Though it was once unthinkable, it is just a matter of time before funerals are being conducted on a regular basis by lay people in the archdiocese of Dublin, and elsewhere in the State, and marriages, and baptisms. Everything but the Mass and the blessing of the Sacraments, in fact.
The funeral ministry policy of its Catholic Archdiocese “looks to the future when the lay faithful will be more centrally involved in carrying out this ministry in our parishes”, a spokesman said. He added that “ongoing training is currently taking place for lay funeral ministers”.
Soon, too, lay Catholics in Dublin (as elsewhere in Ireland) will be officiating at marriages, as it is the couple who marry one another; and lay people will conduct baptisms, which they can do anyhow technically, but not in practice.
Currently, Dublin’s Catholic Archdiocese has nine full-time lay parish pastoral workers working in ministry, as well as more than 30 permanent deacons, mostly married men. The deacons play a role like priests, but are unable to celebrate the Eucharist or administer many of the sacraments.
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In a dramatic appeal last June, Archbishop of Dublin Dermot Farrell invited “women and men who feel that they are called to ministry to come forward to train for ministry as instituted lectors or acolytes or catechists”.
He added: “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
It was Archbishop Farrell’s most overt attempt to date to actively involve laity in the liturgical life of the Church in Dublin and followed consultations, with approximately 3,000 people across the Archdiocese’s 197 parishes as part of the ‘Building Hope’ consultation process he had set up.
In that homily, on the feast of St Kevin last June, he continued: “I will appoint pastoral leaders – deacons, religious and lay people – where necessary, when parishes cannot have a resident priest, to support the priest who will have pastoral responsibility for that parish. Their 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.”
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Then, last November, he announced the creation of 15 parish partnerships, involving all parishes in the archdiocese, and encouraged each such cluster to “contribute energetically” to each other’s work.
None of this took people in the Archdiocese by surprise. From the moment he assumed office as Archbishop in January 2021, it was obvious that Archbishop Farrell was clear in his own mind about the task ahead.
His mission was to “downsize” and he said he would do so 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. It’s not going to be the archbishop, or Archbishop’s House, going around saying: ‘Close this church’,” he said.
On the day of his formal installation as Archbishop, January 31st, 2021, Archbishop Farrell set out the current state of his diocese in numbers – 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.
It was, he said then, certain “that we won’t be able to celebrate Sunday Mass in every church in every parish in this diocese”. He added: “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’.”
To illustrate, he upturned the much-quoted opening line from LP Hartley novel’s The Go Between: “The future is a different country, we must do things differently there.” And in that future, Archbishop Farrell said, “the active participation of the laity becomes essential. They constitute the vast majority of the people of God. Indeed, as St John Henry Newman, remarked perceptively: ‘The Church would seem foolish without them’”.
In April 2021, he set up the `Building Hope’ taskforce, made up of seven women and seven men and chaired by Msgr Ciaran O’Carroll, administrator of Donnybrook parish, to assess the needs of the people of the archdiocese.
Then, the following June, he invited the Catholics of Dublin to give their views on the future of the Church in the archdiocese during a three-week consultation process which concluded on July 18th. Some 3,000 people took part.
There is a major decline in the number of people who actively practice and live their faith
In an interview that summer, Archbishop Farrell painted a grim picture. Evidence of Christian belief in Ireland had “for all intents and purposes vanished”, he said, and this “underlying crisis of faith” was “particularly acute among the younger generations.”
He said: “The challenges facing me are pretty clear. We have an ageing clergy and very few vocations to the diocesan priesthood or religious life. There is a major decline in the number of people who actively practice and live their faith.”
This was why, in Dublin, there was a particular need “for an effective programme of catechetics throughout the diocese to add to and, eventually, replace the current teaching of faith to the young”, he said.
As if to underline the situation, that September (2021) the 3,500-capacity Church of Annunciation in Finglas West, which Archbishop John Charles McQuaid had opened in October 1967, was demolished. It will be replaced by a smaller church building, with a capacity of 300, with freed-up space to be used for social housing and accommodation for older people.
Subsequent attempts by the Archdiocese to get 33 other churches zoned for housing by Dublin City Council were unsuccessful. Its submission listed churches in Artane, Ballymun, Beaumont, Cabra, Griffith Avenue, Drimnagh, Navan Road, Raheny, Walkinstown, Terenure, Harrington Street, Church Street and St James’s Street.
Many of these generally large churches were also opened by Archbishop McQuaid: Artane (1968), three churches in Ballymun (in the 1960s), Drimnagh (1943), Navan Road (1953), Raheny (1962) and Walkinstown (1956).
