The Missionary Oblates of Mary are not considering withdrawing from parishes in Ireland. A recent Tablet story reported that the order was giving up control of at least a third of its parishes in Britain and Ireland, and the parishes would return to the control of their respective dioceses.
However in an interview with ciNews, Oblate Provincial, Fr Willie Fitzpatrick, said the order was not withdrawing from parishes in Ireland, but that it was moving to a “developmental rather than a maintenance mode.”
“We don’t see ourselves as just maintaining a parish. We are not running parishes on our own, but with people,” he said.
The Oblates have three parishes in Dublin, two in Inchicore and one in Bluebell.
Fr Fitzpatrick said that since 2006 the order has been going through a process of discernment .
“It is a refounding,” he told ciNews. “We’re trying to see where we have come from, and where we are going to, and work in a way that reflects our ideology as missionary Oblates.”
Given the downturn in vocations in Europe, the Oblates are “obliged to do things differently”. Part of the refoundation consists in creating ‘centres of mission’, but Fr Fitzpatrick emphasises they will not limit themselves to running parishes.
“We work with people in team ministry, in building up the community, and we train people for that.”
He sees the future of the Church “along the model of the Basic Christian Communities” of Latin America.
“The future has to be about people gathering to create community to witness to the Good News where they are. The challenge is for the Church to be a community of the people of God.”
In Ireland the order works in the area of prison and psychiatric home chaplaincies, in adult faith development, with people suffering from addictions, and in retreat ministry.
“We wish to respond in a new way. We are looking at the needs of those on the margins, and how we can respond to them now.”
The Oblates came to Inchicore in 1856 and bought a farm close to the Railway Works. A small wooden church was built in which Mass was celebrated by its founder, Fr Eugene de Mazenod in 1857.
Many of the workers at the Railway works had helped build this first church and it served the community until work began on the church of Mary Immaculate, which was consecrated in 1903.
The second church in Inchicore, St Michael’s, became a parish in 1933. Bluebell became an independent parish in 1967. In 1972, the Oblates were entrusted with the pastoral care of the area taking in the three parishes.
While the order is withdrawing from some parishes in Britain, it is also establishing an international Oblate community at Kilburn, London. Two priests from Sri Lanka are currently operating the mission, soon hopefully, to be joined by priests from the Philippines and Africa.
“They are not just there to fill the gap, but to share their mission with people,” said Fr Fitzpatrick.
The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) was founded in 1816 by Saint Eugene de Mazenod, a French priest from Marseilles. Originally established to revive the Church after devastation by the French Revolution, the religious order now serves in various countries around the world.
Though they originally focused on working with the poor, they became known as a missionary and teaching order as well.
One of the more famous members of the OMI is the archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Francis George.
The order celebrated its 150th anniversary in Ireland in 2006.
Currently there are over 4,000 Oblate priests and brothers worldwide, working in 68 countries.
Sixty are in Ireland.
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