Many parishes which had two Masses each Sunday will now have one. Archbishop Brady said that wherever feasible, there would be a gap of at least ninety minutes between Masses on Sunday. The archbishop said the decision was taken in light of the fact that there were now more Masses, but fewer priests, than 30 years ago. He said that the decline in the numbers of ordinations and candidates for the priesthood was extremely worrisome.
Ireland has faced a catastrophic drop in vocations over the past few years. This year, for the first time ever, the diocesan seminary in Dublin -- which attracts candidates from among half of Ireland's Catholics -- did not receive a single priestly vocation. One of Archbishop Brady's predecessors, Cardinal Tomas O'Fiaich, forecast a decade ago that the Irish Church, which had sent missionaries all over the world, would soon have to rely on priests from the growing Catholic populations of Africa and South America.