There are solutions to the shortage of priests in Ireland

Dear Editor, In the November 19 issue there was an article stating that 19 priests a month are dying in Ireland. There is an evident decline in students for the priesthood which will have huge consequences on parish life. Many solutions are being proposed to respond to the pastoral needs of the people such as the clustering of parishes, permanent diaconate and greater lay involvement in the life of the Church. While these are good in themselves, they are not a solution to the problem. If a hospital was short of surgeons would employing more nurses help? It might alleviate the pressure somewhat but the core problem would still remain. We need priests. There is no way around it if we want our Church to have a future. What can be done? 

1. Priests can feel abandoned, lonely and overwhelmed. They need support to know how best to respond to the many moral, personal, spiritual and pastoral challenges they are faced with. They also need priestly fraternity. Monthly gatherings of priests with the bishop could help rebuild morale and help (or initiate) on-going formation. We will never have more vocations if priests themselves aren’t happy in their vocations.

2. We need clearer teaching on what the priesthood actually is throughout primary and secondary school, accompanied by examples of saintly Irish and foreign priests in their religion books. Priests have received a lot of bad press recently. Let’s tell people the good stories too.

3. We could benefit from national pooling of resources that can be used to promote vocations in schools so that every individual priest (or parish pastoral council) doesn’t have to invent everything for themselves but can learn from the experience, success and failure of others.

4. Priestly formation needs to enable seminarians to defend and promote the treasures of our faith with love but with confidence. No young man will give his life to the priesthood to begin every phrase with “I suppose”. 

We were able to respond to the need for child safeguarding policies in every parish in the country. Let us promote and support the priesthood with similar zeal or the decline will continue.

Yours etc.,

Fr Patrick Cahill,

Thurles,  Co. Tipperary.