Maybe dearth of celibate clergy is nudging church to start over

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 27, 1995 by Jack Morris

Recently Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland said naming parish administrators is an inadequate solution to the priest shortage. We are, he said, slowly becoming a church of the word only.

What an amazing impasse: the Catholic church done in not by the Protestant Reformation but by our own timidity. This, great church obdurately chooses to allow rapidly growing numbers of Catholic communities - more than 60 percent worldwide, it is said - to languish without the Eucharist.

I am of the opinion that the movement that blossomed as Vatican II received its vital energy from Pope Pius X's decrees early in this century promoting frequent and universal communion. All who received holy communion came to be the mouth of the Body of Christ, bringing nourishment the whole.

St. Pius X saw it was only by this eucharistic miracle that the church could rise from its long slumber and courageously engage the real world.

Nothing is more critical to a vital church agenda as we sail into the high winds of the multicultural third millennium than the Eucharist. Why? Because "the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life," says the catechism. Is this to be taught or lived?

The situation is exacerbated by church leaders who tell us mere matters of sexuality are more important for the reign o God. Perhaps it is we, including the avid readers of NCR, who are to blame. Could the apparent chaos be a carefully orchestrated scenario of the Holy Spirit? And Pope John Paul, unbeknownst to himself, is birthing a new church? Could the Spirit be forcing us, the lower echelons of the church, to use our muscles to push, aiding the birth process? Perhaps the great enemy is our own fear, timidity and resentment of the laboring pains, blindly seeing them as signs of death than birth.

In the New Testament, Jesus is quite clear. He simply tells his followers to gather in small communities, to take ordinary food and drink at table (bread and wine) and to speak certain phrases (more or less the same in several scriptural accounts) over them. He summed it all up with, "Do this in memory of me.'

Nowhere is it indicated that these words are reserved for the lips of certain persons. Wouldn't it be both reasonable and efficacious (and just like Jesus) to have ordinary Catholics from house churches, to gather and read the scriptures, say the words and share and rejoice in this unique Good-given gift to the whole church?

I am not encouraging a wild revolution. I am a priest. I have "orders" and I realize the need for order, decorum and jurisdiction in public worship. I have no objection to the demand that public worship in the Catholic church be governed by law and require an ordained priest.

But shouldn't we explore whether the Spirit isn't, in denying us celibate vocations, nudging us beyond a moribund concept of eucharistic ministry.? Why not investigate more deeply the full implications of our baptismal anointing, which includes a genuine, priestly character, albeit specifically different from that of an ordained minister?

T.S. Eliot's words might give us something to ponder: We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started from and know the place for the first time."

Let's get on with imagining, designing and constructing, and not be afraid.