Brendan Hoban: A seminal moment in our church’s history
Western People 1.4.2025
People of my vintage will remember a time in Ireland when priests were so plentiful that in very busy parishes with teeming congregations multiple priests were needed to assist with the distribution of Holy Communion. Or in places like Enniscrone during the busy summer months, the length of Masses was extended when one priest had to spend between 20-30 minutes distributing Holy Communion.
A few years before lay ministers were introduced around 1975, Fr Mark Diamond, who was then curate in Enniscrone, asked Bishop McDonnell for permission to bring forward the change on the grounds that he (Fr Mark) found the distribution of Communion a particular ordeal as he had an ongoing problem with his sight. The bishop agreed but on reflection – in case he was accused of jumping the gun in the liturgy stakes – he changed his mind and suggested that the nuns in Enniscrone could help out instead. The bishop’s reluctance to change anything, even his mind, was underlined by his repetition of a favourite riposte to retain the status quo – ‘From time immemorial’.
Now that change in the Catholic Church has less of a sense of panic attached to it and is more and more an obligatory imperative, almost everything in life is now driven by necessary and inevitable revision.
Even though the Catholic Church is tortuously slow in moving with the times, some get a strange pleasure out of impeding any reform by consigning it to a distant future on the basis that the Church only moves in centuries. Some thought that, with the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the reforms of the Second Vatican Council had been successfully deferred to a future century but to their horror Francis has given them a second wind, making their delayed implementation irresistible despite some clerical opposition.
Now we live not just in changing times but in historic times and even though the pace of change is inadequately and unnecessarily ponderous, suddenly reform is the order of the day – albeit on a slow boat to China.
At the moment, the dioceses of Tuam and Killala are in the process of merging into one union – an historic break from boundaries delineated over 900 years ago in the Synods of Rathbrazil (1111 a.d.) and Kells (1152). It is a mammoth task organising the complex process of joining two distinct pastoral and legal entities with separate histories, traditions as well as conditions of employment and it has been entrusted to Archbishop Francis Duffy who, in less than a dozen years, moved from his native Kilmore diocese to Ardagh and Clonmacnoise to Tuam and has now landed in Killala.
But that’s not all. The recent synod, albeit not delivering the pace of change that creates momentum, has designated Parish Pastoral and other Councils as mandatory – no longer optional or at the whim of a clerical veto. Synodality, what Francis has defined as ‘the (only) way of being Church in the new millennium’, carries with it in simple terms the promise of a People‘s Church (as Vatican Two had intended).
Now too we’re beginning to see the development of lay ministries not just because priest numbers are declining precipitously but primarily to facilitate the rights of all the baptised to use the gifts God has given them in the service of their church. The focus now is on accepting, facilitating and respecting the rights of the baptised.
In Killala diocese, that change is particularly obvious and will within the next few weeks receive an historic impetus when 62 lay women and men will be commissioned as part of a drive to enhance the pastoral care of parishes. The lay ministries include the Ministry of Reader, Minister of the Eucharist (distribution of Holy Communion) and Funeral Ministers (who will co-lead with priests) all of the standard funeral services with the exception of the Funeral Mass. Funeral Ministers will accompany the priest to the wake house or funeral home; they will co-lead the prayers for the Rite of Reception at the church; they will co-lead the Final Commendation at the end of the funeral liturgy; and they will co-lead the Rite of Committal.
The 62 women and men have just completed a Certificate in Lay Leadership: Theology, Culture and Ministry,designed and delivered by The Newman Institute, Ballina. For two years and three months, course participants have engaged with the main theological subjects of Sacred Sacripture, Pastoral Theology, Liturgy, Moral Theology, Catholic Social Teaching, Faith and Culture, Encountering Jesus of Nazareth, Church History and Diocesan History, Canon Law and the administration of parishes. Safeguarding training and Pastoral Reflection evenings were also key parts of the course. Pastoral Placements were undertaken in six host parishes over the two-year period. In the coming weeks, the lay leaders will commence their ministries in a voluntary capacity in their parishes.
Last Friday (March 28) in St Muredach’s Cathdral the total group of 64 (62 lay people and 2 priests) celebrated their Graduation Ceremony and in Holy Week as part of the Mass of Chrism on Tuesday, April 15th at 6.30pm, our 62 Lay Leaders will be commissioned by Archbishop Francis Duffy. At a time when the commitment of parishioners to their Church is declining, the response of the participants has been nothing short of extraordinary.
An additional reason for hope is that we are now, it would appear, at a seminal moment in church history.
From his bed on the tenth floor of the Gemelli Hospital in Rome, at a time when his doctor has indicated that he was close to death, Francis has personally approved and supported a surprise letter to the world’s bishops by Cardinal Grech with two key messages: (i) that no bishop or priest can opt out of the process of embedding synodality in the future life of the Church – in other words that everyone has to grasp the fact that synodality, like Francis, haven’t gone away, you know, and (ii) that from 2025 to 2028, there will be a three-year period galvanising the Church at every level across the globe through a process ‘of accompaniment and implementation’.
After a long Winter of discontent, we are now on the verge of a new Spring and, in Killala diocese, with the added providential benefit of 62 women and men willing and able to commit to putting their hands to the plough. That we have reached this point is a joy unconfined.
“Seminal” is a word fillled with hope. If Francis and his synods have succeeded in planting a seed, it is bound to grow, “it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
Despite the “priest shortage” there are thousands and thousands of priests in Rome (generating anticlericalism). Can there be synodality without decentralization?
Thank you Brendan for another interesting Article.
Any task in a Parish that doesn’t require Holy Orders should be handed over to the laity. I’ve always been of that Opinion.
That said, could I briefly quote from your previous Article around this Synodality issue:
“Gerry O’Hanlon explained to Diarmuid Ferriter, the operative image of the Church as a pyramid with, in descending order of priority the pope, bishops, priests and lay faithful, has been flipped by Pope Francis.”
Brendan, can you please cite the Ordinary and Universal Magisterial Document and paragraph(s) therein, where Pope Francis abrogated the Hierarchical model of the Church? Please don’t worry if it isn’t available in English: I am fluent in Latin and Italian.
I want to read the exact words used in the formal Abrogation of a Hierarchical Church by the Holy Father, so that I can interpret it in the light of the following De Fide teaching:
“CHRIST GAVE HIS CHURCH A HIERARCHICAL CONSTITUTION”
(You’ll find this in Prof. Ludwig Ott’s “Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma”).
Dermot @2: There is no question of abrogating the hierarchical element of the Church. Rather, it a matter of understanding it as but part of a whole, in service of that whole (the People of God). And so, in the Final Document of the Synod (which Pope Francis declared to be ‘part of the ordinary Magisterium of the Successor Peter’) it is written: ‘Synodality offers “the most appropriate interpretative framework for understanding the hierarchical ministry itself”‘ (Francis, Address in Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Institution of the Synod of Bishops, 17 October 2015).
So, Gerry, the Hierarchical model of the Church, bequeathed by Christ Himself is still valid.
That means that the De Fide Dogma “CHRIST GAVE HIS CHURCH A HIERARCHICAL CONSTITUTION” still stands.
Very reassuring to Traditional pre-Synodal Catholics.
I should be honest with you and let you know that I have been excommunicated for rejecting the Final Synodal Document as NOT PART of the Ordinary and Universal magisterium.
For a Document to be part of the Ordinary and Universal magisterium, it must be in line with what the Popes have always taught. The Final Synod Document itself, which is a HYBRID mix of Episcopal and Lay input, represents a COMPLETE RUPTURE with what has always been taught.
I remain of course faithful to the teachings of our Church as passed on to me in my youth. TRADIDI QUOD ET ACCEPI. The Faith of our Tyburn Martyrs, one of whom is an ancestor of mine.
Gerry, many brave members of your Order, died at Tyburn for professing the pre-Synodal Faith and offering the Traditional Latin Mass.
I wish you well. Ad Multos Annos!
Dermot Quigley, are you aware of St J. H. Cardinal Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845, revised 1878)? Newman was widely seen as a modernist, but St Pius X in person wrote to the bishop of Limerick to assure him of Newman’s orthodoxy (already implicitly recognized by Leo XIII’s conferral of the cardinalte, and later confirmed by the push to canonize him from Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, culminating in Pope Francis’s canonization of him.
While Newman began as a defender of the alleged innovations of the Roman Church, he had to deal with the massive innovation of Nicaea, 325, which for the first time affirmed that the eternal Son was not just God but true God, ending the subordinationist regime of previous theology. At Vatican II the church took a similar massive leap in dismissing centuries of magisterial teaching about Jews (Cum nimis absurdum, 1555, ratified by popes for two centuries) and replacing them with a return to Romans 9-11. Since the Holy Spirit is supposed to be at work in such events, is it surprising that they are surprising, even shocking — the Spirit blows where it wills. BTW, at the end of his Essay Newman says that the Church experiences “effusions” of the Spirit that reanimate it and restore its essential form. He presided over several such events of church rebirth: the Oxford Movement, the Catholic revival in Britain, the wider Catholic revival after the loss of the Papal States, and, posthumously, Vatican II, which has been called ‘Newman’s Council.’ It seems that a similar revival is afoot in France just now. Strasbourg Cathedral was certainly packed full last Sunday.
Lumen Gentium put the People of God first and recontextualized the hierarchical structure of the Church within that vision.
Pope Francis has done a lot to bring back Vatican II, which some were inclined to dismiss as blip on the screen of history. For the joyful impact of that rediscovery I recommend “The Oxford Handbook of Vatican II” by 44 seasoned experts on the Council who are revisiting Vatican II in light of a “paradigm shift” represented by Pope Francis.
Absolutely brilliant, Joe.
You wouldn’t like to come to Edinburgh sometime to talk about Newman to our Newman Association?
I realise that that is probably not very realistic but I say it again and that is how absolutely blessed we are to have you contributing and sharing your amazing reservoir of knowledge on this site.
Thank you again, Joe.
Paddy.
I spent an evening and a morning with Peter Phan, who left VIetnam with his 11 siblings in 1975, spent 50 years teaching in the USA, and says he has now learned to live at last, after migrating to Lucca. Of course he is breathing sighs of deep relief not to be in the US in these nightmare days. We had so many friends in common and so many similar experiences that it felt like I had recovered the unlived half of my life. I’m invited to a colloquium in Florence in October, so a side-trip to Edinburgh might not be beyond the bounds of the possible.