c. 2003 Religion News Service
CLEVELAND _ Each month, the Cleveland Catholic Diocese sends Father Thomas Dunphy a 2-inch-tall stack of documents _ resources for Catholic education; ways to integrate Hispanics, gays and ex-Catholics into parish life; updates on Lenten rules.
Each month, the pastor of St. Martin of Tours in Valley City, Ohio, tosses the documents into the trash unread.
Who’s got the time?
Nearly four decades of decline in the number of priests is reaching a breaking point in the Catholic Church in the United States.
Consider:
Since 1975, the number of priests in the United States has dropped nearly 24 percent, from 58,900 to 44,900 in 2002.
The number of diocesan priests, who do the great majority of parish work, fell from 36,000 to 30,000 during the same period. At the same time, the Catholic population they serve jumped from 48.7 million to 62.2 million.
With seminary enrollment drying up, a quarter of diocesan priests are 70 or older. In 1965, 994 priests were ordained; less than half that number, or 450, were ordained in 2002.
Some major Catholic cities such as Pittsburgh, Chicago and Detroit addressed the issue a decade ago with massive church closings. Even in these dioceses, many clergy are scrambling to meet the basic expectations of their growing flocks by pushing the limits of their physical and mental well-being.
Other regional churches such as the Cleveland diocese, which sought to avoid such painful measures as massive closings, are making their first comprehensive efforts to ease the burden on priests.
The Cleveland diocese is in the middle of a three-year effort, called the Vibrant Parish Life project, to determine the future of ministry in light of the clergy shortage. Interviews are being conducted with parishioners in each of the diocese’s 234 parishes.
Everything is on the table, from church closings to drastic reductions in basic pastoral services such as visiting the sick.
Clergy stress is a problem in every faith. Men’s and women’s groups and Sunday services once were the staples of church life. Now congregations expect a variety of services, from day care to sports to social service ministries. Pity the poor clergyperson who does not show up at the church Scouting event or fund-raising meeting.
But consider the demands on Catholic priests, who have to keep up with the Protestant Joneses on a dramatically larger scale.
Several studies have shown half of religious congregations in the United States have fewer than 100 participating members. In Protestant churches, studies show eight out of 10 congregations with fewer than 100 members have a full-time senior pastor.
However, in a fairly typical urban Catholic diocese such as Cleveland, there are 815,000 registered Catholics, or 2,546 for each active diocesan priest. A church has to have more than 2,100 households _ some 6,000-plus members _ before it can be considered for a second priest.
Nationally, about 15 percent of churches, or 2,928 parishes, were without a resident priest in 2002.
Suburban Catholic congregations are more than six times as large as their suburban Protestant counterparts, according to national surveys. What makes the Catholic shortage worse is the burden is increasingly falling on frail, aging shoulders.
In 1970, there were 53 priests ages 70 or older and 240 under the age of 40 in the Cleveland Diocese. By 2002, the number of older priests rose to 115, while the number of priests under 40 dropped to 28.
Most days for priests are a nonstop rush of blue-collar and CEO-like tasks, from the complexities of running a million-dollar-a-year operation to the demands of making sure the heat in the church is turned down at night or enforcing a 10 p.m. curfew on the school gym.
Add up all the baptisms, marriages and funerals _ and the times priests are expected to be counselors, confessors and even advocates in places from employment offices to the diocesan marriage tribunals _ and something has to give.
Sociologist Dean Hoge of Catholic University of America says some priests are starting to stand up for themselves, but the church has to do more to revise expectations of the priesthood.
“We can’t keep going the way we are now,” Hoge says. “Sorry, dear faithful, we’re not doing it anymore.”
Cutbacks are already happening.
In some churches, the pastors no longer go on Communion calls to the homebound, and visits to nursing homes and hospitals have dropped from once a week to once a month. Many of those times that Catholics expect a priest by their side _ when they face cancer surgery or to say the rosary at the wake of a loved one _ laypeople are now taking over.
Among other cutbacks, pastors are reducing the number of Masses and discouraging special teen or parish renewal programs because of the work that will fall on them.
Studies show laypeople are willing to make a lot of accommodations to the clergy shortage.
In a 1985 Catholic University poll, 39 percent of church members surveyed said they could accept a parish served by a lay administrator and visiting priest. By 1999, more than half of respondents said a lay administrator would be acceptable.
But they are not willing to give up the presence of a priest at the most critical times in their lives.
Even in the 1999 poll, only a third said it would be satisfactory not having a priest to visit the sick. Only 20 percent said it was not important to have a priest for the sacrament of the anointing of the sick, or last rites.
The challenge to the church is to define the essence of the priesthood, and both redistribute more responsibility to laypeople and cut back on the nonessentials.
“The problem is we don’t have a real working definition of what is expected of a priest and what is not,” Hoge says.
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As early as the late 1980s and early 1990s, dioceses in Pittsburgh, Chicago and Detroit faced the clergy shortage by each closing 30 to 50 parishes in painful, swift attempts to create more realistic parish assignments.
In Cleveland, Bishop Anthony Pilla decided against such a hard-hitting response. He has forgone large-scale closings of declining urban parishes to avoid alienating the neighborhoods and ethnic congregations they serve.
But now change is unavoidable.
That change, say church officials, researchers and many of the priests themselves, has to occur on two levels.
One is individual. No matter how much they would like to provide all the services the laity expected in the past, priests can no longer go to every parish function or be expected to be the church fund-raiser as well as pastor.
However, structural changes also are needed, clergy say.
A group of 50 priests from around the country studying the issue asked the nation’s bishops “to pay attention to the workload you are expecting of your pastors, lest you continue to lose the few that you have. Workaholism is not a gift of the spirit.”
The priest group, coordinated by the Rev. Thomas Sweetser of Milwaukee, recommends a 50-hour cap on workweeks and at least a day and a half off each week. Other suggestions include performing wedding ceremonies during regular weekend Masses or having other ministers reflect on Scripture in place of a priest giving the sermon each week.
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In a groundbreaking document in 2000, Bishop James Griffin of Columbus, Ohio, said priests should not be expected to work more than 50 hours a week or to celebrate more than three Masses on Sundays. He also encouraged parishes to have a plan in place for Sunday or holy day celebrations when a priest might not be available.
A major part of the Cleveland effort is to have laypeople take more responsibility to create vibrant parish life. For example, says Sister Rita Mary Harwood, diocesan secretary for parish life and development, if a church wants more senior services, parishioners have to do the work.
The diocese also is looking at clergy distribution and regionalizing parish ministries.
Some proposed structural changes, such as allowing women priests or married clergy, are not up for discussion in Rome.
And an immigrant church that once relied on priests from Europe to meet its needs can no longer look overseas. Overall, the international ratio of Catholics to diocesan priests is twice as high as the ratio in the United States. The severe decline in vocations is even being felt in Ireland, where officials are dealing with the prospect of priestless parishes.
But there is a consensus in the church in Cleveland and the United States that there can be no more turning away from the problem.
Unless changes are made, many more priests will fall victim to burnout or some other affliction, says Michael Lane Morris, an associate professor at the University of Tennessee who has done extensive research on clergy stress.
He says the Catholic hierarchy should follow his grandfather’s advice that you can ride a good horse only so far.
Otherwise, his grandfather says, “You will kill that horse, eventually.”
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