When Irish priests have disappeared, Who Will Break The Bread For Us?

Denial is a fact of life. When those we love are seriously ill, we want to

deny the painful prospects ahead of us. When institutions we’ve given our

lives to are in crisis we often pretend otherwise. Human kind, the poet T.S.

Eliot famously wrote, cannot bear much reality. When we try to pretend that

everything is just as it used to be, that nothing has gone wrong, we do what

the orchestra on the Titanic did, we keep playing, we pretend that

everything is normal. That’s what denial is.

The Catholic Church in Ireland is in denial about vocations to the

priesthood. We’re pretending that there’s no crisis. Or that the crisis is

not as bad as it seems. Or that things could be worse than they are. Or that

we can’t really know what God has in store for us. Or whatever.

Let’s look at some numbers.

• In Killala diocese, for 22 parishes, there are now 7 priests under 55

years of age. Spool on for two decades and there will be 7 (or thereabouts)

under 75.

• In Tuam diocese in 2020 (that’s just 7 years time) there will be 50

priests for 55 parishes and ten years on from that, in 2030, there will be

just 30 Tuam priests, most of them elderly.

• In 1984 there were 171 ordinations or religious professions in Ireland; in

2006 there were 22.

• In 1990 there were 525 students studying for the diocesan priesthood in

Ireland; in 2013 there are 70.

• In 1966, when I went to Maynooth, there were 84 in my class; this year 12

went to Maynooth.

• In 1966, of the 84 who went to Maynooth, 20 were from the western

dioceses; of the 12 in first year in Maynooth none is from the west.

So we don’t need to have 20/20 vision to see this particular train coming

down the track. All we need to do is to be able to count. And to accept what

the very dogs in the street already know is happening – Ireland’s priests

will have virtually disappeared in 20 years.

My new book, Who Will Break The Bread For Us? Disappearing Priests, names

this reality. It examines in detail the solutions on offer and proposes that

we have a narrow window of opportunity to take the radical decisions that

need to be taken if Ireland is not to become a Eucharistic desert, if our

parishes are not to become priest-less and Mass-less communities. Because

without priests we have no Mass and without Mass we have no Church.

For the first time in many, many centuries in Ireland we are facing the

collapse of a scaffolding of worship that was sustained even during Penal

and famine times. And it’s as if, as a Church, we are walking blind-folded

towards a precipice because unlike other fundamental questions we need to

ask ourselves as a Church, Who will break the bread for us? can’t be

obscured in a fog of waffle and distraction. For the simple reason that the

issue of priest-vocations is now embarrassingly quantifiable.

Solutions offered to the vocations’ crisis include : clustering of parishes

(this is at best a short-term management strategy); ordaining married

deacons (but they can’t say Mass); importing priests from Africa (but there

will be huge language and cultural problems); extending the retirement age

for priests (it’s already at 70 and 75 and is both unfair and exploitative);

replacing Mass with Communion services (which will divide and fracture

faith-communities); praying for vocations (is God in not answering our

prayers suggesting to us that the solution may be in our own hands?).

So what can we do?

We could ordain as priests married deacons who already work in parishes –

there are few enough in Ireland at present but there are 16,921 in the USA.

We could ordain married men of proven faith in our parishes – their

education and formation could be fast-tracked, as is the case with deacons.

We could invite priests who left to get married to return, even in a

part-time capacity – there are thousands of them in Ireland, including seven in

one Mayo parish. We could institute a married clergy, alongside a celibate

clergy – already married priests (who have come over from the Church of

England) are working in parishes all over Great Britain.

Recently Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin suggested that there were

vocations out there if we could access them: ‘For the moment, what we have

to do is find worthy candidates who are able to live as celibate priests as

is the tradition in the Latin rite. I believe that there are candidates

there but we are not always necessarily reaching them’.

The key phrase here is ‘for the moment.’ Wriggle-room is what it’s called.

And I suspect, I have to say, that Archbishop Martin knows that the game is

up for the Irish Church if all we can muster is yet another search for

putative celibate priests in the tradition in the Latin rite. That

particular t-shirt is well-faded. Been there and done that.

The reality is that in 20 years there will be few priests in Ireland and

those that are still standing will be mainly in their 70s. So there is an

inevitable logic with asking the question, Who will break the bread for us?,

that points up the futility of short-term, sticking-plaster solutions and I

examine it in this book.

In Who Will Break The Bread For Us? I say my piece about the crisis in

vocations to the priesthood in this book. Not everyone will agree with my

prognosis or indeed with my assessment of ‘the darkness at the heart of

priesthood’ or my direct suggestions about decisions that need to be made.

Now.

But if, as I believe, we are sleep-walking towards a precipice, we need to

consider where we’re going and how long we have to avoid the disaster for

our Church that looms ahead of us. We need at least to start a real

conversation about where we are and what we can do. It’s my hope that this

book will help to kick-start that conversation.

Or at least call a halt to whatever equivalent of that orchestra on the

Titanic playing on regardless that is offered to distract us from what’s

happening in the Irish Catholic Church. No matter how understandable denial

may be, we can’t afford it anymore.

• Who Will Break The Bread For Us? Disappearing Priests may be purchased on this website. (See on right.)