A suggestion that crucifixion scenes were "a turn-off to non-churchgoers" and should be removed as a way of increasing Sunday church attendance has been disputed by Father Pat O'Donoghue, director of liturgy and music for the Dublin archdiocese.
He also disagreed that gory images of the crucified Christ distressed children.
Father O'Donoghue was responding to advice from the Khameleon advertising agency in the UK that "traditional approaches such as showing Jesus on the cross and Bible quotations are a turn-off to non-churchgoers" and should be dropped if church attendance on Sundays was to be increased. The agency was commissioned by the UK evangelical magazine Christianity + Renewal to investigate how church attendance might be increased.
It proposed that, instead of "traditional images like Jesus on a cross", an image of "a lone goldfish in a bowl with the line 'when did you last really need someone to talk to'?" and a vicar with the words "when was the last time you saw some really good stand-up . . . for free?" be used.
Father O'Donoghue pointed to the huge popularity of the crucifixion scene, not least as illustrated in Dublin's Pro-Cathedral where the foot of a statue of the crucified Christ is worn shiny from being kissed so frequently "by people of all ages". He spoke of the rush to kiss the cross during the Good Friday liturgy every year and, in churches where crucifixes were used, how people "go for the feet".
And there were the dramatisations of the Passion of Jesus at noon on Good Friday which, in the Pro-Cathedral, were graphic with roars and screams and whips and hammerings etc. "People are genuinely moved by the experience, always," he said. This included children.
He did not accept children found images of the crucified Christ distressing, anymore than they were upset by what they saw in computer games.
"The visual moves people. Remember Live Aid," he said, referring to film of famine in Africa shown during that concert, which had a powerful effect worldwide.
Mr Paul Gilligan, a clinical psychologist and chief executive with the Irish Society for the Protection of Children, doubted that images of the crucified Christ would of themselves distress children.
"I don't know many who would be afraid (of such images), especially from a Roman Catholic background where it would be associated with happy events like Communion," he said.
It came down to how the image was presented to the child. If as a symbol of punishment then it might instill fear but presented as a symbol of a God who had suffered for the child then it would inspire positive feelings, he said.
People need and like the tangible, Father O'Donoghue suggested. Such was the determination of Mass-goers on Ash Wednesday to get ashes on their foreheads it often seemed the liturgy was being lost on them.
In 1999, trying to attract their interest in another way, he bought in a supply of small wooden discs with a cross on each for Ash Wednesday that year.
In 2000 he ordered 75,000, and 75,000 for 2001. All were gone in no time. The discs had turned up everywhere since, even in football gear, he said.
In the summer issue of Lumen , the Kerry diocesan magazine, the Bishop of Kerry, Dr Bill Murphy, said that "reference is often made disparagingly to the smells and bells of pre-Vatican liturgy. They engaged the senses and remember we are body as well as soul. Music, singing, colour, lights, movement, symbols and, yes, smells and bells have all a place in the liturgy."
