COMMENTARY: Without the priest, there is no Eucharist, and without the Eucharist, there is no Church.
The center of the Eucharistic revival, the three-year initiative of the Church in the United States, is obviously and appropriately the Eucharistic Jesus — the root, center, source and summit of the Christian life.
But as the Church celebrates on Aug. 4 the patron saint of parish priests, St. John Mary Vianney, it is a fitting time to focus on the indispensable importance of the priest in the Eucharistic life of the Church. Without the priest, there is no Eucharist, and without the Eucharist, there is no Church.
For the Eucharistic revival to spur the renewal of the Church, there is a need to strengthen the Eucharistic dimension of the priests we have and to pray to the Harvest Master for many more priestly laborers in his vineyard.
Most Catholics are aware that there is a crisis in priestly vocations, with painful consequences in the life of believers. Twenty percent of U.S. dioceses did not have a priestly ordination last year. Many dioceses are bracing for the retirement and death of priests ordained in the 1970s, who presently represent 50% of their clergy. In the United States, there are 3,500 parishes without a resident priest, and lack of sufficient clergy is causing many Churches to have to close.
There are attempts at quick fixes in various places, like importing priests from religious orders or vocation-rich dioceses in Mexico, Colombia, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, India or Poland. In some circles, rather than look to such temporary solutions, people are trying to exploit the dearth in order to push for the ordination of married men or even to propose the dogmatically impossible solution of the ordination of women.
But many places are not yet committed in a practical way commensurate with the importance and urgency of the need for new priestly vocations. It’s not enough for a diocese to appoint a vocations director and then to expect him to be able to remedy the crisis single-handedly or with an assistant or small team.
The reality is that many parishes — just like many Catholic schools and high schools — have not produced a single seminarian in decades and a visit from a vocations director will almost never be sufficient to change what seems to be, sadly, vocationally infertile soil.
Fewer than 20% percent of Catholic parishes nationwide have anything in the parish intentionally working to stimulate and normalize vocational awareness and response. Many parishes don’t do anything even during the occasions when the Church explicitly focuses on vocations, like the World Day of Prayer for Vocations (May 8), the World Day of Prayer for the Sanctification of Priests (June 24), Priesthood Sunday (Sept. 25) or National Vocations Awareness Week (Nov. 6-12). Since 80% of seminarians come from the 20% of parishes with a vocation ministry or committee, there’s a reason why so many parishes seem to be sterile.
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