Boston Raises Priest Retirement Age to 75
According to a report in the Boston Globe today, the Archdiocese is raising the retirement age for its priests to 75. Despite closing 20% of its parishes and increasing the number of priests responsible for more than one parish, they still need to keep healthy septuagenarians on the job. Even so, they report:
A study by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate found that, because of the rising average age of priests, only two-thirds of all priests are serving in active ministry and that half of all US priests are expected to retire over the next decade.
Wow. So much for the sacramental life of most parishes, I guess. Ministry will continue, of course, since qualified laypeople are stepping up to do everything except that which they’re forbidden to do. But unless something changes, it looks like we may well become, in practice if not in theory, a post-sacramental Church. How sad.
All polls show that the laity and lower clergy overwhelmingly in favor allowing of a married diocesan clergy. I suspect so would a secret poll of bishops. How long will an ineffective European hierarchy stand in the way of a non-doctrinal change? Does hierarchial nostalgia trump the Eucharist and the sacramental life of the laity? A thousand more parishes will close or merge in the US in the next few years. 16000 silent married deacons some of whom could/should be fully ordained.. Where are the levers to force a change? BASTA
Priests in Boston were retiring at 70? The layabouts! ;-)
I predict that this problem will be solved by fiat. Plain and simple, the faithful will be told to get to church. Fewer priests will handle larger congregations. If the congregations dwindle, some bishops will declare that people are lazy and have lost their faith.
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Recently, I stopped by a Bronx parish and found this statement on the cover of the Sunday bulletin: “To be considered active members of [this] parish, each family and single adult must be properly registered and regularly use the weekly donation envelopes for our parish. This is the only way the parish can issue documents attesting to parish membership and Catholic practice (e.g., a letter to be a godparent or sponsor).” Jesus said, “Issue them envelopes. Don’t bother to get to know them.”
“What do you ask for at baptism?” “Envelopes.”
(Sorry for the cynicism, but the I-don’t-know-you-but-by-envelope is out there.)
“Does hierarchial nostalgia trump the Eucharist and the sacramental life of the laity?”
Apparently so. I believe they’ve already made it quite obvious what their choice is in this case.
The retirement age is already 75 for priests in France, moreover they don’t really retire:all the ones who are able still help out even in their 80s and 90s if in good enough health.
Earlier this year, when our pastor went off a week (golf?), the venerable Monsignor Salas filled in – at 94.
He told of how he had helped out in his home parish, but knew he was really getting on in years: he asked the young altar girl if she knew who he was.
She scratched her head, thoughjt for a minute, brightened, and said. “I know! You’re Monster Salas.”
Seriously, there is already lots of angst about parisj closings (see Peter Borre) and the ultimate value of the megaparishes to come.
Then, the question of minority Catholics also raises its head -as their ethnic parish closes, their feel for the new parish – if they move on to it – will be an adjustment.
I fear Eric is right -the dye of non-chenge is cast under the current putative ;eadership.
What is a “post-sacramental Church?”
How does it tie in with so-called “intentional eucharistic communities” that function much like the primitive Christian churches?
Without death (of the old), perhaps there is no life (of the new)?
Might folks be overlooking a blessing in disguise vis-a-vis ecclesial renewal?
Anybody have any ideas on whether/what to (if you or I had the power to do so) we might change the priesthood’s job description to?
That’s a bit tangential to the retirement bit, but honestly, who aspires to be a preacher, spiritual director, business manager, and obedient servant all rolled into one, where you get moved around every six years at the whim of the bishop? Even if married clergy are ever allowed (or women clergy) the job description isn’t very attractive. I don’t see how a family life would fit into the typical career of a parish priest.
I heard it suggested once that in the future the diaconate will come back (out of necessity) as something more like what it was in the early church (those who did service and managed temporal affairs) and the presbyters will go back to being the church’s theological tradition embodied, and ministers would be tied to their parish.
This reminds me of a historical parallel – as Louis XVI faced the start of the French revolutionary impulses seeking freedom, dignity, and the rights of man vs. the absolute monarchy, it is an oft repeated apochrapyl story that the queen, Marie Antoniette, looked at over the starving and hungry people of France and said – “Let them eat cake!”
It appears that some in Rome have confused substance with accidents. So, we seem to have the same historical parallel going on – at stake is the right to eucharist for a believing catholic community vs. a man made and applied rule that restricts priesthood to celibate males. Their rreasoning makes about as much sense as the alleged statement of Marie Antoinette – in the face of the need for eucharistic communities, Rome says – “Let them have communion services!”
Papal insistence on a monosexual and celibate priestly ministry is grounded in and generates a weird scale of values in which access to the Eucharist is presented as less urgent than a badly explained sexual rectitude.
Michael Garvey, Finding Fault, 1990.
If the Church everywhere, or in certain areas, is unable to find enough clergy unless it abandons celibacy, then she must abandon it; for the obligation to provide enough pastors for the Christian people takes precedence.
Karl Rahner, S.J.
A system which forces adult men to remain compliant adolescents into their senescence cannot present to the church-at-large a model of leadership to which normally adjusted males will be attracted. —– Simplistic affirmation of celibacy as a heroic ideal, which requires only the will to accomplish (assisted by grace, of course), cuts a priest off from the wellsprings of redemptive suffering.
Paul E. Dinter, Disabled for The Kingdom, “Commonweal, October 12, 1990.
When Pope Damasus in the late 4th century, in one of the earliest official pronouncements on the matter, wrote that “sexual intercourse causes impurity, and the priest ought always to be in a state to perform his heavenly duty of interceding for the sins of others”, or when St. Ambrose wrote in the same period that “the ministry must be seen to be unhampered and unspotted, and undefiled by conjugal intercourse”, it is vain to pretend that promotion of celibacy is not linked to the notion that sex is unclean.
The Question of Celibacy (editorial), The Tablet, January 19, 1991.
Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart.
W. B. Yeats in his poem “Easter 1916″.
Bishops’ conferences from various parts of the world have called for the ordination of married men to meet the pastoral needs of their people. They understand that forced fasting from the Eucharist is itself a form of oppression and remaining silent in the face of such fasting a form of complicity in injustice. Priests themselves, in growing numbers, refuse to be resigned to the present burden of mandated celibacy and are calling upon their bishops for a review of the celibacy law – a review favored by most priests and an overwhelming majority of the laity.
Certainly the dearth of priests and the pastoral needs of the people of God make the present situation urgent. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, there are more inactive priests in the US than there are active diocesan priests – approximately twenty-two thousand inactive priests and twenty thousand active diocesan priests whose average age is over 60. Many, if not most, of the inactive priests would be serving in our parishes if it were not for the law of celibacy. But even if our seminaries were full and our parishes adequately staffed, the issue of mandated celibacy would need to be addressed. It appears to growing numbers of clergy and laity to be in stark discord with the freedom of the gospel.
Donald Cozzens, The Pastoral Review, March 2007
Why is a married priesthood such anathema and celebacy such a requirement in the minds of the hierarchy? Being unconvinced by all the usual answers I come up with “control.” A celebate (and heterosexual) presbyterate wholly dependant on their brother priests and “fatherly” bishop for community and emotional support is the height of docility. A married priesthood would be much more challenging…
see new website of VOTF working group priest support on mandatory celebacy;
comments welcome.
http://www.nwgps.org/
Can anyone prove there were any priests amont Paul’s Corinthians? We really have such a power royalty oriented concept of what a pastor is. Sacraments are possible because of God’s people, the church. The people make the sacraments not the hierarchy because the hierarchy is useless without the people. There you have some fundamental theology and you don’t have to take a course in religious studies to figure it out.
Again there is a good principle in the church which state “ecclesia supllet” which means the church supplies. If God’s people got together and anointed a pastor, don’t tell me that Jesus is not present there!!
The bishops were appointed by the Pope and may, in some instances, hope to be translated to a larger diocese or elevated to the cardinalate by the Pope. Neither the laity nor the lower clergy have any say in the matter. The Pope has made it clear that he does not want to hear any discussion of mandatory celibacy. Why does anyone wonder why the American bishops do not engage in such a discussion?
I’m sorry for those guys in Boston – there must be some in this situation – who have been slogging through their 60′s, looking forward to being able to pull back at least a bit, only to have the goal posts moved out another five years.
Wasn’t Boston the diocese where a certain Law transferred money collected for presbyteral pensions to a different account without telling the laity who had made their contributions to the presbyteral pension fund?
‘Why does anyone wonder why the American bishops do not engage in such a discussion?’
a review of mandatory celibacy?
The reason I wonder is that I’m amazed that these so called leaders would place ‘pleasing’ the ‘boss’ and ambition for higher seats at the table above the future of the church. Is it possible that their lack of a generational family, gives them no concern for a church beyond their short ‘reign’?. Is the silent bishops’ lack of lack courage and their feigned obedience seen by them as virtues? In any other entity that level of obedience would be seen as wacko. Can we compare this kind of behavior to the leaders of No. Korea who obey their wacko’s appointing his 24 year old son as next leader? apre’s nous le deluge.. is that the operating scheme?
Here’s Fr. Richard McBrien on the subject of the fallout from Cardinal Law’s handling of the Priests’ retirement funds:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_31_41/ai_n14791370/
And the website linked by Ed Gleason above has a very good ten minute video discussion by Fr. Donald Cozzens on the structural causes of problems in the church. He cites the feudal structure of authority and the “dominion” over personnel as well as other matters exercised by the bishops. He sees the bishops as caught in this difficult structural position, and buying into it while to an extent, the laity seem to buy into it as well.
http://www.nwgps.org/
John Paul II and Benedict presided over this great demise. How else can one see them other than colossal failures?
I say, Run these priests ragged and into the ground until they expire before pension receipt!
(Just for effect, of course, but that sure as hell is what the hierarchs are doing — in suckup obeisance to a Pope and Curia who are so far removed from the laity that these guys can’t even begin to appreciate what the hell is going on!!!)
Seriously, when we have no more ordained ministers (or when the people continue to divorce themselves from the JPII clergy and bishops), perhaps we’ll begin to see a resurgence of “intentional eucharistic communities” faithful to their Faith and orthodox liturgical tradition.”
Until then, priests of Boston, God bless you as you find yourselves caught increasingly between a rock and a hard place.
If a 71 year old priest is already retired, is he going to have to come out of retirement?
Raising the retirement age is usually done gradually. For example people who are currently 69,68,67,66 could be asked to work 1,2,3,4 more years than they expected, and only the ones 65 and younger would be required to work 5 years longer.
Claire: desperate times call for desperate measures. Particularly when one is not prepared to admit to the cause of the problem.
Moment of humor in a cartoon from a defunct “liberal” newsletter that a priest gave me some time back:
Two priests in a nursing home are conversing. One says to the other, “Quick, Frank, start drooling, the bishop is coming looking for pastors to assign.”
My heart goes out to priests caught in this nightmare of working until they drop. Unless financially independent and able to say simply, “Goodbye,” they are economic hostages of bishops. It will be interesting to see how much misery it takes before episcopal leadership abandons its focus on absolute power and control, and broadens the definition of priesthood. If bishops do not respond, they will become even more irrelevant than they already are.