St. Patrick's Day falling during Holy Week prompts parade dilemma

Published: 2008-02-21

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The long-held tradition of St. Patrick's Day parades has experienced a bump in the road this year with the saint's feast day occurring during an unusually early Holy Week. In cities across the country most of the parades, some more than a 200-year-old tradition, are going on as planned, even though March 17 is the Monday of Holy Week. But the idea of marching bands, Irish dancing and vast displays of green parading during the solemn week before Easter has stirred some comments from U.S. bishops. The question of how to celebrate the Irish saint is not usually such a dilemma, since the last time his feast day fell during Holy Week was in 1940. Because St. Patrick's Day falls just days before Easter this year the feast will not be celebrated liturgically in most U.S. dioceses, because of a decision by the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments. A newsletter from the U.S. bishops' liturgy secretariat last April announced that the feast day of St. Patrick may be moved to Friday, March 14, in dioceses "where St. Patrick is the principal patron of a particular church" and where "it is customarily commemorated as a solemnity."

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