Catholic crisis

“Catholic Church faces new crisis — Ireland is running out of priests,” was the title of the piece which reported that Ireland, “a country that used to export its Catholic clergy around the world,” soon faced catastrophe. By the year 2028, Irish priests would be one third their number and parishes everywhere in Ireland would be vacant, the article predicted. The feature further stated that in 2007, 160 priests had died in Ireland, but only nine had been ordained. Regular church attendance had “collapsed” the article reported.

The drop, according to the Times, was “attributed to the loss of the Church’s authority after a string of sex-abuse scandals, with an estimated ?750 million being paid out in compensation to victims.” Most of the existing priests in Ireland were of an average age of 61 and few young men were entering the priesthood.

The Times reported that in Ireland some religious commentators were challenging the vow of celibacy as unnecessary. David Quinn, a commentator on Irish religious affairs, told The Times: “I’d say that a majority of priests in Ireland would probably favour dropping the celibacy rule.”

Here in Trinidad and Tobago, vocation has also been on the steady decline for decades, ironic when one considers that the Church of Rome is now built on the faithful of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America. Our young men are no longer of the inclination to embrace either poverty or chastity in the name of religion and though the local church has suffered no sex abuse scandals, TT’s Catholics, thirsting for warmer, less priest-centred, more community-oriented worship, have drifted into the open arms and hearts of the Pentecostals.

If there has been a drastic global waning of priestly calling, this plunge is nothing compared to the low numbers of women becoming novices in the Catholic Church. The Sunday Times’ report said that figures for nuns were even more dramatic in Ireland. Two hundred and twenty eight had died in 2007 and only two had taken final vows.

In TT the Church is faring no better in its recruitment of nuns. As proof of the new stark reality, this past week came the news that the home of the southern sisters of the Order of St Joseph of Cluny on the Harris Promenade, San Fernando, on the market for three years, had finally been sold. The convent was housing fewer than a handful of surviving sisters of the Order of St Joseph of Cluny and high maintenance costs made it unfeasible for the Church to maintain the building. The new ‘downsized’ convent will be a house in Retrench Village, south Trinidad.

It is clear that worldwide, up until the 60s, considering a life in the Church was as commonplace as pursuing a career in medicine. However, the Church presently holds little attraction for the young man or woman. Certainly, young women, prohibited by sexist rules which deny them the chance to be ordained as priests, are not prepared to be confined to the narrow, inferior roles defined for them. Indeed the very division of the Church into priest and nun makes little sense nowadays. The nun it may be argued may be a vocation on the brink of extinction.

The Catholic Church, rocked by sex abuse scandals and challenged by the competition of the Pentecostals, is facing one of its worst moments in history. Rome, whether it likes it or not, if it wishes to halt the decline, if it wishes to survive, may sooner than later have to reconsider its rules, start ordaining women and permitting both male and female priests to marry. If it does not, more convents will be sold and more parishes left priest-less.