Dubbed \u201cPriestless Sunday,\u201d next weekend will find parish leaders filling the pulpits at Roman Catholic churches all around Fairbanks and the road systems.<\/p>\n
No, the urban parish priests haven\u2019t all taken vacations at the same time. Instead, they will be ministering in rural parishes across the sprawling Fairbanks Catholic Diocese, which encompasses almost a half million square miles north of the Alaska Range to the Arctic Ocean and west to the Bering Sea.<\/p>\n
Priestless Sunday is the product of \u201cthinking outside the box,\u201d and a creative attempt to deal with the acute shortage of Roman Catholic priests, explained Robert Hannon, special assistant to the Bishop Donald Kettler.<\/p>\n
Deacons and lay presiders will be conducting communion services \u2014 Celebration of the Word with Holy Communion \u2014 both Saturday and Sunday. It is not Mass but will satisfy the Catholic obligation to attend Mass.<\/p>\n
Kettler has personally been preparing urban parishioners for next weekend, visiting each of the local parishes for town meeting style gatherings and explaining the twofold goal of Priestless Sunday: to establish a sister parish program that is not just priest to community but community to community.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t say they were happy about doing this, but they understood the necessity of it because of the shortage of priests,\u201d Kettler said.<\/p>\n
The diocese has only 17 priests, but serves approximately 16,000 Catholics spread out across 47 parishes, the vast majority of which are only reachable by airplane most of the year. It\u2019s the norm for priests serving in outlying areas to divide their ministry among six to eight rural parishes. Rural churches will have a visiting priest to celebrate Mass about once every six weeks, Kettler said.<\/p>\n
The idea and decision to conduct an urban Priestless Sunday evolved from pastoral and priest council meetings, Kettler said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a one-time thing. However, we hope that the (urban) priests will make arrangements with parishes they are visiting and go out to them periodically,\u201d Kettler said. \u201cI really hope that the priests here will see this as part of their mission.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kettler said he would like to see parishioners become involved, perhaps in catechetical exchange programs as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hope this will be a way that we will be able to continue to serve most of our diocese and not have most of our priests here in Fairbanks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A few decades ago, there were many more priests serving the huge missionary diocese.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Jesuits always supplied the diocese,\u201d Kettler said. \u201cAt one time there were 50 Jesuits, and now there are just eight Jesuits in the whole state.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bishop continues to actively seek priests from many other dioceses and has developed and is distributing a recruitment brochure and video for that purpose. Alaska\u2019s climate, winter darkness and remote location add to the recruitment challenge.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Continue at the link for the rest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From Alaska comes news — for once — about something other than Sarah Palin. It’s a dramatic move by parishes to deal with the priest shortage. This, from the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: Dubbed \u201cPriestless Sunday,\u201d next weekend will find parish leaders filling the pulpits at Roman Catholic churches all around Fairbanks and the road systems.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-people-in-the-pews","category-vocations"],"yoast_head":"\n
A Sunday without priests - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/09\/a-sunday-without-priests.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Sunday without priests - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From Alaska comes news — for once — about something other than Sarah Palin. It’s a dramatic move by parishes to deal with the priest shortage. 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It’s a dramatic move by parishes to deal with the priest shortage. This, from the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: Dubbed \u201cPriestless Sunday,\u201d next weekend will find parish leaders filling the pulpits at Roman Catholic churches all around Fairbanks and the road systems.…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/09\/a-sunday-without-priests.html","og_site_name":"The Deacon's Bench","article_published_time":"2008-09-28T19:04:00+00:00","author":"Deacon Greg Kandra","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/09\/a-sunday-without-priests.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/09\/a-sunday-without-priests.html","name":"A Sunday without priests - The Deacon's Bench","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-09-28T19:04:00+00:00","dateModified":"2008-09-28T19:04:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/5a7b3c6e9d155e382842aa310ff9b1ee"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/09\/a-sunday-without-priests.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/09\/a-sunday-without-priests.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/09\/a-sunday-without-priests.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"A Sunday without priests"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/","name":"The Deacon's Bench","description":"Where a Roman Catholic Deacon Ponders the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/5a7b3c6e9d155e382842aa310ff9b1ee","name":"Deacon Greg Kandra","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/114\/1144d939be636f641ea021e1d347f9fdx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/114\/1144d939be636f641ea021e1d347f9fdx96.jpg","caption":"Deacon Greg Kandra"},"description":"A Roman Catholic deacon serving the Diocese of Brooklyn, New York, Greg Kandra is News Director for the diocese's cable channel, NET (New Evangelization Television.) Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2770\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}