Greg Daly
Msgr Joseph McGuinness 
Changes in Clogher mark a realistic direction for the Irish Church, writes Greg Daly
Ask not what your church can do for you, but what you can do for your church. Msgr Joseph McGuinness didn’t say this in any of the recent missives issued from the Diocese of Clogher, but he could have done.
Hot on the heels of a September 4 notification about a gathering for clergy and church leaders entitled ‘Looking after the shepherd: pastoral support for clergy’, September 8 saw the publication of a notice about “modest changes” to Mass times across the diocese.
That a 15% reduction of Sunday Masses from 113 to 96 could be described as “modest” shows just how pressing Clogher’s situation currently is; a more emphatic reduction in Mass numbers could easily have been justified, given the dropping numbers of clergy in the diocese and the aging demographic profile of the clergy.
The decision to reduce Mass numbers comes after a series of meetings of priests across the diocese, and is the first major development to come out of Msgr McGuinness’ August 11 pastoral letter, ‘The future mission of our parishes’.
Letters and announcements about how dioceses and parishes might look to the future have been, of course, anything but unusual in the Irish Church of late. Bishop Francis Duffy’s March 2017 letter on ‘Sustaining our Faith community in the diocese of Ardagh and Clonmacnois’ was one that caught national attention, but it’s easy to think too of the work of Limerick’s 2016 diocesan synod, or Archbishop Diarmuid Martin’s call for Dublin parishes to reflect this November on how they might find concrete ways to renew the Church in the coming years.
With just 52 men in diocesan formation for priesthood across Ireland – as well as a further 14 being prepared by the Neocatechumenal Way for ministry in the Archdiocese of Armagh – the national vocational map looks bleak, such that it’s not surprising that bishops have been signalling that action must be taken to tackle what must surely be recognised as a national crisis.
Strikingly, however, Clogher’s call for action has come not from a bishop, but from a diocesan administrator, Msgr McGuinness having held the reins in the border diocese since October 2016, following the retirement of Bishop Liam MacDaid.
“Given that we are still awaiting the appointment of a new bishop in the diocese, I had hoped that any significant changes could be postponed until that appointment was made,” Msgr McGuinness wrote at the start of the August letter announcing extensive diocesan changes. “However, circumstances are such in the diocese that changes are now needed to address the immediate challenges that we face.”
Observers of the state of the Church in Ireland have often spoken of how the Church here is approaching a cliff edge, and reading Msgr MacDaid’s letter one gets the distinct impression that that cliff edge has now been reached.
How else to describe a letter which details “the serious and challenging situation” facing the diocese, and precedes an exploration of the possibilities that lie ahead by thanking each and every priest of the diocese for their faithful service in ministry, their dedication to the people in their parishes, and their generous commitment to the diocese’s work as a whole?
That the letter’s tone is one of farewell to a clerical model of Church seems all too clear, not least in its gratitude to a passing generation. Mapping out the reality of Clogher today, Msgr McGuinness spells out how there are just 58 priests in active ministry in the diocese, serving 85 churches spread across 37 parishes.
“During the past year alone we have lost the service of seven priests through death, serious illness and other reasons,” he wrote. “Although we are grateful to have had one new priest ordained, it is clear that the number of active priests in our diocese will continue to decline.”
The age profile of the diocese’s clergy makes that at least as clear as do vocational figures, with 28 of the diocese’s 58 active priests being over 65, just 7 of the 58 priests being under 50, and the remaining 23 in between.
“There are obvious implications in this for our ability to sustain the levels of pastoral and sacramental provision which have existed until now, as well as the administrative structures within our diocese,” according to Msgr McGuinness, who continued: “The changes which I am making are the beginning of a process to deal with the reality of the present and the challenge of the future.”
Clogher’s difficulties are far from unique among Irish dioceses, and for Fr Bernard Cotter, a onetime seminary classmate of Msgr McGuinness and author with Diana Klein of How to Survive Working in a Catholic Parish, the Clogher administrator is to be praised for his willingness to grasp the diocesan nettle. Describing him as “a bright and intelligent man, deeply committed to Faith and Church”, Fr Cotter says: “He has been put in a difficult – unenviable – position, and has reacted admirably and proactively.”
While praising the realism and initiative shown in Msgr McGuinness’s pastoral letter and its recognition of the shifting nature of the Irish Church, Fr Cotter is sceptical of how it appears only priests took part in meetings held to plan for diocesan Mass reductions.
“I do not note any lay involvement in these meetings so I wonder is there a danger that lay people are being seen as passive recipients of any arrangements that the priests, on their own, come up with,” he says, adding that this “doesn’t look like a Vatican II approach”.
Not that the pastoral letter as a whole underrates the laity; far from it, even, with its call for a more practical footing to be given to co-operation and collaboration between priests and people in neighbouring parishes, and in particular with how it invites lay involvement across the board.
“As well as challenges, I have also mentioned possibilities,” Msgr McGuinness wrote. “A key element in the life of the Church in our parishes is the ministry of laypeople. Without the generous and loyal help of many lay volunteers, our liturgical and Faith life would be greatly impoverished, and the day-to-day running of our parishes and diocese would be impossible.”
So far so good, one might think, but also so far so normal, except for how the previous part of the letter had concluded with a call drawing on Pope Francis’s first exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, which mapped out his blueprint for an evangelical and mission-oriented Church.
“There is no intention either to dissolve or amalgamate any parishes,” the letter noted. “What is needed, however, is the vision and generosity of spirit which encompasses the bigger picture and embraces a collaborative and outgoing sense of Christian mission.
“As Pope Francis puts it: ‘The parish is not an outdated institution; precisely because it possesses great flexibility, it can assume quite different contours depending on the openness and missionary creativity of the pastor and the community.’”
Mission, then, lies at the heart of Clogher’s new pastoral plan, something that Donal Harrington [pictured], author of Tomorrow’s Parish: A Vision and a Path, says is to be welcomed.
“That’s good, because sometimes when dioceses are talking about that kind of rationalisation and downsizing and all of that, it’s just keeping the ship floating for another few years – it’s not really making any change,” he says. “If there’s going to be a different future there’s got to be a different sort of parish as well.”
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Lay ministry, according to Msgr McGuinness, is central to the ministry of the Church, and indeed, it seems to lie at the heart of perhaps the most striking line in the whole letter, a declaration in its opening paragraph “that the call to ministry in our parishes and pastoral areas is open to all men and women and that the time has now come for a new approach to how parishes celebrate and operate”.
In his section on lay ministry, Msgr McGuinness outlined how lay ministry is central to Church life and is not something to fill gaps when there are no priests about. Granted, few honest observers of the Irish Church would deny that necessity has been the mother of invention in this area, but Msgr McGuinness’s vision is a positive one, one he maintains is not simply something born out of dire need.
“Fully appreciating and expanding the whole range of ministries across our diocese involves both great challenge and exciting potential. This is not about making up for the diminishing numbers of priests,” he wrote. “It is a response to the baptismal calling to each one of us. It is about encouraging every one of us to reflect upon what we can give in service to our church community. It is about allowing the gifts of each one of us to find a rightful and fruitful place in the service of God and our neighbour.”
It is the hope, he continued, that the range of lay ministries in the dioceses will expand substantially in the future.
(Unfortunately, the first ministry detailed in this section is that of Permanent Deacon, which is an ordained ministry not a lay one, despite the tendency of some to call deacons ‘lay deacons’. This seems a forgivable inclusion, however, given the sociological reality that deacons, unlike young would-be priests, tend to be settled adult members of parish communities.)
“There may be more men and women who can contribute to the life our parishes and diocese in liturgical ministries, as catechists, lay pastoral workers or in youth ministry, or who have skills in safeguarding, management, finance, communications, and so on. The range and quality of the gifts and talents of the people in our parishes, and the generosity shown already by so many, should be a cause of great encouragement and hope for all of us,” he wrote.
Safeguarding is already becoming a case study of the kind of area in which lay people can excel – the recent report from the Diocese of Kilmore has shown that to great effect – but it’s impressive to see so many areas where lay people can build vibrant parishes being outlined. Indeed, according to Donal Harrington, it’s basically a necessity.
“It’s crucial to the future to be able to build the capacity in the parish when there aren’t the priests there, that’s nearly the most important thing to do,” he says. “If there’s people around with the energy and the gifts to do it, that’s absolutely the way to go, but what the ministries would be – he mentions the catechist and the pastoral workers and so on – you only know what ministries you need when you know what you know what you want to do.”
Distinguishing between efforts simply to keep the show on the road and such things as outreach to young families, he says that having a clear mission in this area is necessary, but is full of praise for the call for extensive lay involvement.
“That in itself is kind of revolutionary, really, because in the past people didn’t really have a voice and they were silent but now you’re asking people to be much more active,” he says. “It would have been easier 30 years ago when there were more younger lay people involved in the Church. There’s still a bit of time but it’s getting late.”
For Fr Cotter, meanwhile, one gap in the letter is its failure to address the issue of lay formation.
“The letter points up the effectiveness of lay leadership in the ministry of catechist, lay pastoral leaders and youth ministry, but does not contain any plans for formation of these. Without formation, these will produce more problems than they solve,” he says.
Maintaining that the vision Msgr McGuinness maps out is indeed grounds for hope, he nonetheless stresses that “you can’t just wander in and minister without some kind of formation as to what it’s about”, adding as an example that “you can’t just say in the morning you’re going to be a catechist without knowing what’s involved”.
A key challenge both Mr Harrington and Fr Cotter identify is the need to move away from a priest-centred mentality.
For Mr Harrington, a problem can be that parish enterprises can sometimes depend for their existence on the backing of individual priests.
“It’s a diocesan problem – the diocese has got to put structures in place,” he says. “When (Archbishop) Diarmuid Martin set up parish councils in the Dublin diocese, the document that went with it said a new parish priest can’t come in and dismantle it without consulting him.”
This may, however, be a problem with a limited shelf life, Fr Cotter observes.
“One of the major challenges in Irish parishes is how priest-centred they are – everything has to go through ‘Father’, whether he wants that or not. I find that frustrating,” he says. “I wonder if the parishes are still seen as priest-centred, even if they do not have a resident parish priest. Has any thought been given to lay parish leadership? I cannot see priest-leadership being very effective as time goes on and numbers decline further.”
Lamenting how the focus on clergy may have stifled creativity in some ways, he says: “It was all the priest, and it’s very hard to get stuff going if it’s all centred on one person. It’s dangerous, really, and that’s bred clericalism, I suppose. There’s obviously a new church coming but we don’t know what it’s going to look like.”
Building a social aspect into Church life – as exists even among our nearest neighbours, where tea in the parish hall immediately after Mass is the norm – should be part of the future, Mr Harrington maintains.
“I think even just looking at our own Church, you can see how impoverished it is because of the lack of that. We have this conditioning and his culture of you just ‘get Mass’, so it’s a very individualistic thing. Like, I go to the church and I go to mass but it’s just me on my own and the fact that you’re sitting beside me doesn’t really make any difference,” he says, adding that the absence of a social element in our celebrations has helped to weaken parish life.
Msgr McGuinness’s letter did not neglect the need to pray for and encourage vocations, spelling out that without priests there can be no Mass and our Catholic communities cannot be nourished by the Eucharist, but for Mr Harrington vibrant communities are themselves essential to a vocational culture.
“And if the Church wants to get vocations in future that’s the way to do it – it’s to create a living community, participative and all that. You won’t get it just by praying for it. If you have a vibrant community you’d expect some interest in priesthood would come out of it,” he says.
