Have Sacraments, Will Travel -- The Increasing Shortage Of Catholic Priests Is Forcing Some To Rove Among Parishes

The first inkling came four years ago, when the Rev. Gerald Stanley confided to St. Edward Catholic Church's lay leaders that he was thinking about leaving parish work.

If he left, might the growing priest shortage keep him from being replaced?

It didn't seem likely. After all, St. Edward's was the largest Catholic parish in southeast Seattle, with a thriving, ethnically diverse congregation of some 3,000 members.

Reality hit home this spring.

Not only did St. Edward's lose Stanley, who will be doing chaplaincy work at Western State Hospital in Steilacoom. It also lost its associate priest, the Rev. Victor Olvida, who has been reassigned to a cluster of churches in the Skagit Valley.

As part of what a spokesman for the Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle described as the most novel set of assignments ever, members of a shrinking corps of priests were shifted, paired and teamed in an effort to serve Western Washington's growing Catholic population.

It is only a glimpse of what may come for the region's largest religious denomination.

Fifteen years from now, even with new ordinations, the number of priests available for parish assignments in Western Washington is expected to fall from 163 to 105. By then, the priesthood here is projected to be spread almost twice as thin as it is today, dropping from one parish priest for every 1,800 parishioners to one for every 3,600.

The decline is likely to bring dramatic change, and not just in workload: The church is facing a conflict in fundamental values as priests, described by Seattle Archbishop Thomas Murphy as "the instrument through which God acts" in the sacraments, may be too scarce to preside each week at the Eucharist, the spiritual meal that is the "the source and summit" of Catholic life.

In anticipation, the Archdiocese of Seattle and all its congregations in Western Washington are looking at some wholly new models of parish ministry as they prepare for the 21st century.

CHANGES RENEW DEBATE

But the changes are also restoking debate on the question of ordaining women and married people as priests, even as Pope John Paul II has declared the issue closed. Sixty-two of the approximately 185 priests at a meeting in Fife in March signed a statement asking that discussions about married and women priests continue while the archdiocese looked at various innovations for serving parishes with existing resources.

Some church members are outspokenly angry with the restrictions on the priesthood, while others are angry at those who continue to question the church's rules.

What is it about the Catholic priesthood? Why the passion and debate?

In contrast to the Protestant church, where Scripture is the prime nurturing resource, the sacraments in the Catholic Church are the "way God's grace gets to us," said the Rev. Michael Raschko, professor of systematic theology at Seattle University's Institute for Theological Studies. Take away the priest, who in the person of Christ performs the sacraments of Eucharist, confession and forgiveness of sins, and you take away that way of interacting with God.

Raschko, who helps serve Mary, Queen of Peace Catholic Church in Issaquah, sees in the priest shortage the potential for conflict among four basic Catholic values.

-- The first value is that the Eucharist is the focal point of the Mass and that it and other sacraments should be available to parish members. The Eucharist is that part of the Mass in which the bread and wine are transformed by the priest into the body and blood of Christ - spiritual fuel for baptized Catholics.

When a priest is not present, a non-ordained parochial minister or pastoral life director can deliver a sermon and distribute pre-blessed hosts - leftovers, as some priests call them - but would have to skip the Eucharistic prayer. In the Eucharistic prayer, the priest calls down the Holy Spirit upon the gifts of bread and wine and consecrates them with Jesus' familiar words, "This is my body, this is my blood."

"It's like taking the heart of the Mass and yanking it out," said Raschko.

-- The second value is that the parish community be small enough to be viable. "We could have Mass in the Kingdome each weekend. But do we lose something? What is a community?"

-- The third value centers around the nature of the priesthood. Should he be anchored in his community? Raschko asked, or someday will there be drive-up windows at churches where a priest zips by, says into a microphone, "This is my body, this is my blood," and then drives off to the next parish?

-- The fourth value is that of the celibate male priesthood.

"Something has to give somewhere. Which will it be?" asked Raschko.

At St. Therese Catholic Church in Seattle's Madrona neighborhood, the first and third values appear to have given the most.The growing, racially mixed parish of some 1,750 members has not had a priest pastor since 1990.

It is led by a parochial minister, Patty Repikoff. She oversees the pastoral care of the community. She's responsible for the parish grade school, development of parish leadership, administration, fund-raising, budgeting. She works with the liturgy committee to plan the weekly services. She preaches. She counsels couples on their wedding plans. . . .

But she can't preside at weddings. She can't anoint the sick. And she can't celebrate the Eucharist.

For those sacraments, the Revs. Joseph McGowan and Phil Buroughs, Jesuit priests at Seattle University, come to the parish on weekends or help out on specific occasions. The three have formed a close bond.

But asked how she feels about counseling or caring for a person, and then stepping aside while a priest performs the sacrament of reconciliation or anointing of the sick, Repikoff said, "I guess awkward is not the right word. I mean there is a certain sadness in me. Yet I've really said yes to the ambiguity of living within these limits. I've had to make peace with that. To live with anger, so much pent-up anger or frustration, I couldn't."

REPIKOFF HAS VOCAL SUPPORTER

Pat Callahan, a married priest who is a member of the St. Therese parish, wasn't so sanguine. Callahan, who has left the active ministry, said Repikoff has pastoral gifts that outstrip many priests.

"I think the consternation for laity is largely the whole absurdness of the dilemma . . . when the solution is so clear," said Callahan, a proponent of married and women clergy. "Jesus said to Peter three times, `Peter, do you love me?' Peter said, `Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.' Jesus said, `Feed my sheep.'

"That to me is the closest definition we have for the job description of a pope, or a bishop, or a priest. Feed my sheep. Care for my people. . . . At a certain point, I think it becomes very much a moral issue for church leaders to say how much longer can we abandon the real spiritual care of our people simply to be obedient to policies that everyone agrees are not working," Callahan said.

For the immediate future, the archdiocese has set up teams of priests to serve multiple parishes, asked other parishes to share a priest, and continued staffing some parishes with non-ordained pastoral-life directors.

TEAM TAKES OVER AT ST. EDWARD'S

At St. Edward's, a sprawling complex a half-block west of Rainier Avenue South in the Columbia City area, Stanley and Olvida have been replaced by a team of priests, the Revs. William Heric, Jerry McCloskey and Renaldo Yu, who will rotate among three parishes stretching from Beacon Hill to Rainier Beach: St. George, St. Paul and St. Edward Catholic Churches.

Leaders of the three parishes stressed the positives. For one, the emphasis now will be less on "us only" and more on how the three parishes relate to one another as a larger community. "That's a very Catholic way of being," noted Heric, who has been St. George's priest the past three years.

And from a practical standpoint, the parishes will be able to combine resources to provide services more efficiently - possibly, for example, hiring a full-time youth minister for all three churches instead of part-time staff.

The shortage may also spur more lay people to get involved in their parishes.

"What it's forcing to happen is what should have happened anyway, and that's full and active participation of the baptized community," said the Rev. Michael J. Ryan, pastor of St. Michael's Catholic Church in Olympia. Some 1,400 members of his 8,000-member parish volunteer for everything from greeting people at Mass to visiting the sick.

Yet proud as he is of the efforts at St. Michael's, Ryan said such efforts are "never sufficient" to offset the drop in the number of priests.

QUALIFIED PEOPLE SHOULD BE ORDAINED

He said he favored the ordination of "qualified people" to the priesthood. "I am not worried about whether they are male or female or married," he said. In his own parish, there are 17 married priests who no longer can be in active ministry because of the church's rules on celibacy, he noted.

But at St. Mary Catholic Church in Anacortes, the Rev. W.R. Harris responded that to abandon the unbroken tradition of male priests going back to Christ and the apostles would be like abandoning the institution of marriage because the divorce rate is so high.

"I think we have to ask ourselves, what are we doing to encourage young men to study for the priesthood? If you don't do much, well, yeah, you're going to have a priest shortage," he said.

A number of priests, meanwhile, are worried that the Eucharist is taking second place to the preservation of celibacy. At the priests' meeting in Fife to discuss future models of parish ministry, the Revs. Jack Walmesley of St. John the Baptist Church in Covington, John Madigan of St. Stephen the Martyr Church in Renton and David Rogerson of St. Theresa Church in Federal Way co-authored a statement, signed by some 60 others, asking that discussion be kept open on the ordination of women and married men.

MUST REPRESENTATIVES BE MALES?

Raschko, the SU professor who was one of the priests to sign the Fife statement, said some argue that only males can represent Christ because Christ was male. "Is to represent Christ only a physical thing? Or does it have to do with the qualities of the person?" Raschko asked.

At one parish in the Puget Sound region, however, a priest who asked that his name not be used pointed to the thick Catholic Catechism of church teachings.

"You should ask the priests you interview, `This is what the Catholic Catechism teaches; what is your problem with that?' "

He quoted from the Catechism, "The Lord Jesus chose men to form the college of the 12 apostles, and the apostles did the same when they chose collaborators to succeed them in their ministry. . . . The church recognizes herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord himself."

The priest said, "We do not have the authority from Christ to ordain women. If you are going to be true to what Christ did, what Scripture reports, and to the 2,000-year history of the church, you do not ordain women."

Harris, the priest at St. Mary's in Anacortes, called for a strengthening of faith. Where the practice of faith was robust, priestly vocations were strong, he contended.

MURPHY MOVING CHURCH FORWARD

As the debate over ordination continues, Archbishop Murphy is trying to navigate the church into the next millennium with the resources that are available.

In remarks to the priests gathered in Fife, Murphy said he had heard the cries of people hoping for new criteria for ordained ministry. But he reminded the priests, "We are not in a position `to do our own thing.' "

For him to introduce or support radical changes contrary to Catholic tradition "would be both irresponsible and destructive. We would no longer be part of a universal community of faith," said Murphy.

Murphy and the archdiocese have been vigorously encouraging young men to consider the priesthood. Priests and parishioners throughout the archdiocese also are now examining three models for future pastoral care.

-- One option would be to maintain current communities and develop weekend services in the absence of a priest. This option, according to an archdiocesan analysis, would maintain parish identities and underscore community responsibility for running the parishes. Risks would include the sacraments being less available and the Eucharist being undermined as the pre-eminent symbol of community life.

-- A second option would be to reorganize parishes into clusters, where one would be identified as a central parish and the others would become satellite centers for worship and ministry. Some sense of community identity would be preserved and there would be more efficient use of staff and resources. But one parish might appear to be favored if it is selected as the central parish.

-- The third option would be to erase some or all parish boundaries and establish new parishes with new names. This alternative would maintain single-parish communities. At the same time, it would risk alienating parishoners and wiping out historical identities.

DECISION MAY BE MADE NEXT YEAR

Archdiocesan officials don't expect to finish consulting with parishes and priests until the fall or winter. A final decision won't be made until early next year. Elements of all three options could be selected, archdiocesan officials indicated.

The archdiocese has been anticipating the need for new models of parish ministry for years. It has experimented with team ministries in the Skagit Valley and satellite worship sites in Olympia, among other initiatives.

Planning and discussion have kicked into high gear.

"We knew the (priests') shortage was coming," said Walmesley, the St. John the Baptist priest in Covington. "It is here now."