As part of my seven month sabbatical in 1980, I spent two months observing liberation theology in practice in India, the Philippines and Peru. I jotted down these thoughts after what was for me a mind-blowing experience in Peru. Feeling a burning desire to share the experience with others, I wrote it up and it was published in The Clergy Review, 1981, February, pp. 61-63. Although written over thirty years ago, the problem is still with us and what I wrote seems as relevant today as it was back in 1980. In fact, it is even more relevant since here in the UK and in the West in general, there is a very drastic reduction in the number of priests. In my own Liverpool Archdiocese the 2011 Directory lists 149 diocesan priests currently engaged in parish ministry (35 of them also holding other diocesan posts), whereas the 1980 Directory lists over 600 priests in parish ministry serving a catholic population of just over 500,000.
Many say we just have to trust in God. Perhaps God is longing for us to trust in our own initiative and come up with some creative solutions. As I mention in the text below, even if the numbers of full-time priests were to return to what they were, as long as the model of priest to which we are accustomed remains the same, I doubt whether that would be any solution to the problem. Looking around us at an ecumenical level might suggest more imaginative solutions. For instance, when I served in the shared Catholic/Anglican Church in Widnes, the vicar and I used to help with the very thorough training of Anglican men and women on the LOM formation course. LOM means ‘Locally Ordained Ministers’. On ordination, LOM priests are licensed for ministry only in their own parishes. It struck me as a form of ministry from which the Catholic Church has much to learn. It might offer one of the ‘imaginative solutions’ I refer to above.
It does not make sense pastorally (i.e. it is pastoral nonsense) to say that the Eucharist is at the heart of the life of the Christian community and then deny many Christian communities regular access to the Eucharist for the sake of a much lesser (and even questionable) pastoral value, namely that of obligatory celibacy for priests. In many developing countries that is precisely what is happening and apparently on an alarmingly wide scale.
In 1980 I had the privilege of a two-month visit to some developing countries. Admittedly that was a very brief experience but at least it brought me face to face with some undeniable realities. For instance, in the Philippines I visited three dioceses outside of Manila. In Infanta there are approximately 170,000 Catholics and only sixteen priests (including the bishop). In Kidapawan there are roughly 250,000 Catholics and twenty priests (again including the bishop). I did not get the figures for the third diocese, Cagayan de Oro, but from what I saw the situation seemed fairly similar. Moreover, apart from the major cities, I did not get the impression that those figures were exceptional. Furthermore, in these dioceses many of the Catholics are living in tiny villages miles from the nearest road, so that the priest can only get there on horseback or by foot, no mean feat during the monsoon period, as I discovered to my cost!
In Peru I visited Villa el Salvador, one of the shanty towns on the edge of Lima. There again there were a quarter of a million people, this time served by five priests. Some idea of what this means can be gained by imagining my own archdiocese, Liverpool, with this kind of priest-people ratio. At the moment (1980) Liverpool has half a million Catholics and they are served by over 600 priests! According to the Philippine or Peruvian ratio those half-million Liverpool Catholics would be served not by 600 priests but by sixty (Kidapawan and Infanta ratio) or by a mere ten priests (Villa el Salvador ratio). It is virtually impossible for us to imagine what such a situation would mean in practice.
Paradoxically I came back from my short trip abroad with the feeling that one of our problems in England is that we have far too many priests. The little experience I had in the places mentioned forced me to face the disturbing truth that in a strange way a Church with fewer priests seemed to be a Church with a far more active and responsible laity. In the three dioceses I visited great emphasis had been laid on the development of basic Christian communities and the result was that in many of the villages or sectors of the shanty towns there were very active praying, caring and socially involved Christian communities. Many of these communities were seldom able to celebrate the Eucharist (just a few times a year) due to the shortage of priests but they were sufficiently wellformed and organised to undertake their own Sunday para-liturgy and to run their own catechetical and community care programmes. I seemed to detect a quality of Christian community life in these places which I would not associate with the average parish in this country. Not having a priest living in their midst seems to have forced these communities to take on their own responsibilities. However, it should be recognised that the bishops, priests and sisters in these areas have made it a top priority to foster these local communities by training supporting community organisers and local leaders and catechists. In other words, the priests and sisters have taken on the role of providing and co-ordinating apostolic formation for local lay leaders and such work is the main thrust of their full-time ministry. The very positive element in this situation was the faith and vitality of the local lay community. The negative side lay in the fact that for most of the year many local Christian communities were deprived of the Eucharist. This had the additional disadvantage that they could not even celebrate in the context of the Eucharist the key events and feasts of their life as a community.
Maybe we need to say more than that there is a crying pastoral need for priests. Maybe we should also look at the kinds of priests that are needed. I cannot help feeling that it would kill the life of those basic Christian communities suddenly to have thrust upon them a full-time priest (whether a married man or a woman would be irrelevant) whose priestly role was patterned on the style of priesthood to which we are accustomed. As far as I can judge, what those communities need is the recognition or authorisation (‘ordination’) that one from their midst (man or woman, married or single) can preside at their Eucharist. This would be no more a full-time role than is the present role of leader of the liturgy in their communities. Whether it should be a permanent role for one specific individual or whether it should be a role shared by a number of appropriate members of the community would need further consideration. The book of essays, Minister? Pastoral? Prophet? Grass roots leadership in the Churches by Schillebeeckx and others (SCM, London, 1980) is very relevant to this issue.
If this is indeed the form of priesthood needed in these basic Christian communities, it is probable that normally the most suitable people would turn out to be married and employed in the kind of work normal in their community. To make this kind of priestly ministry full-time would be inappropriate and would only result in concentrating in one person the various ministries currently shared by the whole community. That would be a very retrograde step and would be detrimental to the development of the Christian community as such.
However, I can see that there is also a need for a full-time ministry somewhat along the lines of that currently being exercised by the priests and sisters working to promote and sustain the local communities and their leaders. They would probably need some community base themselves and it would be appropriate that they should at least share in the Eucharistic presidency in their local community – and maybe also in the communities they visit on their roving commission. This would surely be true at the level of breaking the word of the scriptures with these communities.
This full-time pastoral ministry would be a different form of priesthood. Such priests would also be more effective in symbolizing the unity of the local community with the wider local Church presided over by the bishop. This fact is another important reason for their being able to exercise Eucharistic presidency in their visits to the local basic communities. Although I would not argue that celibacy is essential for such a full-time ministry, I would certainly say that those who have committed themselves to consecrated apostolic celibacy (men and women) would, other things being equal, be very suitable persons for this ministry.
As regards our own country, it would be foolish to translate uncritically what has proved helpful in a different setting and culture. Nevertheless, I think we have much to learn from the experience of the developing world. One point strikes me very strongly. We would be unwise to assume too easily that a reduction in the number of priests in this country is a pastoral disaster. The experience in parts of the developing world suggests that it might well be a glorious pastoral opportunity for forming a ‘Sharing Church’ along the lines so beautifully portrayed by the bishops in Part One of The Easter People. If there is any truth in this, we might be committing a major pastoral blunder if we make it a priority to increase the number of full-time priests before undertaking a radical reappraisal of the kind (or kinds) of priesthood needed for such a ‘Sharing Church’. Whatever pastoral value might be involved in obligatory clerical celibacy, it certainly should not be allowed to stand in the way of the supreme value of the Eucharist in the life of the local Christian community. To deprive many Christian communities of the Eucharist for long periods of the year for the sake of upholding obligatory celibacy seems to be a policy without any adequate justification theologically or pastorally.
It might be worth quoting some lines from the diary I kept of my visit to Peru. It is referring to the local Church in one of the very remote rural areas linked to the town of Tambogrande:
The sisters too are affected by the shortage of priests. For a while they had an elderly Peruvian priest in Tambogrande but he has gone. Now they have no resident priest. A retired military chaplain comes for Sunday Mass but he is not very reliable. Consequently, it is very hard for the Sisters since they cannot be sure even of weekly Mass, let alone daily Mass. Despite it all, they remain a very prayerful community, thank God.
One moving experience I had there was to celebrate Sunday Mass in Callejones, a tiny village about three hours drive (by jeep through desert with no roads) from Tambogrande. Sister Therese Hartley SND had prepared a group for their first Communion, mostly teenagers. All the families turned out and filled the little Church which they had built themselves. Sister Therese looked after the first part of the Mass (including the homily) and I took over at the offertory procession. Sister Mary McCallion, another SND Sister there, had taught me enough Spanish to be able to say the Second Eucharistic Prayer but that was as far as I could go! Callejones (and the many villages like it) would only have Mass a couple of times a year. It was a Mass I will never forget. I felt very privileged to be able to share in it. Yet it made me even more convinced that it is a serious pastoral mistake for the Church not to ordain women in such situations. How can we say that the Eucharist is at the heart of our Faith and our Christian life and yet deny such communities the Eucharist for the lack of a priest when there is a sister available – especially when she has as much theology and far more spirituality than most of us priests and is fully accepted in that community as the spiritual leader and the one in charge of the liturgy?
I would not want these remarks to be read as taking away from the tremendous work being done by many very dedicated foreign priests in these countries. For the present many of them are playing an indispensable role in building up these basic Christian communities. But the long-term solution must surely lie with the men and women who make up the local indigenous Church.