Holy Days of Obligation in Ireland

Ireland keeps six holy days of obligation besides Sundays. Two others that are obligatory in the universal calendar, the Ascension and Corpus Christi, are transferred here to the nearest Sunday. That is why an Irish parish bulletin looks different from an English or American one in May and June.

The six days

Every Sunday of the year carries the obligation. These are the weekday feasts that carry it too, when they do not fall on a Sunday.

• Christmas Day, 25 December
• The Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God, 1 January
• Saint Patrick’s Day, 17 March, kept as a holy day in Ireland as the patron of the country
• The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 15 August
• All Saints, 1 November
• The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 8 December

What was moved, and why that is ordinary

Canon 1246 sets out ten holy days for the Latin Church, then says that a national bishops’ conference may, with the approval of the Holy See, abolish some of them or move them to a Sunday. Ireland has done the second for the Ascension and for Corpus Christi. Both are still kept, and kept as solemnities. They are kept on a Sunday.

This is the most common source of confusion for visitors, and for Irish Catholics reading a schedule published abroad. A calendar from another country that lists Ascension Thursday as a holy day is right for that country and wrong for this one.

How parishes publish these days

A holy day schedule usually comes from the parish rather than the diocese, in the week beforehand, and it usually appears in three places at once: the parish newsletter, the parish website, and the noticeboard at the church door.

Two patterns are worth knowing. The vigil is the norm rather than the exception, so most parishes list a Mass on the evening before a holy day; canon 1248 is what makes that count, and this directory files a Saturday evening Mass under Saturday and calls it a vigil. And the weekday schedule usually changes: a parish with one morning Mass will often add an evening one, and a parish with a school attached will often add a school Mass that anyone may attend.

Finding a Mass on a holy day

This directory holds the ordinary weekly schedule for each church, as its own parish or diocese publishes it. It does not hold holy day schedules. Those are announced a week or two ahead, they change from year to year, and a stale one is worse than none.

The ordinary schedule is still useful for narrowing the search. A parish that says Mass every weekday morning at ten will almost certainly say Mass on a holy day. The county pages below show which churches near you publish anything at all, and each church page carries the phone number and the parish website where the holy day times will appear.