A Hair In Your Soup?

Once upon a time a gourmet chef took over the day-to-day operations of a highly acclaimed and successful restaurant. The menu was superb, the presentation excellent, patrons numerous, but one of the chef's policies gradually allowed a major problem to develop: poor service. There were not enough waiters. Business suffered.

Applications to serve were numerous, but the gourmet chef  rejected most of them. He insisted that all who served had to be bald! He said that this control assured that no patron would ever find a hair in his soup!

Priests of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati recently received a memo containing "open listings," that is, positions in parishes and other church-related offices needing a priest. The listings are "open" in the sense that priests may nominate themselves or other priests for these positions.

One listing in this memo is unique. The Priests' Personnel Office is looking for a priest who will serve as "parochial administrator" of one parish and as "parochial vicar" to assist the pastor of three other parishes. (A parochial vicar is what we used to call "an associate pastor," and a parochial administrator is a quasi-pastor, that is, a priest who takes the place of a pastor; cf. Canons 539-540).

Such an arrangement implies that the diocese does not have enough priests for all its parishes. The priest shortage is having an impact upon people in  general and upon priests in particular.

In 1959, before Vatican II,  the Archbishop of Cincinnati Most Reverend Karl J. Alter commissioned a study which concluded that there was a "threatening shortage of priests for the immediate future" of the archdiocese.

His study was accurate; the shortage, however, was not confined to "the immediate future."  The statistics for 2012 show that the Archdiocese has 176 active diocesan priests plus 95 who are sick, retired or away. An additional 237 religious priests serve in the diocese, some of them in parishes. The number of parishes is 214; of that total, 152 have resident pastors and 62 are without resident pastors though administered by priests.

These stats reflect the reason for that unique open listing mentioned above and for the development of so-called "pastoral regions," that is, arranging one priest to serve as pastor or parochial administrator of more than one parish in a given area.

Yet another open listing seeks "Parochial Vicar for Champaign County Region" which includes four parishes --one priest to serve as associate pastor in a rural area of the diocese which includes four congregations.

The Archdiocese of Cincinnati, of course, is not alone in coping with the priest shortage. Across the country, according to studies published by the Center for Applied Research for the Apostolate (CARA), there was in 2009 "slightly more than one active diocesan priest per parish (1.05) in the United States."  At the present trend by 2035 the estimate of priest per parish is 0.84; the number of Catholics "per active diocesan priest would be 2,210."

At the present moment, according to CARA, there are "about 63,800 Saturday Vigil and Sunday Masses in an average week" in the United States.

There are still some who think priests work only on weekends. They forget about administrative duties, communion calls, anointing the sick, weddings, funerals, fielding complaints, confessions, staff meetings, parish council, finance commission, etc, etc, etc. Priests are not as available, even in emergencies, as many parishioners would like them to be.

The hierarchy's concern for the priest shortage is real. Bishops are constantly urging more prayers for vocations and initiating vocation recruitment programs.

At the same time there have been calls for the development of a new paradigm for priestly service. Those we call priests today normally fulfill three roles; they are priests (sacramental role), they are evangelists (the prophetic role), and they are leaders (the servant/leadership role).

Presbyteros is the term we usually translate as "priest," but it is more accurately rendered "elder." The Greek word for priest is hiereus, one who offers sacrifice. The roles are not necessarily identical.

Is it possible to ordain men who would fulfill the first role (that is, preside at liturgy, shrive people of their sins, anoint the sick, etc) without at the same time serving as professional teachers and administrator/leaders?

Are there men in the parish congregation who could serve as priests and yet remain in secular jobs and be husbands and fathers?

I remember being told by a non-Catholic professor at Vanderbilt University back in 1987, "Your church is going to have to make up its mind which is more important: celibacy or eucharist."

His bold assessment has challenged my thinking all these years.

Once upon a time a gourmet chef took over the day-to-day operations of a highly acclaimed and successful restaurant. The menu was superb, the presentation excellent, patrons numerous, but one of the chef's policies gradually allowed a major problem to develop: poor service. There were not enough waiters. Business suffered.

Applications to serve were numerous, but the gourmet chef  rejected most of them. He insisted that all who served had to be bald! He said that his requirement assured that no patron would ever find a hair in his soup!