Soon there will be so few priests in Ireland to say Mass that the very existence of the Church will be in question. The bishops have no Plan B but laypeople are thinking more creatively, according to a founder of the Association of Catholic Priests Last June, in the grand surroundings of Renehan Hall in Maynooth College, the American priest-­commentator Donald Cozzens addressed members of the Maynooth Union. Tellingly, he entitled his talk “The Last Priests in Ireland”. Once, such a title would have been regarded as provocative; now it hardly merits a raised eyebrow.The difficult truth for the Irish Catholic Church is that Irish priests are disappearing. It is now mathematically certain that in less than two decades they will be significantly fewer, significantly older an