Solutions to the lack of priests

The situation in the diocese of Clogher (“Age profile of Clogher priests ‘a challenge’”, News, 5 September) is not unusual. The shortage of priests to meet the needs of the faithful is widespread – my own parish priest has two other large parishes to care for. How can this lack be remedied? The simplest and most obvious way would be to allow the ordination of married men.

There are two types of vocation at issue. One, the vocation to celibacy, may be received by men and women, and only the person feeling that call can be the judge of how to answer it. It cannot be imposed. The call to priesthood is not like that – ultimately, it is the bishop who decides to call a man to be ordained.

No one can claim the right to be ordained, but once ordained that person has certainly been called. In every parish there are surely devout men whom the bishop might invite at least to consider ordination – married deacons, for instance.

St Paul says that Peter and the other Apostles had the right to be accompanied by a wife, a right he himself chose not to exercise. That right has presumably been inherited by Peter’s successors. Leo XIII, in Rerum Novarum, taught that “no human law can abolish the natural and original right of marriage”, and surely ecclesiastical law as much as civil law is human rather than divine?

Instead of obsessing about the ordination of women, on which there is no foreseeable likelihood of agreement as to whether divine or human law is involved, would it not be more profitable to seek a change in the western Church on the ordination of married men?

Our lord asked Peter a simple question, “do you love me?” and gave him a simple mission: “Feed my sheep”. Any bishop has the right, if he so chooses, to ordain only those who have (or claim to have) a commitment to celibacy. But at what cost to his duty to feed the sheep?

It seems as if the bishops have decided they would prefer the sheep to go hungry than for their flock to be fed by married shepherds.

PAUL SPILSBURY
BRISTOL

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