{"id":334,"date":"2009-03-16T11:25:42","date_gmt":"2009-03-16T11:25:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/rock-and-a-hard-place-pope-say.html"},"modified":"2009-03-16T11:25:42","modified_gmt":"2009-03-16T11:25:42","slug":"rock-and-a-hard-place-pope-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/rock-and-a-hard-place-pope-say.html","title":{"rendered":"Rock and a hard place: Pope says laity can’t fill priest vacuum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Benedict XVI today announced a “Year for Priests”– a fine idea, though one that apparently also comes with a tough message for lay people dealing with a shortage of priests, and the Eucharist. <\/p>\n

First, the announcement. According to the Vatican press release<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

“Benedict XVI highlighted the “indispensable struggle for moral perfection which must dwell in every truly priestly heart. In order to favour this tendency of priests towards spiritual perfection, upon which the effectiveness of their ministry principally depends, I have”, he said, “decided to call a special ‘Year for Priests’ which will run from 19 June 2009 to 19 June 2010”. This year marks “the 150th anniversary of the death of the saintly ‘Cure of Ars’, Jean Marie Vianney, a true example of a pastor at the service of Christ’s flock”.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The news release ends, however, with this paragraph, in full:<\/p>\n

\n

“The centrality of Christ leads to a correct valuation of priestly ministry, without which there would be no Eucharist, no mission, not even the Church. It is necessary then, to ensure that ‘new structures’ or pastoral organisations are not planned for a time in which it will be possible to ‘do without’ ordained ministry, on the basis of an erroneous interpretation of the promotion of the laity, because this would lay the foundations for a further dilution in priestly ministry, and any supposed ‘solutions’ would, in fact, dramatically coincide with the real causes of the problems currently affecting the ministry”. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That seems like a pretty direct admonishment to lay reform groups, such as Voice of the Faithful (VOTF)<\/a> on this side of the Atlantic, or Wir sind Kirche (We are Church)<\/a> in Europe–or to the many individual Catholics or groups who are trying to cope with a growing shortage of priests, and of parishes and of the Eucharist. <\/p>\n

A couple of thoughts: I don’t think one should necessarily conflate lay initiatives for reform or simply lay-led ministries in the absence of a priest as intentional or even unintentionally undermining the role of the priest. Many if not most of these groups value the priesthood. And some argue that the women’s ordination movement itself reflects a kind of clericalism! <\/p>\n

Obviously the laity in the post-Vatican II age of a “priesthood of all believers” and a vocations crunch has contributed to an intense debate over the role of the priest and that of the laity. With or without the vocations shortage there would still be a debate, I believe, about the servant-leader and what is often called the cultic or iconic model of priesthood. (And most will respond, “both\/and, not either\/or…”) <\/p>\n

But the vocations “crisis” (scare-quotes are used to denote doubt about the term–some will see it as a good thing, perhaps, others as non-existent) has also forced the church on the ground into new arrangements–lay people as pastors, even women as pastors, the ordination of married converts, and of course overworked, overstressed circuit rider priests who are used as sacramental machines rather than pastors, and with parts wearing down and no replacements. <\/p>\n

The pope rightly stresses the centrality of the Eucharist, but without offering viable remedies to the absence of the Eucharist for so many people. Priests are central to the church–I support anything that supports them, as this Year of Priests is designed to do. But the Eucharist is also not just for priests.<\/p>\n

So what do we do? Reasserting clerical privilege doesn’t cut it, as the reality on the ground is what it is. Cardinal Egan even raised a discussion of optional celibacy<\/a>. There are other options, all of which would not undermine the priestly office. I think it would be better to discuss options now before the crisis gets even worse.<\/p>\n

The full text here, in Italian<\/a>, of the pope’s talk today to the Congregation for Clergy in which he made the announcment. <\/p>\n

Hat tip: Cathy Grossman at USA Today<\/a>.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}