Courtney McGrailAn occasional pleasure offered by the internet is when a blog one had previously liked but thought defunct splutters unexpectedly into life, as if to say “I’m not quite dead!” Such revivals are rarely sustained, but they’re welcome for all that.
It was, as such, a delight to see valledarurni.blogspot.ie rear its head last week, with Fr Sean Finnegan, now parish priest at Caterham in Surrey, observing that though it has been over a year since his previous post, he wanted to get something off his chest about how the shortage of priestly vocations in England is beginning to bite.
Commenting on how some dioceses have been closing parishes, while others have opted for mergers, he says mergers can work in a diocese with a relatively concentrated Catholic population, but they don’t work so well in dioceses “where substantial distances and small populations are concerned”, citing how the Welsh diocese of Menevia embarked on “a savage cull of churches, such as in Aberystwyth, where the shocked parishioners took their appeal to Rome, only to have it denied”.
Trustees
Previously, English and Welsh parishes were typically in the trusteeship of a few senior parishioners, such that the parishioners ‘owned’ their parish property, but over time the dioceses persuaded the parochial trustees to resign their trusteeships in favour of the diocesan bishop and a few other senior clergy.
The effect, he says, that all diocesan property, including the church buildings, are assets of diocesan corporations, such that supposedly ‘failing’ churches can be sold to finance other projects.
“When a church is closed, especially where there is a resident and still relatively flourishing congregation, as would seem to be the case at Aberystwyth, anguish is the result, and no demonstrable benefit to those who have lost the place where they, their parents and their grandparents were baptised, first Communicated, wed and buried,” he says, especially given how in some cases great-grandparents might have made extraordinary sacrifices to help build the church.
Arguing that Rome should not have supported the bishop, and that under canon law the parish – rather than the diocese – owns the property, he says that the bishop ought instead to have withdrawn the priest, allowing the parishioners to maintain their church and arrange for Mass whenever they could find a willing priest.
The laity, he adds, ought to be able to step up, saying the Office and Rosary in the Church, and running parish devotions. While this is not ideal, “once you close the Church you lose the people”, he says, observing, “the universal Church has plenty of experience of running parishes that only have Mass once or twice a year”.
Like many a parish church, Fr Finnegan’s blog may have seen better days, but it’s worth exploring them anyway by digging into his archives, easily accessible from his sidebar. In particular, a series from July and August 2011 on Catholicism in Ireland, with a slight epilogue in January 2012, is worth reflecting on.
Another old blog, but this time still going strong, is Amy Welborn’s ‘Charlotte was Both’ at amywelborn.wordpress.net. Published since March 2007, and following her old blog ‘Open Book’, it’s an always interesting blog from a level-headed writer with decades of experience with America’s major Catholic publishers.
Recent posts have covered topics as diverse as newly canonised saints, a trip to New Orleans and the cost of family dental care, as well as – perhaps more surprisingly – RTÉ’s Radharc series.
Observing that it’s “always nice to find a new time-suck on the Internet”, Amy praises the quality of the films the Irish Film Institute has been putting online, and notes of one 1962 film, that behaviour at Mass never changes.
“People refuse to budge from their spot at the end of the pew, umbrellas are carelessly wielded, and what happens when the priest starts preaching is hilarious,” she says, noting that despite a trend among some in the Church to theologise ‘veiling’ as a traditional practice, there’s “hardly a veil to be seen”.
