The Irish Catholic Church was seen for generations as the jewel in the crown of the English-speaking clerical world.
Scores of parishes in Great Britain owed their development to Irish priests.
The same applied in the United States, Australia and in many mission lands throughout Africa and elsewhere.
Ireland boasted many seminaries, with the main national seminary, St Patrick’s College in Maynooth (founded in 1795), once home to 500 seminarians. Today, there are just 20 there.
While it will be argued that modern Ireland does not need as many priests given the decline in weekly Mass attendance in the Republic, from 91 per cent in 1973 to less than 30 per cent today, the reality is that for those who remain practising Catholics, there will always be a need for sacramental ministry.
The ageing profile of the clergy makes administering to that need increasingly difficult. And while a country that once exported its priests to the four corners of the world now imports clergy from former mission lands like Nigeria – a sign of the success of past Irish missionaries – the numbers are nowhere near enough to make up for the overall decline in indigenous priest numbers.
Fr Paddy Byrne summarised the statistics in his recent column in the Laois Nationalist: “The number of priests and members of religious orders in Ireland has dropped by 70 per cent since 1970. In the past three years, more than 25 per cent of priests in Ireland have died. And the average age of priests has risen substantially in that time; it is now well above 70. Add to those problems of health and morale and you have a serious difficulty with staffing, to name just one.”
The national broadcaster, RTÉ, recently broadcast documentaries focusing on the decline in religious numbers – potentially a terminal one – called “The Last Priests in Ireland”, presented by comedian Ardal O’Hanlon, and “The Last Nuns in Ireland”, presented by award-winning journalist Dearbhail McDonald.
Half a century ago, there were 14,000 nuns in Ireland; now the number is around 4,000, the average age being over 80. New vocations are extremely rare; in the Convent of Mercy in my home town of Tullamore, only one woman has been professed in the last four decades.
Fr Byrne, a parish priest of Abbeyleix, in County Laois of Ireland’s midlands, notes that it didn’t have to be this way: “The volume of work has grown, but the numbers available to do it have drastically declined. But this situation did not develop overnight. A substantial decline in vocations began as far back as 30 years ago. There was no shortage of voices calling for action, for a review of the way that we, [the] Church, [are providing] for the training and empowerment of lay people, for the creation of structures of dialogue, participation and subsidiarity. In response, some wagged an accusing finger, saying ‘God will provide’.
“That was to evade the issue,” Byrne highlights, “and the decline continued. Regrettably, little of the above was done. A crash landing, therefore, seems more likely than a soft one. If you don’t learn lessons the easy way, you are taught the hard way. If you don’t take the initiative, you will be boxed into a corner by circumstances beyond your control and with no room for manoeuvre. If you don’t reform, you precipitate a revolution – or a collapse.
“Fewer priests does not mean no priests; rather, it may mean moving to a different understanding of priesthood – one where the emphasis is on empowerment and enablement and getting local eucharistic communities to take responsibility for managing themselves, with all that means. In that scenario, we may not need so many priests. Yes, no reason why we can’t have married priests. Let’s face it, we had them before, but not to simply prop up the existing system,” he adds.
It is true that there are some exceptions to the general decline, with the Dominicans reporting relatively healthy vocations, but that isn’t enough to offset decline in other orders and among diocesan clergy, with the closure of seminaries such as St John’s in Waterford, St Kieran’s in Kilkenny, and Holy Cross and Clonliffe in Dublin.
Reliance on overseas clergy seems to be a growing reality – a striking example is Portlaoise, where Mgr John Byrne is assisted by curates from Indonesia, Romania, China and Brazil. Meanwhile, there are reports of lay people being trained to lead funeral liturgies.
While efforts to foster vocations continue, no one is expecting miracles. It seems likely that there will be a much greater need to involve lay people in parish leadership roles. This is similar to what has been happening in the US, Catholic Herald Editor William Cash highlights, where “Catholic leadership is today passing from the Church and Catholic institutions to the lay community” due to there being fewer priests “at the forefront of cultural and public debate”.
But the precise nature of how that sort of leadership can be delivered to make up for the shortfall in Ireland remains a matter of debate, and one that appears to lack the energy, inspiration and proactivity occurring on the other side of the Atlantic.