Like post offices – use your church or lose it, but don’t complain when parishes disappear
OF ALL the images from 1979 used to compare and contrast last month’s visit of Pope Francis with the last papal visit, the one that struck me most was John Paul II visiting Maynooth. The pope is shown entering the beautiful neo-gothic college chapel being cheered along like a rockstar by some 1,000 student priests. John Paul is later said to have been horrified by what he saw as the spectacle of would-be priests behaving in a church like they were at a soccer match. Whatever the appropriateness of cheering and whooping in a seminary chapel, it was a powerful symbol of the outward strength of Irish Catholicism. The faith was invincible, and we knew it. Over the years, Maynooth became the largest and best-known seminary in the world. She sent her sons wherever souls were to be found to be saved. In rural Ireland, it was said, a family had really made it when they had a bull in the field and a son in Maynooth. Had Pope Francis visited the national seminary during his brief trip, he would’ve witnessed a very different scene. Just five men will begin their studies for the priesthood later this month – believed to be the smallest number in the college’s 223-year history. Another man will study in Rome and nine others have embarked on a comprehensive preparatory year with the hope of entering the seminary next year. By the end of this month, there will be just 23 men across the seven-year programme based in the sprawling Maynooth campus training to be priests in Irish dioceses. It’s a bleak picture that is obvious to anyone who walks Maynooth’s iconic cloisters. The walls are adorned with the class-pieces that show the images of all those men ordained in a particular year. The individual images of the new priests have enlarged dramatically in recent years. Where there used to be dozens of postage-stamp size images, there is now just a handful of faces with images resized to fill the same space. Ireland is running out of priests and Maynooth is just a microcosm of the acute shortage being felt across the country. “Who cares?” you might ask. Isn’t Ireland becoming less and less religious? Yes and no. While it’s certainly true that fewer people attend Mass on a weekly basis, the number of people who still identify as Catholic, have their children baptised and want a Catholic funeral is remarkably high. Most recent figures from the European Social Survey reveal that 24pc of Irish young people attend Mass every week. Over all age groups, an RTÉ exit poll conducted at the abortion referendum found that 44pc of people went to Mass at least once a month. A further 27pc of people said they went on special occasions such as Christmas and Easter. Even allowing for a little bit of grandiose inflation, it’s a lot of people who rely on an ageing cohort of priests for significant occasions in their lives. Next month, the Diocese of Clogher (which includes Co Monaghan, most of Co Fermanagh and parts of counties Tyrone, Donegal, Louth and Cavan) will cut the number of Sunday Masses from 113 to 96. The number of priests in the diocese has fallen by a third in just 20 years. Of the 58 priests still working in parishes, 28 are over 65. Do the math. Clogher is not alone, and the diocese is facing the crisis head-on. Many priests complain their bishop stubbornly resists plans to cut Masses, insisting the Church may soon turn the corner on vocations. It’s a case of naïveté trumping optimism. Decades ago, Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich predicted that Ireland would one day need missionaries from Africa and Asia. He was laughed at. But that day is here, and many dioceses have been sending to Nigeria and India for stand-in priests. But, as the number of Catholics continues to increase there, developing countries will soon need to call their priests home. What was once thought unthinkable is now not too far off. Ireland will soon have a year where not a single priest will be ordained to serve in an Irish parish. Already, many rural churches are all but closed, opening only for an hour on a Sunday morning for a visiting priest to lead Mass. How long before they go the way of rural post offices and are closed for good? Urban areas – particularly Dublin – are in a much more critical state. In about a decade, it’s predicted that Dublin will have just one priest under the age of 40. How long until many city centre churches lie padlocked, unused and unloved? The British-based sociologist of religion Prof Stephen Bullivant recently described Irish people as remaining “astonishingly religious”. And the data would seem to bear him out. But, how many people who avail of Church services – whether just for special occasions of daily Mass – see themselves as responsible for the Church’s future? How many people who enjoy the comfort blanket of the Church encourage initiatives to foster vocations to the priesthood and religious life? It’s not enough to look to bishops and Church leaders and grumble about falling numbers of priests. Or confront the ageing parish priest about cutting Masses, or that more should be done for young people. Unless Irish Catholics start to take more responsibility for the Church – and this includes encouraging vocations – Mass and the parish church as a focal point will disappear from large parts of the country. The parish clergy have been a feature of the life of Irish communities for some 300 years. If they disappear, it will mark the biggest social shift in Irish society since we stopped speaking our own language.