, opted out.”

Though raised as Catholics, he and his wife had left all that behind long before. They discussed it with their daughter, a bright child, who understood they were not practising Catholics and accepted it easily, as some of her friends were in the same situation.

“There were no negative social consequences, within the family or among friends, or for our daughter at school,” he says. The single annoying downside was that there was no alternative curriculum for the opt-out children, who were sent off to do some colouring in the considerable time given to Communion preparation. “From an education point of view, it was a waste of time.”

Ideally, says Donal, their daughter would be in a school where every faith is treated equally, but there was a long waiting list for the local Educate Together school. “So, short of setting up our own school, we had no choice.”

Priests readily acknowledge the problems inherent in tying Communion preparations to the school rather than to the parish. Portlaoise parish has employed Margaret Dooley, a primary-school teacher and catechist on a five-year secondment, to devise a First Communion programme, among other things. They unhitched the event from the school, placing the preparations – religious, ceremonial and decorative – firmly back with the parish and the family. It is made clear to parents that the responsibility for preparing their children, including regular Mass attendance, lies with them, not with the school.

Children are invited to five hour-long, after-school, pre-Christmas Time Out sessions in the parish centre on Fridays. These include gentle tutorials on how to bless themselves and how to behave in the church. They are encouraged to get involved in the Sunday-morning child-friendly Masses by bringing along tokens such as a small stone to represent the stepping stones of Lent. Only after these sessions are parents invited to enrol for the sacraments and to choose a date from six parish ceremonies.

Although Mass attendance is not policed, some parents suspect that the tokens are a way of registering the attendance. They can hardly complain.

This system contrasts with the Do This in Memory programme conducted elsewhere in the country, whereby parents must sign up to attend Mass on specific Sundays with their children. “The problem is that this is now interpreted as meaning you have to go [only a few] times,” says Msgr Byrne.

On one occasion, Fr Paddy Byrne had to cancel a special Sunday Mass but forgot to inform one of the schools. Afterwards, three mothers, who felt they had been duped into attending what turned out to a regular Mass, came to him complaining bitterly that they “had to sit through this”.

Although Portlaoise seems to be getting it right, not everyone is enamoured of its methods. Because the parish has reclaimed the preparations, teachers, for example, have been deprived of their leading role in what is traditionally a big show day for the school.

The elaborate, competitive, precision-engineered pageantry of music, movement and reading often associated with the day has also been abandoned by Portlaoise, on the basis that this is a sacred ritual.

Des Sutton, the principal of St Paul’s and choirmaster for three of the six parish First Communion ceremonies, agrees with this approach. “The pageantry is grand, but you have each parent nearly waiting for their own child to perform. At the end of the day, you have to question what it’s all about.”

He also sees the value of the preparations taking place outside school hours and the religious instruction being contained within regular class programming. His gut feeling, though, is that parents would prefer the old way. “They go and see the lovely productions in the Dublin diocese and ours is ordinary by comparison. But, in their hearts, they know why they’re doing it this way.”

Isabelle Byrne has been saying her prayers devoutly since first class and took her First Penance very seriously this year, choosing her best dress for the occasion. Her mother, Sarah, is slightly bemused.

“I hadn’t been a regular Massgoer apart from family occasions. I made my own First Communion here but grew up in Dubai, so we were not in or around churches. Then my niece made her First Communion last year in Naas, and it was beautiful. I was there with tears in my eyes feeling, Oh yes, we have to get involved.”

While Isabelle and her brother race around the yard of Scoil Mhuire in Portlaoise, Sarah looks back on the year and her early reservations about the inconvenient Time Out children’s sessions after school on Fridays and the required Mass attendance.

“I definitely wouldn’t be wanting to go every Sunday. We got married in February, and trying to fit all that in would have been very hard.”

But in hindsight she wouldn’t change a thing. “Parents have to decide if it’s worth doing and, if it is, to put in the work, even if they have to rearrange things.”

Isabelle took the Mass requirement so seriously that when she was hospitalised, and couldn’t attend, she became very anxious that she might be excluded from the First Communion ceremony.

The parish has been in constant touch by text. To the amusement of Sarah and her husband, one text discouraged extravagant displays such as horse-drawn carriages or stretch limos. It was sent after another parent had asked whether such carriages were allowed.

Meanwhile, the satin dress has been acquired from TK Maxx, complete with beads, diamante and all the accoutrements. There will be a bouncy castle, supplied by Sarah’s grandfather, and about 38 guests for a party at home.

Sarah’s mind moves on to the aftermath. “We haven’t heard anyone talk about a follow-up. Will this all just stop then?”

It’s a thought echoed by another mother, Marie Cushen from Stradbally, Co Laois, whose daughter Jill made her First Communion last year. It was “a great family occasion, and it’s a milestone at that age”.

In Stradbally, the parents took the lead in the preparations, creating new friendships and closer community links. “It was a wonderful day and a time Jill will remember, but when you look for a follow-up, where do you go with it? I think it’s really all about family and what we did in childhood.”

“Emma is very excited about the day, but she knows that it’s not about the dress or the celebrations or the money: it’s about what you believe in,” says Tracey O’Sullivan. She has experienced tragedy recently and finds huge comfort in going to Mass and dropping in to light a candle during the week. “You feel different coming out.”

Marian Naughton is also a woman for whom Sunday “doesn’t feel like Sunday to me if we haven’t been to Mass”. There will be a bouncy castle for her little boy, Peter, who has never had one because his birthday is in October. His cash will probably go on a set of Lego for himself and his brother, and there will also be money for a child the family sponsors in Ethiopia, his mother says with quiet pride.

A mother on opting out of Communion ‘Emma was the only one who didn’t have any religion’

My daughter Emma, who is now 15, went to Scoil Bhríde, a Catholic primary school in Kill, Co Kildare. Though my partner and I were both reared as Catholics and I went to a convent secondary school, I had gradually turned away from religion. We didn’t marry, and Emma wasn’t christened.



I investigated sending her to a multidenominational school, but we live a stone’s throw from Scoil Bhríde, so I went to talk to the principal. From the outset I wanted to be very clear that there wouldn’t be any issue with Emma not taking religion classes. His only concern was that my daughter would feel left out, but he was understanding and said she could go home during religion class or could do other work instead.



We discussed religion with her as she was growing up. I explained to her that she hadn’t been baptised and that she wouldn’t have Holy Communion. I did encourage her to read about religion, but nothing seems to have appealed to her any more than it did to me.



When it came to Communion age, there were one or two children in her class who didn’t make it as they may have been of other denominations, but I think Emma was the only one who didn’t have any religion.



We did make a bit of an effort to make her feel comfortable. Because of the dresses and all the fuss that was being made of the other children, we opted to go on holiday at that time. The school agreed this was wise.



I was very glad I sent her to the local primary school.



Emma is now in a Catholic secondary school where, again, we explained our position in advance to various teachers, and there has been no issue about it at all.



Veronica Bennett



in conversation with Conor Goodman

What Communion means to families ‘Parents have to decide if it’s worth doing and, if it is, to put in the work’

Isabelle Byrne has been saying her prayers devoutly since first class and took her First Penance very seriously this

year, choosing her best dress for the occasion. Her mother, Sarah, is slightly bemused. “I hadn’t been a regular Massgoer apart from family occasions. I made my own First Communion here but grew up in Dubai, so we were not in or around churches. Then my niece made her First Communion last year in Naas, and it was beautiful. I was there with tears in my eyes feeling, Oh yes, we have to get involved.”



While Isabelle and her brother race around the yard of Scoil Mhuire in Portlaoise, Sarah looks back on the year and her early reservations about the inconvenient Time Out children’s sessions after school on Fridays and the required Mass attendance.



“I definitely wouldn’t be wanting to go every Sunday. We got married in February, and trying to fit all that in would have been very hard.”



But in hindsight she wouldn’t change a thing. “Parents have to decide if it’s worth doing and, if it is, to put in the work, even if they have to rearrange things.”



Isabelle took the Mass requirement so seriously that when she was hospitalised, and couldn’t attend, she became very anxious that she might be excluded from the First Communion ceremony. The parish has been in constant touch by text.



To the amusement of Sarah and her husband, one text discouraged extravagant displays such as horse-drawn carriages or stretch limos. It was sent after another parent had asked whether such carriages were allowed.



Meanwhile, the satin dress has been acquired from TK Maxx, complete with beads, diamante and all the accoutrements. There will be a bouncy castle, supplied by Sarah’s grandfather, and about 38 guests for a party at home.



Sarah’s mind moves on to the aftermath. “We haven’t heard anyone talk about a follow-up. Will this all just stop then?”



It’s a thought echoed by another mother, Marie Cushen from Stradbally, Co Laois, whose daughter Jill made her First Communion last year. It was “a great family occasion, and it’s a milestone at that age”. In Stradbally, the parents took the lead in the preparations, creating new friendships and closer community links. “It was a wonderful day and a time Jill will remember, but when you look for a follow-up, where do you go with it? I think it’s really all about family and what we did in childhood.”



“Emma is very excited about the day, but she knows that it’s not about the dress or the celebrations or the money: it’s about what you believe in,” says Tracey O’Sullivan. She has experienced tragedy recently and finds huge comfort in going to Mass and dropping in to light a candle during the week. “You feel different coming out.”



Marian Naughton is also a woman for whom Sunday “doesn’t feel like Sunday to me if we haven’t been to Mass”. There will be a bouncy castle for her little boy, Peter, who has never had one because his birthday is in October. His cash will probably go on a set of Lego for himself and his brother, and there will also be money for a child the family sponsors in Ethiopia, his mother says with quiet pride.