PRIESTS “WILL have effectively disappeared in Ireland in two to three decades,’’ a prominent West of Ireland priest has said.
Writing in the Furrow magazine, Fr Brendan Hoban, parish priest at St Muredach’s Cathedral, in Ballina, Co Mayo, said of his own Killala diocese that “in 20 years’ time there will be around eight priests instead of the present 34, with probably two or three under 60 years of age’’.
Last April the Archbishop of Dublin, Most Rev Diarmuid Martin, said there were now 10 times more priests over 70 than under 40 in Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese. “In just a few years we will only have a little over 200 diocesan priests to minister to our almost 200 parishes,” he said.
In April also it emerged that the number of priests in the Tuam archdiocese is set to fall by 30 per cent over the next four years, leaving most parishes there with just one resident priest.
On June 14th last the Catholic diocese of Waterford and Lismore saw its first ordination in eight years, when Fr Michael Toomey (39) became a priest. In that same diocese this week, and for the second time in two months, sacristan Ken Hackett has been conducting a Liturgy of the Word with Holy Communion instead of daily Mass at Ardfinnan parish in Co Tipperary, as the priest, Fr Robert Power, was away.
Fr Power celebrated Mass there last Saturday and in two other churches in the parish on Sunday. He had alerted parishioners by newsletter to the planned arrangement.
Mr Hackett is a minister of the Eucharist and a minister of the Word, as is required for a person conducting a Liturgy of the Word with Holy Communion, according to Vatican norms published in the early 1970s. Women may also conduct such liturgies.
Mr Hackett told The Irish Times yesterday that the response from parishioners had been “very,very good”.
As reported in this newspaper on July 8th, 2008, the practice of lay people conducting such services is becoming commonplace, usually involving women, on the Continent.
An example is the Nôtre Dame de l’Espérance parish on France’s Mediterranean. It has five churches and one priest. Each church has appointed a lay person to perform almost all functions of a priest except consecration at Mass and administering those sacraments only a priest may.
