HALF OF PARISHES WILL SOON HAVE NO PRIEST

Bishop calls for a debate on Church roles for women and married men

HALF of our parishes could soon be left without a priest, and churches will have to be shut down, clerics have warned.

The shortage of young seminarians has left the Catholic Church in deep crisis and the only solution is ordaining married men and women, according to a high-profile bishop, who now has the backing of the Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland.

Fr Seán MacDonagh of the Association said yesterday: ‘If we continue as we are, we will be without priests. Many parishes have two or three churches and unless there are priests a lot of them will be closing down. They’ll go the way of post offices and Garda stations.’

The Association called for a radical overhaul

because so few young men are taking a vocation and many of those now serving as priests are over 65.

The priests’ association – which represents over 1,000 priests across the country – said it supports the recent call by Bishop Leo O’Reilly of the Kilmore Diocese for change.

The bishop had said the hierarchy must set up a commission to study the possibility of allowing married men to join the priesthood as well as ordaining female deacons.

The association has also made its own submission to the Vatican on the matter.

Bishop O’Reilly has also revealed that he has invited two Nigerian priests to serve in his diocese. They are due to arrive shortly.

‘There was a time when we sent missionaries to Nigeria, now the wheel has come full circle and they are sending missionaries back to us,’ he said at the time.

The priests’ group warned: ‘ The high percentage of priests over 65 and the low intake of seminarians suggest that in ten years’ time many parishes will be without a resident priest.’

Parishes are al r eady being AS

many as 2,000 people have f l own out f rom Dublin as part of the largest annual pilgrimage to Lourdes.

A total of 175 sick pilgrims, 560 volunteers, 52 nurses and eight doctors were among those who departed on seven specially chartered flights to the French shrine of Lourdes yesterday.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, who is leading the pilgrimage for the 12th time, said the Lourdes pilgrimage was extraordinary in how it could bring together so many ‘from strong believers to the plain curious, and even perhaps the cynical’.

He will celebrate the opening Mass at the Grotto with the group this morning.

Pilgrimage director Fr Martin Noone said: ‘The fact that 300 students and young people signed up for this pilgrimage is really heartening. The young people leave with a sense of what is of value in life.’ clustered into groups and because of this some parishoners have to do without a daily Mass, and have to make do with a prayer service without Holy Communion.

The proposed changes in Church rules would be expected to encourage more men to join the priesthood, and to promote women to more meaningful roles.

This year j ust 17 seminarians started studying for the priesthood at the Maynooth seminary, St Patrick’s College, to become priests within the next six years.

Low as that figure is, it is, in fact, up three on last year’s intake.

And with a typical dropout rate of 50 per cent, the dwindling priest numbers looks set to continue into the future. There are now about 80 men at the college training to become priests.

Currently, there are 2,677 diocesan priests spread across 1,386 parishes, along with 1,530 clerical priests and 557 religious brothers. The number of parish priests dropped 13 per cent in the decade between 2002 and 2012, according to the Statistical Yearbook of the Church.

Meanwhile, Anthony Neville of the priests’ association said that Mass is only said every second day in some parishes.

He said: ‘The profile of the priests is that a huge majority are over 65 so within ten years they’re going to retire and unfortunately the rate of new entrants to the seminaries is quite small by comparison. The numbers are not being made up.’

He added: ‘People who have been daily Mass-goers all their lives are now finding that they can’t get Mass and Communion every day which is quite distressing for some of the congregation.’

When asked if parishes in Ireland are without any priest, he said: ‘They have clustered parishes so technically speaking you might have a priest who is allocated to more than one church. So he is dividing his time and he is not in a position to say as many masses.’

Fr MacDonagh also challenged the clustering of parishes by the hierarchy, saying it is only ‘adding to the burden on elderly priests’.

However, he did praise the attitude of Pope Francis, who he said has helped spark the debate surrounding admitting married priests in the hope of alleviating the dwindling numbers.

It has been previously reported that the progressive Pope plans to change important ‘archaic’ parts of the Catholic rules. One 70-year-old priest in Galway must divide his time between two parishes and he faces a 20km round-trip between both churches to say Mass.

Fr Paddy Mooney was ordained 45 years ago and said at one time there were as many as five priests between both parishes.

He told the Irish Daily Mail, that at his age, he finds juggling the two parishes to be tough going.

Fr Gearoid Walsh, 57, in west Cork, must spread his time out between three churches, one of which is on an island, a 15-minute ferry trip away.

Figures released last year by the Irish Catholic Bishops Conference found that three quarters of all priests were aged between 45 and 74, with the largest portion aged between 65 to 74.

One bishop who met Pope Francis in a rare private audience l ast April said the Pontiff was openminded about finding solutions to the problem, and that bishops’ conferences could have a decisive role.

Austrian- born Bishop Erwin Kräutler said the Pope told him that local bishops who ar e best acquainted with the needs of the faithful, should be courageous and make concrete suggestions.

A spokesman for St Patrick’s College Maynooth said the seminary had ‘no comment’ on the proposals made by Bishop O’Reilly and other interest groups.

‘A huge majority are over 65’

WHETHER the Catholic Church chooses to admit it or not, it surely has itself to blame for the drastic decline in the numbers joining the priesthood.

Not only did the Vatican display a degree of arrogance in dealing with clerical child abuse, certain elements of the hierarchy in this country also disgraced themselves. And many feel that the issue has not been properly addressed.

That needs to change. Because at their best, priests are an invaluable part of the parishes they work in – providing support, comfort and spiritual leadership.

The Church must find ways to encourage young men with a vocation to pursue it. And the first step on that path needs to be winning back the confidence and respect of the broader community.