A Kildare priest, who is nursing a €100,000 deficit in the cost of running his parish over the past two years, has criticised people who use the facilities and services of the Catholic Church for one-off occasions but do not contribute financially towards maintaining it.
Fr Joe McDermott, parish priest of St Conleth’s Parish Newbridge, was speaking after end-of-year accounts showed a financial deficit of €50,000 for the second year in a row.
There are now concerns that if a call for parishioners to raise their contributions is not heeded, it will not be possible to sustain next year’s wages bill of €250,000, which comprises almost half of the parish’s expenses.
Fr McDermott blamed the sizable shortfall in the accounts on “the economic situation coupled with less people practising at the moment.”
“There has been a gradual decline in support for our fund-raising - it’s the times that are in it.”
Criticising the occasional use of the church facilities for special occasions, he said people should have, “a lot more courage, stand by their convictions and stop using the church for one-off occasions such as Communions and Confirmations if parents don’t have a commitment to faith.”
”It is the same for people coming in to get married because it’s nostalgic. I wish we had more integrity with people,” Fr McDermott went on. “People who use the church as a one off are not generally contributing but they expect the church to be there for them.”
He said these expectations, “have to change and they need to stop using the church for a social occasion rather than a religious one.”
The parish wage bill, “has nothing to do with the priests,” Fr McDermott pointed out, explaining that it covered parish centre staff, musicians, pastoral workers and sacristans.
While reserves from better years had given him some leeway, and allowed this shortfall to be met so far, “this cannot be sustained in the long term and I would be concerned if we had to let people go,” he warned.
“There is a small amount of money already there as over the years one or two small legacies have been left and the deficit will have to come out of that. Employees have taken a pay cut which we appreciate, while our own income for priests has dropped also.”
Apart from manpower, “there is lighting, heating, insurance, maintenance and repairs of church and that comes to about €50,000 to €100,000 a year,” he pointed out.
Newbridge parish committee has now appealed to parishioners who can do so, to increase even slightly their weekly contributions.
Fr McDermott said that morale in the Church might be low but between six and eight thousand people in the parish were still practising every week.
“There is a huge number of people who have dropped off but that trend began back in the 1970s and 1980s.”