Fr. Powell, OP posts on The Mistakes We Make with Priestly Vocations and what he sees of the problem of appointing Parish Life Coordinator (PLC). I think he makes some great points in that as a stop gap measure this will become something much more permanent and will do little to spur vocations. I think the danger he speaks of when priests start becoming "traveling Sacrament Machines" is not to be taken lightly.
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This reminds me of a book I recently browsed (I couldn’t stomach to read it all) called “Priestless Parishes” by Virginia Stillwell. In it, she propels the idea that because the laity share in the priesthood of Christ, the laity really don’t need an ordained pastor except to dispense the sacraments like some vending machine. How sad.
Haven’t any of these people read about the rebellion of Korah in the Book of Numbers? With special attention to the fate of Korah and his followers?
And by the way: if there’s nothing special about the priesthood, how come so many dissident womyn want to be priests?
I’ve become fond of the term “sacramental sperm donors”
Spot – you just gave me the words to express my distaste for these new developments. I believe that even before PLCs, parish pastors were already objecting to being treated like vending machines and that parish committees were running everything without seeking guidance from their pastor.
The normalization of dysfunctional homes and parishes at times seems worse than the dysfunction itself. After all, isn’t that why the prayer of the Pharisee was rejected but the prayer of the publican was accepted?
The woman who is the parish administator told me that our COUNTY will only have one priest left in a few years. The women are in the wings too.
We are almost there. One parish priest is gone half the time, doing who knows what but NOT offering daily Mass, hearing confessions, visiting the sick etc. and is now out of the country on yet another vacation. My pastor is a ‘peace and justice’ sort. We are held together mostly by an increasingly frail 84 year old ‘retired’ priest, but a TRUE priest, who never says no to a soul.
Our bishop is set to retire next year so we are praying for a good, holy, strong MAN of God to come and do some sweeping out of the women in control and turn us to a path that is Roman Catholic. If that does not happen, we are in trouble very soon. Today I learned there is no second Mass for the Assumption because no priest can be found to offer it. Where in the world are the ones we even supposedly have????
I work as a secretary in the largest parish in the area and I don’t know of a single women who has ever expressed a desire to become a priest.
Holy men should take the advise of women though -look what happened to Pope Urban when he ignored St. Briget of Sweden…
“We gain nothing in the way of addressing the “vocation crisis” by showing our guys that they aren’t needed. We can say all day long, preach loudly from the pulpits, and insist until we are breathless that priests are invaluable to parish life, but if boys and young men see the parish “getting along” w/o daily priestly leadership, they will go along to get along. They have to be needed, and they have to be shown that they are needed.”
Here, here! I have seen in so many ways how men, even as fathers and husbands, give up and “go play” when a woman pitches in by doing what he is expected to do but isn’t doing for whatever reason(esp if she does it just as well).In most cases her “help” is unintentionally destructive. And what is her reward? For unobtrusively taking on someone else’s work she ends up tired, angry, and isolated. It would only make sense if this dynamic operated in the church as well as the home.
Today, during the last Mass of my vacation, I (and all in attendance) were privileged to watch a priest’s gentle, dignified (wordless!) instruction to two brand new “baby” altar boys. There was something in the scene too precious to describe. The boys were stupefied in the beginning, but little by little, as they sought and received assurance by glance and gesture, they matured in trust and confidence. It was a precious “handing-on” that I witnessed.
Afterwards, I questioned, for the very first time, if we had made a mistake in inviting girls to serve on the altar. If so, it will be hard to undo without injuring the females who have served with devotion. It’s not that they are incapable (most of them are MORE capable than their male counterparts) or lesser persons, but they may be obstructing vocations by their sincere helpfulness.
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