It's just a matter of time before they'll be conducting funerals, marriages and baptisms in the Dublin archdiocese and elsewhere, a diocesan spokesman says.

They'll be doing everything but celebrating the Mass and blessing the Sacraments. Priests will continue to be responsible for those rites.

The Catholic Church in Ireland has for some time been exploring ways to involve further lay Catholics in the Church.

Dublin's Catholic Archdiocese currently has nine full-time lay parish pastoral workers working in ministry, 30-plus permanent deacons, mostly married men.

Last June, Archbishop of Dublin Dermot Farrell invited "women and men who feel that they are called to ministry to come forward to train as instituted lectors, acolytes and catechists.

"These are lay ministers, women and men, who are publicly recognised by the Church and appointed by the diocese to minister alongside priests and deacons in leading liturgies, supporting adult faith formation and accompanying families preparing for the sacraments.

"It is my pastoral responsibility as Bishop to do this - for the sake of the gospel and for the sake of the People of God," he said.

Farrell has been expressing this view since his instalment as Archbishop in 2021.

His mission was to "downsize" - in consultation with the Catholics of Dublin, lay and clerical.

It would be about "talking to the people, it's talking to the priests, listening. These are their churches, their faith communities".

Also on his day of installation, Farrell noted the archdiocese included 197 parishes served by 350 active priests with an average age of 70.

"So more and more lay people are going to have to take responsibility in terms of the leadership that's provided at parish level," he said.

"We won't be able to celebrate Sunday Mass in every church in every parish in this diocese.

"I think the Lord is probably saying to us at this time: ‘I don't want you to keep doing the things that you were doing 100 years ago, 200 years ago'."

He then set up the 'Building Hope' taskforce to assess the needs of the people of the archdiocese.

The taskforce found Christian belief in Ireland had "for all intents and purposes vanished".

This "underlying crisis of faith" was "particularly acute among the younger generations," Farrell said.

"The challenges facing me are pretty clear. We have an ageing clergy and very few vocations ... and a major decline in the number of people who actively practice and live their faith."

Dublin especially needs "an effective programme of catechetics ... to eventually replace the current teaching of faith to the young," he said.

In 2018, the Irish archbishops invited Cardinal John Dew to speak about the Wellington Archdiocese's experience with its own Launch Out programme, which was established to form lay pastoral leaders.

Dew's topic was "Lessons from New Zealand, Launch Out: Lay Pastoral Leadership Roles".

Source

• Irish Times
• CathNews

Archbishop Dermot Farrell (pictured) has pledged to respond "positively and swiftly" to new proposals put forward by his parishes to deal with the challenge.

"We face a particular challenge in the shortage of priests to minister to our parish communities — communities which themselves are very different from even one generation ago," he said.

At Mass in Dublin's Pro Cathedral he said that, as bishop of the diocese, it was his strong conviction that "we are not called to be passive in the face of changes which imperil the three-fold mission with which we have been entrusted, but together to shape our future in the light of the gospel".

Archbishop Farrell announced that he is putting in place formation programmes to support those who are willing to undertake leadership and ministry in new ways, working alongside our priests and deacons in the pastoral leadership of our parishes.

He invited women and men who feel called to ministry to train as lectors, acolytes and catechists.

He also pledged to appoint where necessary pastoral leaders - deacons, religious and lay people - when parishes cannot have a resident priest, to support the priest who will have pastoral responsibility for that parish. This voluntary service will be supported by the pastoral workers in the diocese.

"It is my pastoral responsibility as bishop to do this - for the sake of the gospel and for the sake of the People of God. Christ brought his disciples along a new way. He calls us to find a new way in our time."

He said his call to the diocesan family was to embrace what Pope Francis calls Christian risk.

"It is a call to ensure that the way the Church is organised, our structures or our pastoral certainties, do not restrict our mission in the twenty-first century.

"To do so would be to impose the old solutions on new problems, that is, to use second-hand solutions which appear tried and tested, but which in the end are tired and superficial."

Sources

• The Tablet
• Catholic Culture

The pastoral letter is the first one Archbishop Dermot Farrell (pictured) has released since he was installed in February. Pope Francis had announced his appointment last December.

"The purpose of this pastoral letter is to initiate a diocesan conversation about how all can contribute to the care of our common home and recognize the many dimensions attached to this challenge," the letter says.

"We are at a critical moment as a global community and so I wish to encourage all people of faith to embark on this journey to live our call to protect and care for the garden of the world."

Farrell released the letter, subtitled "The climate catastrophe - Creation's urgent call for change," on the eve of the Season of Creation - an "annual celebration of prayer and action for our common home". This year the Season runs from 1 September to 4 October. He invited the Dublin archdiocese to participate in the celebration.

"This pastoral letter, which I have titled, ‘The Cry of the Earth, the Cry of the Poor,' approaches the climate catastrophe from the perspective of faith," Farrell says.

"That is not to say, it excludes the insights and contribution of the natural sciences. On the contrary, healthy faith takes on board what God says through creation. Faith and science are not opponents; in a truly Christian view, faith and reason ... go hand in hand. God reveals himself through the world. That is the heart of our Catholic faith.

"Scientists have issued a ‘code red' not just for the environment, but for humanity itself. God now calls us, individually and collectively, to work for the good of the planet and the good of all. Let us not fool ourselves: there can be no enduring response to the cry of the earth without responding to the need for justice and dignity."

In his letter Farrell also urges parishes in the 1.1 million-strong archdiocese to sign the "Healthy Planet-Healthy People" petition, endorsed by the Holy See.

The petition, directed at the U.N. Climate Conference that will take place in Glasgow in November, calls for an agreement limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

He also invites Catholics to become involved with the Laudato Sì Prize, an archdiocesan initiative inspired by Pope Francis's 2015 encyclical.

The letter concludes with an appendix of poetry by English Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins and T.S. Eliot.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Crux Now