For all of the previous reasons, as well as the fact that the
U.S. Catholic population is growing 10 percent per decade, fueled
mainly by Hispanic immigration, the priest shortage in the United
States is likely to get worse before it gets better. And this
worsening shortage, wrote the late University of Wisconsin sociologist
of religion Richard Schoenherr, is a powerful engine driving change
within the church.
About 25 percent of all Catholics have thus far noticed the
effects of the shortage, according to a survey commissioned by
the American bishops. That will change. The once unthinkable "No
Mass on Sunday" is about to become a reality in an increasing
number of parishes. Bishop James Griffin of Columbus, Ohio, in
fact, has already warned his diocese that "there will be times
when due to a lack of an available priest there may be no Mass
on a Sunday in a given place."
Anticipating such times, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
several years ago established a "Word and Communion" liturgy to
be celebrated when no priest is available. The service resembles
a Mass in every respect except there is no consecration of the
Eucharist. In Goodbye Father: The Celibate Male Priesthood
and the Future of the Catholic Church, published posthumously
this autumn, Schoenherr contends that this priestless service
"could signal the most momentous structural change in the Roman
Catholic Church since the Protestant Reformation."
Such a structural change could have a profound effect on the
ethos of the church. "If there is no priest at a Sunday service,
no one in the congregation is identifying with the role played
by the priest," Schoenherr writes. "So no one is identifying with
the beliefs and values inherent in priesthood and the intimately
related ritual of eucharistic sacrifice.
"Hence, little by little, the role of priest falls out of the
social structure of the community as Sunday after Sunday the congregation
adapts to an order of worship which does not include a priest.
Along with the disappearing role of priest go the beliefs about
the centrality of the eucharistic sacrifice of the Mass, which
have been the bedrock of Catholic piety since the earliest days."
If they reach a critical mass, the Word and Communion services
could accelerate and perhaps even perpetuate the priest shortage.
The place of the priest in the community would be diminished in
a revolutionary way, and the net effect would be to make Catholicism
more Protestant in structure and style.
David Yamane, a Notre Dame assistant professor of sociology
and the editor of Schoenherr's book, talks about carrying the
issue to its logical, if absurd, conclusion. "As far-fetched as
it sounds, potentially we could have one priest or bishop in the
country who would consecrate all the hosts needed and ship them
out to the nation's parishes."
Schoenherr contends in Goodbye Father that the church
is now at a crossroads and must choose the direction for the future:
Either expand the available pool of candidates for the priesthood
to maintain the centrality of the Eucharist or evolve into a lay-dominated
form of Catholicism. Or there could be a schism of some type.
Whatever choice is made, Schoenherr argues that a strikingly transformed
Catholicism looms on the horizon.
In his book, Schoenherr predicts that ultimately the church
will realize that maintaining the eucharistic tradition, the sacrifice
of the Mass, is more essential to Catholicism than maintaining
a celibate, male clergy. He argues that sacrament and priesthood
are not expendable; they are at the core of the faith. Celibacy
and male exclusivity are traditions maintained by church law;
consequently they can be set aside, he asserts.
A 2001 study of the American Catholic laity, led by Catholic
University sociologist William D'Antonio, suggests that lay Catholics
agree with Schoenherr. They express strong belief in the importance
of the sacraments and a strong desire for their regular availability.
The study indicated that U.S. Catholics find Word and Communion
services unacceptable as a long-term substitute for the Mass.
Meanwhile, 70 percent approve of ordaining married men, while
60 percent are open to ordaining celibate women and 50 percent
married women.
As the priest shortage worsens, Schoenherr writes, pressure
will build for a radical solution that will result in the ordination
of married men in the Roman rite. "Optional celibacy will be legitimated
amid conflict, but will spread and be routinized in the next two
or three generations."
Certainly, the leap to ordaining married men is not a large
one. Married men are ordained in Eastern rite churches that are
in union with Rome, such as the Melkite church. Even in the Roman
rite an estimated 80 married former Episcopal priests in the United
States have been allowed to continue their priestly ministry after
converting to Roman Catholicism. It's a much greater leap to ordaining
women, but Schoenherr writes that this gap too eventually will
be spanned, although not without bitter controversy and conflict.
But maybe he has it wrong. Some argue that Schoenherr's conclusions
do not hold up because the priest shortage, while real, is not
as threatening to the integrity of the church as he believes.
They point out that the church successfully has endured worse
shortages in the past. Indeed, in 1829, the ratio was one priest
for every 2,150 Catholics; today's ratio is one priest for every
1,898 members of the laity.
"When folks talk about circuit-rider priests [a priest serving
many parishes], this is nothing new," says Rev. Wilson Miscamble,
CSC, rector of Moreau Seminary. "Remember Stephen Badin [the priest
who acquired the land on which Notre Dame was built] was a circuit
rider priest. People saw a priest only once every three months
or so in the 19th century."
