Relentless Ministry – In a new series written by Priests, we will explore what most priests describe as “Relentless Ministry” and the challenges of being a priest in Ireland today
Gary O’Sullivan and ‘Fr John’ have both written recently about the relentless pressure on priests and nobody can dispute that as a genuine issue which can only continue to get worse. What we can question is whether priests are doing enough to help themselves. It seems to me that there is a direct correlation between how much pressure a priest is under and how much that priest is prepared to let his parishioners take on responsibility for various areas. In his article, Gary included a typical list of activities requiring the priest’s attention – “the daily dose of funerals, weddings, baptisms, sick calls, safeguarding training, GDPR forms, music rights checklists, heating bills, insurance requirements, cemeteries, schools, diocesan committees, special collections.” It is difficult to see, however, why several of those activities require Holy Orders to carry them out; it is indeed quite likely that in some areas such as GDPR, insurance or music rights, that there is somebody in the parish much better qualified to carry them out than the priest. Unfortunately, activities like these often have to be carried out to a specific timetable and cannot be deferred; as the priest gets busier and busier with them, the most important part of the priest’s duty, his pastoral care of his parishioners, is the part that becomes easiest to defer which in turn can increase the sense of detachment from the Church that is becoming ever more common.
Demands
Going beyond these day-to-day activities, every parish needs to be looking at its long-term pastoral demands in these increasingly difficult circumstances and trying to develop a plan of action to fulfil them. Everyone who has looked at this has concluded that the answer lies with Parish Pastoral Councils (PPC). Although PPCs are one of the main recommendations in the final report of the Synodal Pathway, there is nothing new about them; PPCs have their roots in Vatican II and were explicitly recommended in the 1983 Code of Canon Law. Pope John Paul II referred to them in his 2000 Apostolic Letter for the New Millennium and their importance for the future of the Church has been further echoed by Pope Benedict and Pope Francis.
I know of at least one diocese where the figure is less than 50% and there is no reason to think that is untypical”
In 2007, in response to the very patchy implementation of PPCs over the previous 20 odd years, the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference issued their ‘Commission for Pastoral Renewal and Adult Faith Development’ in which they noted:
“While the Code of Canon Law stops short of mandating parish pastoral councils in every parish it certainly encourages their establishment, seeing this as an inescapable consequence of the vision of Church heralded by the Second Vatican Council.”
Seventeen years on from that document, very little seems to have changed in practice with lots of people talking about PPCs but a lot less people implementing them. There are no figures immediately available for what proportion of parishes actually have established a PPC (perhaps the absence of figures tells its own story) but I know of at least one diocese where the figure is less than 50% and there is no reason to think that is untypical across the country.
Change
The lack of implementation is due to one thing and one thing only – individual priests declining if not outright refusing to implement a PPC in their parish, insisting that they retain responsibility for all areas of parish activity. Reasons for this are not always clearly stated but one wonders how an individual priest can come to the conclusion that he is a better judge of what needs to be done to deal with the problems facing the Church than three consecutive popes and the Irish Catholic Bishops speaking collectively.
Perhaps the bishop’s first response should be to ask that priest what help he has sought”
Regarding the recent Synodal Pathway, my own impression was that parishes that had an existing effective Pastoral Council were the ones who became most engaged with the process and that parishes with no such Council were the ones least likely to participate with any degree of enthusiasm and, in far too many cases, did not engage at all. In effect, the Synodal Pathway likely did more to help and encourage those who are already doing well and did little for those who most need help.
Even among its most enthusiastic supporters, there seems to be a widespread feeling of disappointment that the Synodal Pathway failed to achieve any real change. Whilst the media, however, like to focus on what they see as the ‘big ticket’ issues like female ordination and treatment of divorced people and the LGBT community, the people I talk to are frustrated not about those major items but more with how little change there has seems to have been that can help them at a local level with the specific issues facing their parish. The big danger in all of this is that whilst listening is a vital part of bringing about real change, if nothing changes as a result of the listening then it may seen as little more than lip-service and lead to people becoming even more dispirited.
Pope Francis has signed off on the final Synod document, making it a teaching of the Magisterium. The Synod’s conclusions on the value of PPCs suggest that these might become mandatory in Canon Law rather than optional as they are at present. It remains to be seen whether that happens in practice and what the effect might be. In the meantime, when a priest comes to his bishop looking for additional help or even just to moan about his ever-increasing workload, perhaps the bishop’s first response should be to ask that priest what help he has sought from his parishioners.
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Martin Harran has been involved in a range of parish activities over many years including past membership of a PPC.
