Our diocese, like so many others, is facing a catastrophic priest shortage (though, actually, we have very nearly the same ratio of priests to Mass attendances that we did in 1990. Might it be happier and healthier to think that we have too many churches rather than too few priests?). With commendable generosity, the diocese has prepared a “discussion paper” and invited the laity’s input. Unfortunately, as we saw with the bizarre questionnaire on families and sex, the hierarchy is not yet very good at “consultation” and the paper omits almost all useful information (like how much money we have) that might enable the laity to have some intelligent ideas. It is made more complicated because several ideas that swathes of the laity think might help solve the shor