In 20 year’s time the Christian Churches in Ireland will celebrate 1600 years since the
arrival of St Patrick in 432.
I wonder what sort of celebrations will take place?
What will the state of the Christian Churches especially the Catholic Church, be?
I’m sorry I won’t be around to experience it.
In a new book, ‘Who Will Break The Bread For Us?’ Fr Brendan Hoban,
a founder member of the Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland,
examines this problem and its most obvious symptom of disappearing
priests.
The jacket of his book gives us a strong pictorial image. It’s a
photograph taken in 1982 of 46 priests from Brendan Hoban’s own dioceses
of Killala gathered for an annual retreat.
There is a reasonable mixture of young and old.
The front row however has six aging decrepit priests.
Fr Hoban writes that “in less than 20 year’s time when we will be
celebrating 1600 years since the coming of St Patrick, present
statistics indicate the number of priests in Killala will be the
equivalent of the front row of the picture in number and in age. It is
not an attractive prospect”.
The question of who will break bread for us is a legitimate one.
Fr Hoban continues, “At most we have a window of a decade or so to come to terms with this crisis.
And unless we do, a Eucharistic famine will prevail in Ireland as
parishes without Masses will lose their focus and their resilience.
“Without priests we will have no Mass, without Mass we will have no
church… our priests are disappearing and we need to do something about
it now.”
His point is well made in a quotation from Padraig J Daly’s poem about a seminary wasteland.
In ‘Institution’ he writes: “White goalposts / rise out of the long
grasses / of seminary fields / the house in empty / safe for the
shuffling few / astray along its shabby corridors / remembering thump of
balls / crack of sliotar / yelp and counter yelp / the proud façade
crumbles in the wind / the roof lets water in / the grass edges to the
door.”
The book catalogues the numbers; statistics don’t lie.
An aging group of decrepit priests will no longer be able to “keep the show on the road.”
One of his best chapters is entitled ‘The Dark’. It’s based around
Michael Harding’s 1986 book ‘Priest’. It sets the theme magnificently –
good but lonely, dysfunctional clergymen fighting a losing battle.
The chapters on celibacy are the most controversial. In turn they
look at the arguments for and against compulsory celibacy in the
priesthood.
Both arguments are fairly treated, yet in a way, both arrive at the same conclusion.
If we insist on compulsory celibacy then in less than 20 year’s
time the priesthood as we know it will have, for all practical purposes,
disappeared.
If we change to allow married priests, that too will change the
church beyond recognition. Fr Hoban clearly and succinctly looks at how
both people and priests themselves rationalise celibacy.
It’s quite clear that for the author celibacy is a central issue, as it has become for commentators everywhere.
Yet there is also a growing tendency within the church to examine whether clericalism rather than celibacy is the issue.
We certainly need priests in a Eucharistic Church. But does the Church have to be built around the present clerical model?
That is a question that needs to be teased out more fully than Fr Hoban has the opportunity to do in this book.
Brendan Hoban is a sincere, honest priest who is a focussed thinker and brilliant communicator.
He is an exceptional talent in the Irish Church. I hope he is allowed to continue to write and to challenge us all.
Who Will Break Bread For Us is essential reading for priests,
bishops and laity. It is a calm, reasoned and honourable attempt to lift
the veil of denial and to help us face an uncertain future.
‘Who Will Break Bread For Us? Disappearing Priests’ is on sale at €9.95 plus €2 postage.
It’s available online from www.associationofcatholicpriests.ie or by post, from The Pastoral Centre, Ballina, Co Mayo.