Priestless Masses?

During August and September the secular media discussed, on several occasions, the re-introduction of the celebration of the Mass according to the Tridentine rite as an extraordinary rite without the need of special permission. The "fateful" date - mid-September - came and went without any apocalypse of note. A few people in some countries benefited from the new regulations; most ignored them, and the vast majority only have a very vague idea about the whole debate and the ensuing fuss. It seems that in Malta and Gozo interest in the matter is negligible.

One could say that the argument was mainly of interest to the far right in the Church. But during the same months the other end of the spectrum - the far left, so to speak - was also involved in another argument regarding the celebration of the Mass. We bring this argument to our readers' attention so that they can be informed about a wide spectrum of discussion within the Church.

At the centre of the controversy was the Dominican order, or at least its incarnation in the Netherlands. That small country in the north of Europe proved to be the enfant terrible of the post-Vatican II Church. It then was domesticated and subdued, but the volcano seems to be bubbling once more.

The Dominicans, who gave the Church many great saints and also Martin Luther, were fomenting it. They face a situation where today in the Netherlands, in several parishes it is difficult to find a priest to celebrate Mass. The Catholic Church in the Netherlands numbers 1,557 parishes, with 1,112 priests, many of them elderly, 286 deacons and 774 male and female pastoral workers.

Officially, there are more than five million Catholics (out of a total population of 16 million, of whom one million are Muslims). Less than 10 per cent of the Catholics are regular churchgoers. As a consequence, most parishes have a celebration of the Word and Com-munion using pre-consecrated hosts. In some cases, local Church officials advise Catholics to drive to a nearby parish that has a priest.

The Dominicans in the Netherlands proposed a radical solution. Many would not consider it as a solution, including A Christian Outlook. They distributed a 38-page booklet, Church and Ministry, that proposes that parishes in need of an ordained priest choose their own person to become the president of the celebration of the Mass. The parish could then present such candidates - "women or men, homo- or heterosexual, married or single" - to the local bishop to ask that they be ordained, according to the booklet's summary on the Dutch Dominicans' Website.

The bomb is yet to explode. Basing its recommendation on practices within the early Church, the booklet says that if the bishop chooses not to ordain the candidate - for example, because the person cannot meet the requirements of celibacy - then the elected candidate and the congregation could speak the words of the consecration together.

"What is important is an infectious attitude of faith," the booklet says. In an interview posted on the Dutch Dominicans' Website, Dominican Fr Harrie Salemans, one of the booklet's authors, said: "The Church is organised around priests and finds the priesthood more important than local faith communities... This is deadly for local congregations."

The initiative was neither shared by the Dutch bishops nor by the general curia of the Dominicans in Rome.

The Dutch bishops have reacted strongly to the booklet. They said that it contains elements "in conflict with the faith of the Roman Catholic Church". They think it improper for one group of faithful to address another without their prior consent.

Following pressure from the bishops, the Dutch Dominican Provincial, Fr Ben Vocking, has called off a conference at which the Council of the Dutch Dominican Province was planning to discuss the booklet's proposals.

The general curia of the Dominicans joined the fray. In a written statement released by the Vatican on September 18, the Dominicans' Rome-based leaders said that, while they "laud the concern of our brothers" over the shortage of priests, they did not believe "the solutions that they have proposed are beneficial to the Church nor in harmony with its tradition".

The Curia also criticised the strategy adopted by their brothers to the north. Their statement said that they "did not believe that the method the Dutch Dominicans have used in disseminating" a booklet to all 1,300 parishes in the Nether-lands was an appropriate way to discuss the issue. An open dialogue about the availability of the Eucharist and the priestly ministry should be carried out through a "careful theological and pastoral reflection with the wider Church and the Dominican order," the statement said. "The booklet published by our Dutch brothers was a surprise to the general curia of the Dominican order," it added.

All this notwithstanding, it seems that the issue will not end there. Other groups, besides the Domini-cans, want to continue enquiring about what can be done to address the problem of lack of priests. The question is a legitimate one if addressed within the long standing and millennial tradition of the Church. Radical suggestions, though well intentioned, the tradition of creating more problems than they solve. It seems that the recommendations of the Dutch Dominicans belong to this category.