Same rock, but a changing church

There, center stage, was the new pope surrounded by companies of cardinals, battalions of bishops, platoons of priests and detachments of deacons, the religious who can perform some priestly duties such as marriage and baptism.
The Catholic Church, in all its glorious finery on this night of nights, seemed unchanged, immovable, triumphant.
But the church carries out its mission on many stages. And while St. Peter’s, the building, is as close to permanent and immovable as you’re going to find anywhere in this world, the people who do the daily work of the church are not made of stone.
The church, for a number of reasons, has been in a state of flux for some years now. This is so in Ireland, the United States and just about every other country where Roman Catholicism has a significant presence.
The causes of this flux, and the form it takes, is varied. But matters of faith and theology aside, it is the state of the priesthood that is most focusing the minds of those who practice their faith to the maximum, and those who adhere to its by degrees.
In Ireland, the reaction to reports that a popular Galway-based cleric had an affair with a younger woman and fathered a child caused uproar fourteen years ago. Bishop Eamonn Casey was subsequently forced into exile.
The reaction to a more recent report that a popular Galway-based cleric had an affair with a much younger woman and fathered a child has spawned a dramatically different response.
Many, if not most, Irish Catholics seem to bear no particular ill will towards Father Mossie Dillane and Madonna Byrnes. Rather, the primary concerns of those targeted by opinion pollsters have been the welfare of the child and the happiness of the admittedly unorthodox parents.
On top of that, Irish Catholics would appear to be living in the past in that they appear ready to turn the clock back to the moment in the 12th century just before the church authorities imposed priestly celibacy.
Some of them, indeed, want to turn the clock forward to a point where women are either made priests, or nuns are allowed carry out some or all of the functions of the male priesthood.
This sentiment is not entirely drawn from some blazing liberalism sweeping the variously faithful. Catholics, liberal and conservative, are deeply concerned that, with the rate things are going, the very sight of a priest outside a televised event will become a rarity twenty or even ten years from now.
The onetime anti-Catholic jibe about Ireland was that the place was “priest ridden.”
The number of diocesan priests on the entire island is today less that 3,000 – and falling.
The average age in the priesthood is 61.
If you put them all together the priests of Catholic Ireland, diocesan and those in religious orders, would only fill a fraction of a stadium the size of, say, Madison Square Garden.
Attrition due to death and a collapse in vocations is eating away at the total of Roman collars from both ends. In addition, some priests are leaving Holy Orders because they can no longer live with the rigors of celibacy.
Some have been kicked out because of pedophilia.
This is not only the case in Ireland, but in the U.S. and other countries where pedophile scandals continue to erupt.
In the U.S., the latest child abuse charges against a priest, in this case the Rev. Daniel McCormack, are making front page headlines in Chicago.
Making smaller headlines, or none at all, are those priests who continue to labor away in a vocation that has lost much of its allure and yes, glamour, in the past few decades.
Readers are by now familiar with Father Michael Tracey, the Mayo born priest whose coastal community in Mississippi bore the full brunt of Hurricane Katrina.
Tracey, whose parish includes not just a church but three schools, has been facing a most extraordinary situation virtually single handed. Sure, there are lots of lay volunteers flooding into the area to help with rebuilding and even the FEMA crowd managed to give him a trailer – eventually.
But when it comes to the task of dealing with the practical and spiritual affairs of a parish that literally saw part of its infrastructure being sucked into the Gulf of Mexico, Tracey has been largely on his own.
The clerical cavalry has not been sighted coming over the hill.
That’s because there isn’t any.
So what to do?
Many would say ordain married men, allow the ordained to get married, open the Catholic priesthood to women.
Concern over property rights was the main spur for the introduction of celibacy all those centuries ago, and yes, it hasn’t gone away.
Marriage these days is daily exposed to the raw statistics of divorce. It would be no different for married clergy.
Only last week, a Church of Ireland bishop resigned from his diocesan position after breaking up with his wife.
The couple have kids too. All very sad although such family trauma pales when compared to that caused by the predation of pedophiles.
Given the tenor of the times it isn’t too much of a stretch to believe that Catholics in Ireland could deal with inevitable divorce should priests be allowed marry.
In the U.S., meanwhile, the entire story has moved on. Here, there are already Catholic priests who divide their time between their religious duties, their wives and families.
And all with the blessing of Rome.
Back in 1980, the late Pope John Paul 11 decided that former Episcopal priests in the United States could make the crossing into the Roman Catholic priesthood even if they were married.
The number of married Catholic priests is still hovering below 100, but is on the rise nevertheless. These married priests do face limits on seniority. They can’t become bishops for example.
But the point is that the principal of allowing priests to be husbands and dads has already been conceded.
Certain eastern rite churches loyal to Rome also allow priests to marry.
When it comes to survival of the church, the Vatican has never been less than pragmatic and adaptable – no matter the spoken orthodoxy of the day.