Catholics Call for Lay-led Mass

Lay-led Mass at St. James the Great (Wellesley, MA)

To the surprise of no one, the Catholic Church throughout the world is in dire need of priests. The causes for this situation are many and their significance could be debated ad infinitum, but the more important issue is what can be done about the situation. 

The traditional answer, of course, is to "foster vocations" among young men, but that is obviously not working. Since the Church in recent years has taken a turn to the right and appears to be attempting to rewrite Vatican II, many young Catholic men do not see a future in such a Church. And the flip side of that is that, according to anecdotal reports, the young men who are entering seminaries are basically fundamentalists. 

There are, of course, other solutions. The most obvious is to reignite within the Catholic Church the the enthusiasm generated by Pope John XXIII and Vatican II. If you recall back then, Catholics felt  that they were "the people of God," and they were the Church. Today, unfortunately, Catholics feel they are the peasants serving THE Hierarchy, who dictates minute details as to the proper "Latin Way" to worship. Most typical young Catholic men will not choose to be part of this feudal system. 

Above and beyond the above, there are two obvious solutions to our lack of ordained priests. The first is to eliminate celibacy as a condition for the priesthood. Why not encourage men who experience the sexual intimacy  of marriage into the ranks of the priesthood, i.e. going back to our origins in the early Church.

The second is to ordain women, either married or single, to  the priesthood. Although Catholic Nuns have been the backbone of the Catholic Church's social mission, whether it be education or healthcare, they have been excluded from positions of prominence in the liturgy and the clerical power structure. Although the rest of the world, even multi-national corporations,  have come to recognize the value of women, the Catholic Church remains a blatantly sexist church.

Given the Church's intransigence to consider the above solutions. another possibility exists. Since, in the near future,  there will not be enough traditional priests to serve the liturgical needs of Catholics,  the faithful need a lay-led liturgy alternative.

At St. James the Great in Wellesley, MA, in 2008, Catholics were meeting in their church, even though the Boston Archdiocese had turned off the heating and the water, to celebrate Mass without a priest. To assist the lay-led liturgy, anonymous, but supportive priests had consecrated communion hosts to be used at  the lay-led Mass.

Recently, according to Reuters' News, 6,000 Catholics in Belgium have signed a manifesto urging their bishops to allow lay people to celebrate Sunday Mass in parishes left without priests. More than 200 of the signatories were ordained priests.

In June, 2,000 Catholics (including 361 priests) in Austria called for lay-led Masses and the ordination of married men and women to maintain parishes that no longer have priests.

Since none of these solutions - the ordination of married men and women or lay-led liturgies - is contrary to core Catholic dogma, one would think the Church, bishops and laity, would be having a serious discussion of these options. Unfortunately, Benedict XVI is not into discussion; his thing is Papal edicts.
   

 The Catholic Church's near-future looks gloomy as long as the Vatican with its medieval mentality is not willing to follow John XXIII's example of open discussion.