Brendan Hoban: Priests must usher in new era of lay ministers                             

Western People  10.6.2025    

The continuing decline in priest numbers in the Catholic Church – with the future heavily weighted by a phalanx of elderly priests – has created a mathematical certainty that within a few years a cliff-face is approaching when numbers will plummet.

It’s difficult to quantify exact numbers – as a variety of unknowns include deaths, retirements, illnesses, etc – but, in Killala diocese for example, it’s predicted that in just a handful of years’ time the number of priests will be around six.

The obvious question is being asked: where can we get priests? There are two answers: we can pray for vocations or invite foreign priests, or both. The first has been tried for years and, from recent experience to date, is by common consent not the answer. Even bishops given to seeing occasional green shoots emerging on a bleak church landscape are now conceding as much. 

The second solution – inviting foreign priests – sounds more promising but this too is widely questioned. Short-term, it seems a satisfactory fix but longer term, not really – for multiple reasons. The two main arguments for this strategy are: one, there are plenty of priests available; and, two, they are anxious to come.

Unfortunately, both statements are simply not true as the official Catholic Church priest-to-people statistical ratio makes clear. For example, the ratio in Europe is significantly superior to that in Africa. And there is the additional moral concern that effectively buying in foreign priests deprives their own native people of their services.

There are as well the complex challenges of foreign priests dealing with an alien culture, a different theology, an unfamiliar language, a foreign accent, a difficult climate,  unaccustomed cuisine, etc – concerns that already confirm very strongly that the strategy is at best a temporary re-fill rather than a permanent solution.

A more effective strategy is to ask two different questions: one, how in the next decade or so before priest numbers effectively disappear almost completely, can the surviving and mainly elderly (and very elderly) priests be supported in dealing with an ever increasing workload with an ever declining number of priests? And, two, what can be done now to prepare for a time, in just over a decade or so when, as in Killala diocese, the number of priests will be around six?

First, how can we  take the pressure off the progressively fewer clergy trying to cope with progressively increasing and progressively unrealistic and unsustainable work-loads?

One active solution proposed is to ‘encourage’ or ‘pressurise’ or ‘cajole’ retired priests to remain in or return to parish work. However, this is an unacceptable, unworkable and unworthy ‘solution’ as elderly (and sometimes very elderly) priests can have their willing nature unfairly exploited or have their health compromised when they are effectively being  subjected to what one priest has called ‘a form of elder abuse’. Would retired teachers, for instance, be happy to be pressured into returning to the schoolroom? And even if they were prepared to do so, would their families be happy with that?

The obvious resource to help out over-worked priests are their ‘lay’ parishioners, Catholic women and men who are prepared to work with priests to alleviate some of the work-pressure that they’re under. A priest complained to me recently about his work load as illustrated by the fact that he had to pay ‘over 70’ visits a month to bring Communion to elderly housebound parishioners – ‘the First Friday calls’, as we know them. He didn’t have to, of course, because there are plenty of people in every parish happy to help out with this important ministry.

Perhaps good advice for over-worked priests would be to list for themselves work that they imagine they have to do but that Catholic parishioners can do? Like first Friday calls? Like why are they still looking after the parish accounts – even sometimes counting the collection themselves – when there are more competent people in the parish who will do that for them? Or trying to supply regular Masses in every one of their five churches when some lay-led prayer services which include the reception of Communion would satisfy people instead.

These questions are particularly appropriate now that Pope Leo is following in the footsteps of Pope Francis, and committing himself to ‘a People’s Church’ that will introduce a flowering of specialised lay ministries that will allow priests to focus on their own particular priestly line of work and facilitate their parishioners in doing the rest.

But are there competent, committed, faith-filled lay Catholics who will come forward to bear that responsibility? Yes, there are! Recently in Killala diocese 64 lay leaders were commissioned for a number of lay ministries, including that of Funeral Minister, after a study course of two years and three months and are now actively involved in a variety of ministries. And if Killala, why not elsewhere?

Second, what can be done now to prepare for a time, in just over a decade or so when, in Killala diocese, the number of priests to serve 22 parishes will be just six?

The answer is two-fold. One, we need to extend and deepen every possible lay ministry – in terms of encouraging, preparing, training and officially commissioning lay Catholics – to cover every area of parish life apart from the duties that are beyond their baptismal brief. In other words, all areas of ministry apart from the specifically priestly duties – saying Mass, hearing Confession, anointing the sick, etc. And, two, we need to do it now because unless priests ensure that the development of lay ministries in their parishes is a priority, they are not preparing for the inevitable – the incontrovertible fact that future ministry in the Catholic Church will be driven in the main by the laity.

So there are two distinct challenges: lay people to do what they can do; and priests to make it happen – or rather to let it happen. The first is a cinch. The second, not so much. But we’ll see.

We live in interesting times.