The Catholic Church, like many other mainline Christian Churches is facing a clergy shortage and has not found an acceptable solution to the problem except for, as in the Diocese of Buffalo, periodic parish and vicariate reorganizations that only delay the inevitable while leaving the laity and even some of the clergy shaking their heads.

I participated in the first two reorganizations or renewals in the Diocese of Buffalo. My participation in these made me very cynical about the whole process.

What began as an exercise where teams from the parishes in a vicariate would rate their parish on what it did well and what it needed to work on in the end resulted in an announcement that some parishes would remain open while others would close or be joined with another parish.

Many parishioners were surprised by this, leading to resentment that over the last 20 years has led to lower church attendance, and participation in the Sacraments. If Church members had been told the truth they probably would have been more understanding.

The Diocese of Buffalo is now concluding another “renewal” program with parishes being grouped into Parish Families led by a team of priests and deacons. This latest reorganization may work for a while but in a few years as the number of priests continues to fall, and there is little indication that trend will change, another renewal program will need to be created. Are there any solutions that will get the Church off this treadmill to oblivion?

To begin, the Roman Catholic Church believes priests should not marry based on certain passages in the Bible, and because it believes that the priest acts “in persona Christi” (in the person of Christ) and should therefore be celibate, like Christ.

Prior to the 12th Century priests could marry and it was especially common for priests in England and Normandy to be married and to prepare their sons for an ecclesial life. Finally, in 1322 Pope John XXII insisted that no one bound in marriage even if unconsummated could be ordained. Interestingly this decision had less to do with Church doctrine and more to do with concerns over primogenitor and the possibility that church lands would be left to the eldest son.

Today, there are married Priests in the Catholic Church. Married Episcopalian priests who convert to Catholicism can continue to be married and be a Roman Catholic priest. Also, Eastern Catholic churches that are in communion with the Roman Catholic Church can also maintain their tradition of married priests. Maronites, Greek Catholics, Armenian Catholics and Syrian Catholics widely accept and even prefer married priests. Amongst U.S. Catholics in a recent poll 74% said they would welcome married priests in ministry.

Then of course there are the many married men who already serve as deacons in the church and are members of the Church’s clergy. It is likely that some of these men would be open to serving as priests.

Allowing married men to enter the Catholic priesthood would not fully solve the shortage, but there is another option. Discussion of the issue of the ordination of women in the Catholic Church has always been controversial and is usually met with a cold stare and a resounding, “no, never.” During my time working on a master’s degree at Christ the King Seminary and later when I was employed by the Diocese of Buffalo I made the acquaintance of several Catholic women, already actively involved in the

Church’s ministry who felt that they had a genuine calling to the priesthood and resented the fact that church doctrine made fulfilling that calling impossible.

Those who feel that women should not be ordained as priests in the Catholic Church usually fall back on two positions. The first is that Jesus chose only men as his apostles, but we really don’t know if that is true. At the time of Jesus’ ministry women usually were not included in histories or writings as important figures. However, in the Christian Bible, his mother Mary is mentioned several times as being with her son and his disciples and Mary Magdalene is remembered as witnessing Jesus’ crucifixion, burial, and being the first person to see him after his Resurrection. These women were close to Jesus as were the sisters of Lazerus Martha and Mary but because the of the status of women at the time of Jesus we will never know definitively if they were his disciples.

The second position used to justify forbidding the ordination of women is that the Petrine Doctrine which was passed on to Peter by Christ with these words, “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church,” is the guiding principle of the Churches ministry, and because it was given to a man, ministry is masculine, hence women cannot be ordained.

These two positions used to forbid female ordination have stood the test of time but I think that they are based on “wishful thinking” rather than on a rational interpretation of scripture or tradition and can now be safely ignored and probably should be.

I believe the Church is at a crossroads in its history and tough decisions need to be made so that it remains viable in the future. A Church placing so much importance on its Sacraments and their availability must do what it needs to do to, to maintain an adequate number of priests in active ministry.

Thomas Kirkpatrick Sr. is a Silver Creek resident.