Viral Homily from Irish Priest Ignites Debate on the Meaning of the Mass

A viral homily from Ireland reignites a dangerous confusion about worship, the Eucharist, and the Mass itself

Worship, like Catholicism, just took the back seat in Ireland. A little liturgical firestorm broke out on X today after a 43-second clip from a homily went viral. What made it go viral? See below.

The priest is Fr. Pat Fitzgerald, C.P.—a Passionist serving at St. Paul of the Cross Parish in Dublin.

In the video, Fr. Fitzgerald says something outrageous:

“We don’t come to Mass to worship God, that’s not what it’s about. It’s about sharing a meal. There’s plenty of times for worshiping Him & so on, that’s for some other occasions.”

Some…other…occasions? What occasions would those be? During a walk on the beach? Praying privately at home? Well then why should I go to mass?

“ [Mass] is a time for sharing a meal, taking up those words he used at the Last Supper. ‘Take this all of you and eat it…’”

He tries to anchor it in “Take this, all of you, and eat it,” as if the word eat turns the altar into the dining room table. A classic case of facts telling lies or mistruths, while looking like the real Truth.

But here’s where his logic is so flawed, and his catechesis is so lacking: the reason we share a “meal” at all is because it completes the sacrifice (the Worship act). In Exodus—which prefigures both the sacrifice of the Cross and the Eucharist—the lamb wasn’t just slain; it had to be eaten. God was explicit about that:

“They shall eat the flesh that night… you shall let none of it remain until the morning” (Exodus 12:8, 10).

The eating wasn’t an afterthought. It was part of the sacrificial worship itself. That’s the pattern Christ fulfills. Calvary is the sacrifice. The Eucharist makes that one sacrifice sacramentally present—and Holy Communion is how we participate in it.

So this “meal” we gather for presupposes an act of worship—Christ offering Himself to the Father in His once-for-all sacrifice, made sacramentally present on the altar. You don’t get Communion without sacrifice.. The banquet flows from the sacrifice, not the other way around.

“We’re not here for Worship”?! Then we don’t have to be here for the meal either.

See ya’!

This is plain ol’ bad catechesis. But more than that, it’s dangerous—and frankly foolish—to tell Catholics at Mass that they’re there for a “meal” and not for Worship.

And it’s a calamity to elevate a meal—something rooted in the temporal order—above the very meaning of the Mass: the worship of the living God. The altar is ordered toward eternity. That’s where our sights belong.

Fr. Fitzgerald does get one thing right—communion. I mean communion in the sense of togetherness and real unity, not Holy Communion. But that’s a story for another time.

I’ll have a lot more to say about this clip (and “communion”) in the next episode of Fire Branded, including Communion in the hand vs. ‘being fed like animals’ “ - Streamed Live to X , YouTube, and here at The Forge.
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-TJ

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