No Catholic priests, no Catholic Church?

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 20, 1995 by Tim Unsworth

Angus Tully had been around horses all his life, even back in Catholic Ireland, where the definition of a Protestant was an Irishman with a horse. His religious faith was conceptually akin to his long-dead mother's belief in leprechauns. "Of course, I don't believe in them," she used to whisper. "But they're there."

He was nearly 60 before he married. He had spent his life in stables, rodeos, riding academies and the like. It made perfect sense to him that he be married on his horse and under his 10-gallon hat.

"I don't have a 10-gallon hat," Fr. Ambrose Deady told me. "But I've talked to the couple. They are decent, hardworking people. They've got trace marks of Catholic blood. There won't be any children and they'll ask nothing more of the church except to be buried from it.

"I'm not getting up on any horse," Deady continued. "But I'm going to marry them. I'll dress like a Lutheran minister and hope I don't get caught."

I'm hearing more and more stories like that these days. They are part of an evolving church that now must react more and more like Tevya in "Fiddler on the Roof" rather than checking with the office manual.

Another story has a pastor confronted by a couple caught in a canon law jam concerning the man's previous marriage. The pastor advised them to get married by a judge and promised to provide a blessing afterward, largely so the man's devout, aged mother would not be hurt. When the couple arrived without the marriage certificate signed by the judge, the pastor bit his tongue and married them with the mother in mind.

Within a week, the chancellor had mailed back what priests sometimes refer to as a "gotcha letter." It contained a copy of the marriage certificate the offending priest had signed. The pastor got his teeth kicked in. The chancellor got promotion points.

But chancery discipline has done little to slow the changing direction of pastoral services in a church that continues to lose business. Sensitive pastor are being asked to stretch their sacramental garments to cover all manner of situations. It amounts to an underground church.

Recently one pastor told me he had presided 11 times during a single weekend. In another case, three clerical jubilarians left a retirement party early because all were presiding at Saturday evening Masses. The youngest of them was 77. Elsewhere an 81-year-old bishop delivered a touching homily at the funeral of an 18-year-old boy. Their fires have never gone out.

But now look at the new liturgy of the Eucharist in the absence of a priest. In one large parish in Eden Prairie, Minn., and undoubtedly others, it has completely replaced the weekday Mass. In other cases it replaces the morning Mass on any day when there is a funeral or a wedding.

"I had 77 funerals last year," the nearly 70-year-old pastor said. "If I'm going to be a good pastor, I've got to visit the dying person. Then I've got to go to the wake, do a service and prepare a homily. The next day, I do the funeral and go to the cemetery and family luncheon.

"It's almost as bad with weddings," he added. "I had about two dozen of them last year. So, I don't have a morning Mass on wedding or funeral days. That's a least one-third of my year."

The pastor's solution makes sense given the worsening priest shortage But in other cases, changes may be linked to the vagaries of human nature.

Emerging evidence shows that week day Mass is on the wane partly because some priests are just too lazy to preside. A number of pastoral associates confide that they quietly check out the rectory each morning to ascertain if Father is up. When he is not, they must preside at the absent-priest liturgy. Further, they admit that the priestless liturgy itself is evolving.

The pastoral associates now process down the aisle and occupy the presider's chair. They let others do the readings, give the homily, and recite virtually every prayer except the words of consecration - all while the pastor, who would not have made acolyte back in the days when priests were abundant, is still in bed.

Then there is Manus Boyle, a resigned priest who serves as chaplain at a local public hospital. It's a small hospital, hardly worthy of the local parish's attention. (In fairness, some of the bean counters administering hospitals have said that floor nurses are not to call clergy until a patient has expired, short of a specific request. The standard line: "It's not the highest and best use of the priests' skills.")

Manus Boyle makes cold calls on all patients. He finds Catholics who have drifted from the church but want reconciliation before they are delivered home. He always offers the services of a priest but, as often as not, finds souls who have been adrift for too long. So Boyle reasons that he cannot turn away someone in an emergency. He shrives and anoints them and brings them the Eucharist. He'll even officiate at a non-eucharistic liturgy at the funeral home.

Then there's old Leo Crumlish, who never saved a nickel during his years of active ministry. He served at a time when extra income came largely through stipends. He hated being a sacramental jukebox, so he retired on a pension that barely covers his rent and his car.