This is the Feast of Corpus Christi.

Its Gospel is the most difficult to listen to of any Sunday Gospel

as we realise how many hundreds of thousands throughout the world

are deprived of the Eucharist.

They are deprived because of the shortage of secular priests.

The blazing intensity of the Gospel reinforces the need to

accept that the secular priesthood is no longer an effective 

means of providing the Eucharist.

Is there any real problem in creating a different and effective

method of Feeding the Flock simply by the valid ordination

of a few members of every parish in the world to take the

place of a resident priest?

Let us call them Ordained Ministers  for the sake of convenience,

and consider the practicalities.

1. The Ordained Minister, one of a number elected by fellow

parishioners, is duly ordained, says Mass and helps to provide the

Sacraments, under the authority of the Bishop or Archbishop.

 

2. celibacy is not  a doctrine, and is already waived to permit

convert Anglican clergymen to become priests.  It would

still exist, of course, for the religious orders.

 

3.General Absolution would be a necessity

 

4.. The Ordained Minister would never preach off his own bat

and will have no doctrinal input of any kind , doctrine being

obviously the preserve of the Bishop or Archbishop.

 

5. The kind of clerical education we are familiar with

is unnecessary. The only training required would be in the

techniques of saying Mass and distributing the Sacraments.

 

6. Church property and income is not affected in any way.

 

7. Such a system can be implemented , with good will, within a year.

 

8. The possibility of an Ordained Minister later bringing his

position in the parish into disrepute would imply outstanding

powers of deception. Local knowledge is likely to prove more

effective than a perceived sense of vocation has been.  In any case,

8.3% of the Apostles themselves let the side down, and rather

spectacularly at that.

 

9. The election of the present Pope  and the recent selection 

of Bishops in England and Scotland from religious orders

may prefigure a situation in which all members of the

hierarchy are so recruited.

 

Is there any real problem?  Some Bishops don’t see one.

Why can’t more of them join in ?