New proposals on the restructuring of parishes in the Archdiocese of Dublin will buy the church between five and ten years at most because the situation is “critical”, a senior priest has warned.
Fr Aquinas Duffy, parish priest of Cabinteely, who is also Vicar Forane for up to 15 parishes in the Bray Deanery in Dublin, made his comments after it emerged that a total of 34 priests in the diocese have died since February 2020, the youngest of whom was just 52.
“Anybody who works in parishes can see the structures are collapsing around us. The time for talk is over; concrete action needs to be taken,” he said. “This crisis has been coming for many years, but Covid has pushed us further over the cliff.”
He said the new move to appoint a parish priest to multiple parishes would put huge pressure on priests.
As part of its plans for radical change to offset the impact of a declining and ageing clergy, the Archdiocese of Dublin’s new strategy, “Building Hope”, has asked parishioners to identify nearby parishes with whom they can share resources in terms of finances, personnel and volunteers.
It is Fr Duffy’s view that the future will see funerals done without priests as the church relies increasingly on lay-led liturgies.
“We have to face the deeper questions that are coming out of the synodal pathway like who is going to provide the Eucharist in the future? If we don’t consider issues like women priests and married, we are only fooling ourselves.”
He highlighted to The Tablet how in some parishes in South America a priest celebrates the Eucharist once every two years. “That is wrong. If you consider the Eucharist to be central to our beliefs, what you are saying is, actually it isn’t important because we are not going to find any way of that Eucharist being provided. To do nothing is not an option; to do nothing is to make a decision to let it all collapse.”
“I can’t emphasise enough how critical a moment we are at right now. We are at a crossroads which will determine the future of Catholicism in Ireland,” he said.
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