The time has come for bishops to consult parish communities before a priest is moved, a leading priest commentator has said. Fr Martin Delaney writing in this week’s Irish Catholic says the consultation is all the more necessary if the priest being moved is not going to be replaced.
Fr Martin asks: “Is it fair to ask a seventy-year-old priest -once deemed vulnerable during the pandemic and advised to cocoon – to leave a parish where he and his people are content, only to take on two or three new parishes?”
Fr Martin says he is detecting “increasingly vocal protests from parish communities learning that their bishop has decided to move Father to a new appointment” and in one case the bishop reversed the decision due to the protest.
Fr Martin concludes: “Whatever stage we are at in our synodal journey, the days of telling laypeople to ‘Pay Up, Pray Up and Shut Up’ must be over.
