mfundis:
Hello,
I was wondering if anyone has heard if a book called “Priestless Parishes” by Virginia Stillwell. Our parish life coordinator wants the parish council to study this book because the priest shortage in our diocese is getting worse, and the parishes are “clustering”. I have my fears, especially since she introduced the tome on the agenda as Future Church…any help would be appreciated!
I have not read the book, but have actually experieneced the Priest shortage first hand. This may not be typical but it does happen. In the mid eighties I was stationed in South Texas. Our parish church was beautiful, well over 100 years old with remarkable architecture. Unfortunately the Parish had no resident Priest. Sacramental functions were carried out by what could best be described as circuit riders out of San Antonio, who came by on the average of about once every month or so. Sometimes a little more often. The rest of the time we were at the mercy of the Sisters of the Most Precious Blood :bigyikes:
a truly radical group of sisters. Their beliefs and practices were way ,way, way, way, way out there, some of which I have posted here previously. Lets just say that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was no where near the top of their agenda on Sundays. In fact, I’m not really sure if they were really a Catholic order at all now that I think about it. Their communion services often were thinly disguised harangues against the U.S. government and it’s involvement in Central America. A lot of us were either military or government employees and we got tagged a lot for our complicity in injustice. We were berated constantly for living in the wealthiest country in the world, while people were starving right across the border. Since we were all obviously unworthy, we could not receive holy communion, but got a good tongue lashing instead. And yes, there were consecrated hosts available but only for them. The Mass was almost always a Communion Service minus the Communion.
When the circuit riders appeared on the scene, you never knew what you were going to get. The one common thing was they didn’t like being there and it showed. At least Communion was available. Usually. The priests also were heavily into liberation theology and most of their homilies dealt with that and the plight of Central America migrants escaping the wars and poverty back home. Sometimes they would have a few of these people sitting in the front rows with hoods over their heads, probably to protect them from the Border Patrol, a few of whom were parishners. I often wondered how they felt about all of it. We did have one Priest, I can’t recall his name, who was fairly orthodox, except he gave every Mass entirely in Spanish. His rationale was that since south Texas had once belonged to Mexico, it was only right that we honor that heritage. It would have been all right but he barely spoke Spanish. By the way the congregation was split about 50/50 English Spanish speakers.
Anyway, Baptisms had to be scheduled usually at least 8 months to a year in advance. You could forget church weddings at all. Well thats not entirely true, you could rent the church and have a justice of the peace. Or you could try to schedule with the Priests
There was no catechism available except at the parish school, and you can guess who ran that drum roll
Thats right, our good friends the Sisters
And as you may have guessed by now, their view of what needed to be taught was a good bit different than what the church did.
They also ran the reconciliation services, and just about everything else. Confirmations were handled through the diocese exclusively.
No it is not at all pleasant being without a resident priest.
