What are we to make of the condition of the Irish clergy as seen in an analysis by the Association of Catholic Priests in their annual meeting in Athlone last week? Their report shows that 547 priests of the 2,100 working priests in the Irish Church are aged between 61 and 75 and nearly 300 or 15 per cent of working priests are aged 75 or over. They serve in 1,355 parishes and 2,652 churches or mass centres.
In all the 26 Irish dioceses, 52 priests, or fewer than 2.5 per cent of working priests, are younger than 40. There are just 47 seminarians in Maynooth. There are 464 working priests aged between 40-60, while 45 priests are out of ministry.
The obvious and honest response to all this is gloom. This is the real state of the Irish church: demoralised, ageing and failing to attract men to the priesthood. And it is the crisis in morale after a succession of child abuse scandals that has occasioned the collapse in vocations. Formerly, a priest could expect deference in any social environment; now anticlericalism is culturally normative, though individual priests may well be respected in their own parishes. It is a catastrophe which has happened within a generation, perhaps two generations, a consequence of a succession of child abuse scandals, and, as importantly, the way in which those reports were handled by a media and political class which is predisposed to be hostile to the Church.
It is possible, moreover, that the downward trajectory will continue; if young people do not see priests who are happy to be living a life committed to Christ and ministering the sacraments and holy in themselves, the chances of infectious vocations are obviously fewer.
Yet, miracles happen. The church in Ireland in the eighteenth century was maintained through the piety of the laity; clerics were far fewer in number than they were to become in the nineteenth century, and it was the devotion of ordinary Catholics which kept the faith alive. The church in Ireland is now in the position of the apostles before Pentecost. And at Pentecost we know what happened.
What is needed in this crisis of the Irish Church is faith, hope and decent catechesis. In an aggressively secular republic, far fewer children are being given proper sacramental preparation in schools; that role is being devolved to parishes, as is already the case in many parts of the UK. There must now be a concerted effort to ensure that this catechesis is thorough, based on clear exposition of the teachings of the church, rather than the fudge and euphemism described in devastating detail in a book by an Irish Times journalist, Derek Scally, in recalling his own religious education in the Seventies and Eighties. It is still the case that for many, perhaps most, Irish families, communion and confirmation are rites of passage, socially acknowledged celebrations for a family; that encounter with young people once or twice in their lives is an opportunity that the bishops cannot afford to squander.
The devout laity will dislike the amalgamation of parishes that is already taking place, and the closure of churches, and the devout laity are right. Yet, given an ageing clergy, the brute consequences of the figures cannot be avoided: it is not possible to get one priest to do the work of four or five, no matter how committed. It is, however, possible for the laity to maintain the life of the church in another mode themselves; the priesthood of all believers must, in these circumstances, become a reality. It would be quite possible for an ordained deacon to preside over a service of vespers or compline or Benediction in a church, to enable a community to come together in prayer other than on Sundays. It is entirely appropriate for laypeople to lead others in prayer as many do, in recitations of the Rosary, or devotions.
Crucially, it now falls to the laity to ensure that churches are kept open for private prayer. In other words, ordinary parishioners will have to ensure the security of their church by taking it in turns to spend time in church; CCTV cameras have their limits. The worst possible outcome of the present crisis would be for churches physically to close. If nothing else, ordinary Catholics must always be able to pray before the Blessed Sacrament, and it will take a concerted effort to ensure that is possible.
In ten years’ time, the Irish church will be 1600 years old, if judged by the traditional date of St Patrick’s arrival in Ireland, in 432. It would be tragic if this anniversary, in painful contrast to the exuberant festivities of the eucharistic conference of 1932, were to see still further decline.
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