A County Donegal based parish priest has strongly criticised those who put Sunday shopping ahead of Sunday worship.
Speaking at the 50th anniversary celebrations of his own church, namely Saint Peter's in Milford in County Donegal, Fr Martin Collum claimed that more and more people now prefer to spend their Sundays buying clothes and material things than going to Sunday mass.
In a poignant message to his parishioners he said, “What does the future hold? What will we pass on to our tortured youth-that which our ancestors passed onto us?”
He added, “The modern day church for many is the shopping malls, the cathedrals of consumerism with Gucci, Channel, Calvin Klein, Boss or whatever their God is at that moment of time. There is a danger that the church will be out on the fringes or on the margins and not at the centre of our lives in the future.”
Fr Collum was also critical of those who only use the church for special occasions such as communions , marriages and funerals and those who claim that while they don't go to mass that they practice their faith at home.
He said, “Churches are not places that could simply be wrapped up and rolled out for special occasions like weddings and funerals and then left as an empty building until the next big occasion.”
He pointed out that “This is a self-service religion where we can pick and choose” and it doesn’t exist.
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