Brendan Hoban: Few priests to change around now              

Western People 25.4.2023

One of the remarkable changes in Irish church life in recent years is how seldom priests are now transferred (or, as we used to call it, ‘moved’) from one parish to another. Once it was part of the established routine of church life that in early summer a bishop looked into his heart in May, took his pen in his hand in June and (usually in July) wrote a series of letters to a given number of priests directing them to new parishes.

Included in the episcopal directive was a date – at most two weeks later – by which ‘the Changes’ had to take place. It was all done and dusted by August. It was that simple.

Nonetheless a whole ritual attended the process. Any previous comment made by the bishop that could possibly be interpreted as indicative of his intentions was parsed and analysed ad infinitum in predicting a probable change as well as lists of probable (or at least possible) knock-on changes.

Some priests were regarded as experts in this regard, like racing pundits predicting the results of the Grand National, developing a series of possible permutations and combinations that helped them while away the previous winter.

Usually, priests anxious for a change tended to keep their powder dry.

Occasionally older priests were known to voice an interest in a particular parish, usually in an effort to recapture an imagined golden era when as young, thrusting curates they had made their mark on that parish. Younger priests who were at the bottom of the pyramid of influence tended not to request a change as it afforded the bishop the opportunity to appoint them to the least amenable curacy in the diocese.

In smaller dioceses like Killala, there was less room and fewer priests to manoeuvre but in more significant archdioceses like Tuam and Dublin the list was as long as a litany. Nowadays usually there is, in effect, no list at all. Changes are now more often than not limited to filling a gap when a priest dies or retires and the bishop more or less automatically extends the responsibility for the vacant parish to his neighbour in an ever-expanding dispensation that will, it appears, continue until there is only one PP left standing.

For some time now the decline of priests has been a mathematical certainty. When I was ordained fifty years ago there were 58 priests in Killala diocese, now the number of active priests is heading for a third of that figure – with most in their late 60s or 70s. The obvious fact is that priests are disappearing from our parishes and will, apart from a small cohort, soon have left the stage.

Efforts to manage the decline have followed a number of strategies.

• The first was to group parishes together into one working unit. This was called ‘Clustering’ and in its time it camouflaged the decline while allowing parishes to retain their independence and usually their priest(s).
• The second was to effectively unite parishes – though the word ‘unite’ was not used – and this was given a variety of names, like ‘Family of Parishes’, which theoretically allowed parishes to retain their independence but not necessarily their priest numbers.
• The third was simply adding on a parish that had become vacant to the responsibilities of the neighbouring priest.  
• The fourth was sourcing priests from abroad – mainly India, Romania and parts of Africa.
• The fifth, now getting its first wind, is introducing a number of lay ministries to supplement the declining number of Irish and foreign priests.

None of the above are, either individually or collectively, solutions to the decline in priests but rather short-term management strategies. For example, the short cut by some dioceses towards managing the problem through bringing in foreign priests is sometimes touted as a solution as if in India or Africa or cumulatively around the around the world there are thousands of priests available to replace the emerging gaps. This is not the case. Generally, throughout the world, apart from some temporary exceptions, there are no extra clergy to fill vacancies in the developed world. And the notion that we can summon priests at will to fill gaps in Irish parishes – as if we were Premier League clubs transferring footballers – is to ignore and indeed patronise the primary responsibility such priests have to their own people and their own dioceses.

Of the five strategies mentioned above, the only permanent future contribution to the pastoral care of parishes is through lay ministries. At present dioceses and parishes are dipping an experimental toe in the water by developing a series of lay ministries that will support in the short term the work of a declining number of priests.

This will mean that many of the services that priests would normally deliver will now come by way of lay Catholics, women and men. For example, the extra rituals around funerals – liaising with the family in arranging the Funeral Mass, leading prayers in the funeral home or in the home of the deceased, receiving the remains in the church, saying the prayers at the grave-side – will soon be the responsibility of lay ministers. Soon, in funeral liturgies, the priest’s only possible involvement in funerals will be to say the funeral Mass.

As the future becomes more obvious every year that passes, as priest numbers decline with a cliff-face now in sight, the prospect of priest-less parishes is suddenly focusing the mind. Where to now?