Word: priestless
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That pronouncement hasn't kept women away from the altar. In the U.S. they read from Scripture, lead general prayers and distribute Communion. Pragmatism has been a persuasive agent for change. With the ranks of priests severely diminished, some women in so-called priestless parishes conduct Communion services on their own, refraining from the Eucharistic prayer and consecration. "Some of these women are well intentioned, but the bulk of them are power-hungry witches," says a Vatican functionary. "They have no concern for the church and for souls...
...hierarchy has been appointing lay people, nuns and ordained deacons to take charge of parishes that lack priests. And last November Catholic bishops approved rites for Sunday worship that can be led by nonordained parish leaders in priestless congregations. To Schoenherr, a former priest, such measures are no more than stopgaps. As he sees it, the chief problem is celibacy. Eventually, he maintains, the church "will have to accept the ordination of married men in order to recruit and retain." But that is not likely to happen any time soon. Although a majority of American Catholics believe that priests ought...
Scenes like the one at Rodlinghem are becoming more and more common in rural France these days, as parish after parish takes its turn at a "priestless Sunday." The country that anticlericals once thought priest-ridden is now facing a severe shortage of Roman Catholic priests (as are most European nations). In 1965 there were 40,000 French priests; by 1975 there may be as few as 30,000. As one result of the shortage, French bishops, meeting last year in Lourdes, tacitly authorized laymen to hold "prayer assemblies" in churches that cannot offer Sunday Mass...
...town's young people, distressed at seeing the parishioners splinter off to other towns for church, asked to hold the new prayer assembly in place of Mass. Soon the district's other three towns-Licques, Rodlinghem and Ecottes-were offering to share their priest by taking one priestless Sunday each month...
Priestly Handymen. France today has only 56,700 priests v. 71,300 in 1901, when separation of church and state became law. This deficit is especially serious in the parishes; more and more young priests are entering orders rather than the secular priesthood, and there were 16,000 priestless parishes in 1950 v. 4,772 in 1903. One reason is the appalling poverty of the average country cure. Dependent upon handouts for food and fuel, he often spends the winters in near-starvation, and it is becoming increasingly common for parish priests to solicit odd jobs in the neighborhood-house...