Never in its history has the Catholic Church had more followers worldwide, nor has it ever had more young men training for the priesthood. Contrary to what people might think, given the battering the church has taken in Ireland over recent years, from a broader perspective it is an organisation at high tide.
In 1974 there were 710 million Catholics on the planet. By 1994 that number had risen to just short of a billion, or 17.4 per cent of the world's population - an increase of more than 30 per cent in 20 years.
The number of young men in Catholic seminaries throughout the world has also soared. In 1974 the figure was 63,043; by 1994 it was 105,075. Equally, though defections from the priesthood were a problem, they are now on the wane; preliminary figures for 1995 indicate that there were 289 more ordinations than defections throughout the world that year. This extraordinary tale of a blooming church is not, as many assume, due simply to the numbers in Africa and South America making up for a decline in the Western world. Between 1974 and 1994 the Catholic population has increased significantly on every continent.
One obvious consequence of such huge growth has been the poor ratio of priests to followers. In Brazil, for instance, there is just one priest per 8,000 people, compared to one for every 980 Catholics in Italy. Indeed more than half of the world's priests are in Europe, where just over a quarter of the world's Catholics live. The Americas, North and South - the world's most Catholic continent, with almost half the planet's Catholics - have just over a quarter of the church's priests. The continent where Catholicism is growing fastest, however, is Africa. The Catholic Church's centre of gravity, where population is concerned, is shifting southwards and this will probably be reflected in the increasing influence of the South American and African churches on the church's character over future decades. Europe, however, is still dominant in church government. Nowhere is this reflected more clearly than in the make-up of the College of Cardinals. Despite a great improvement on the past, in terms of geographic representation, it still has 48 European cardinals - 17 of them Italians - out of the existing total of 108 who can vote in papal elections. (There are 160 cardinals altogether, but 52 of these are aged over 80, including Ireland's only cardinal, Cardinal Daly, and so cannot vote in a papal election).
So where does Ireland stand in this landscape of a booming Catholic church? A dramatic view of where trends here are leading is presented in a play currently running at Dublin's Gate Theatre. In Joe O'Connor's The Weeping Of Angels, three elderly women sit in a room. It's some time in the future and they are awaiting death. They are believed to be the last nuns in Ireland. Theirs is a bleak and poignant scenario - but far-fetched, surely? It would not appear so. According to Joe O'Connor the play was inspired by The Death Of Religious Life, a book by the Redemptorist priest Father Tony Flannery, published here earlier this year, which addresses the sorry situation of Ireland's religious as we come to the end of this millennium.
One of the more striking features of the Irish Catholic Church at the moment is how its clergy is both ageing and declining in number. Nowhere is this more manifest than in the religious orders.
The great majority of religious in Ireland today are aged over 60. For instance in Mount St Joseph, Roscrea, the average age of the monks is 73. Recruits are few and, in some cases, not even encouraged, such is the gap between youth and age.
This has had inevitable consequences. An example can be gleaned from an Irish Catholic report of October 16th last which related that some Masses at the Augustinian priory in Callan, Co Kilkenny, had been cancelled due to a shortage of priests. The prior, Father Henry McNamara, is quoted as saying that the average age of Augustinians in Ireland is now over 60; that the order has had just one ordination this year and that it has had just one seminarian over the past eight years. As a result of this the Augustinian student house in Dublin has closed and the order has withdrawn priests from teaching staff at schools around the country. At Callan, where the Augustinians have been since 1230, Father McNamara said they were now "surviving on a wing and a prayer".
Tracing the background to this decline, the Dominican priest Father Gabriel Daly, writing in the July/August edition of Religious Life Review this year, said it began with changes made at Vatican 2, which "quite simply disposed of the view of religious life as a higher and more perfect way of life than that of ordinary Christians".
A glance at the figures underlines this. In 1970 there were 7,946 priests in religious orders in Ireland; by 1996 that number had almost halved. In 1970 there were 18,662 nuns; by 1996 that was down by a third. In 1970 there were 2,540 religious brothers; by 1996 that had dropped by three-fifths.
The collapse of seminarian numbers across the board among religious has been dramatic. In 1970, 261 young men entered seminaries for the religious orders in this country. In 1996 that figure was down to 39. For nuns, the drop was even worse. In 1970, 227 young women entered novitiates; by 1996 that was down to 19. But it is the religious brothers who have suffered most. In 1970 they had a total of 98 entrants - in 1996 there was just one.
This rapid decline has brought with it some unexpected problems for the orders. As Father Flannery says "traditionally, religious in Ireland were not well off. They lived frugally . . . now things have changed". Religious are finding themselves in posession of large properties which they no longer require. So, of late, the property pages regularly carry advertisements for large tracts of land, usually already serviced, zoned for building, and owned by religious orders. Examples in Dublin over recent years would include nine and a half acres at St Gabriels, Cabinteely, which realised £5.7 million for the Daughters of the Cross of Liege and seven and a half acres at Linden, Blackrock, which belonged to the Sisters of Charity and were sold for £8 million.
"How can people, vowed to a life of poverty, deal adequately with this type of situation?" asks Father Flannery. What they are doing is investing the money to care for their ageing populations. "Over the next 30 years or so religious communities will have large expenses and little income." It could be said, he continues, that in this whole area "religious have become wise in the ways of the world". But he wonders whether "all of this careful and sensible husbanding of money is another indication of a loss of spirit, or maybe even a loss of faith in the Person who told us to learn from the lilies of the field, and not to worry about tomorrow".
Where diocesan, or secular priests are concerned, the situation, while very worrying, is not quite so grim.
Speaking at a function in Dublin towards the end of September the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Desmond Connell, said: "Perhaps for the first time in our history, sufficient numbers of young men are not coming forward to answer the needs of the church." Earlier that week it had been disclosed that Clonliffe College, the seminary for the Dublin archdiocese, had had no entrants at all this year - while at Maynooth there were just 21 entrants, the lowest intake in its history. Already some rural dioceses are having problems in ensuring that weekly Masses are said in more remote parishes. Masses have had to be cancelled in some places, due to shortage of priests. President-elect Mary McAleese said recently that Sunday Masses at Ballyfarnon, Co Roscommon, where she holidays every summer with her family, had been cancelled for that very reason - and Saturday evening Masses have been dropped in the nearby village of Arigna. Other townlands in the Elphin diocese have also been affected, as have parts of Achonry, another western diocese. Bishop Thomas Flynn of Achonry has said he has had to reduce formerly three-priest parishes to two priests, and two-priest parishes to one.
In 1970 there were 3,944 diocesan priests in Ireland. In 1996 that figure was 3,638, a drop of just 306 over the 26-year period - which, when one takes into account the significant number who left the priesthood over the same period, is quite impressive. But it is when you look at figures for entrants to the seminaries that an indication of the very real crisis ahead becomes apparent. In 1970 there were 164 such entrants; by 1996, just 52.
And this decline seems set to continue. Since 1986 (170 entrants) the trend has been down, down, down, almost halving between 1994 and 1995 - the year of Father Brendan Smyth, and a rash of child sex abuse cases involving clergy, the Catholic Church's annus horribilis.
Dr Connell has put it down to a number of factors: "smaller families, the weakening of family support for one who seeks to test a vocation, the impact of scandals, the fear of permanent commitment to the celibate life, the abandonment of their ministry by some priests, the concentration on career opportunities and competition in the educational system, the aggressive worldliness fostered by so many influences about us". But the root cause of the crisis he traced to a loss of faith.
Traditionally, he said, the faithful "showed a religious respect for priests and held the priestly office in high esteem . . . the presence of a priest brought with it a sense of the sacred". Priests were now, however, uncomfortable in a world that no longer understoood or respected them. It was not suprising, therefore, he said, "that priests begin to conceal their presence in society when they feel that being recognised for what they are is liable to provoke resentment and even hostility".
Just how seriously the Dublin diocese is taking this can be measured by the fact that it is holding an information day at Clonliffe College this Saturday as part of a recently-launched drive to encourage vocations. It's part of a bigger publicity campaign called Who are the Men in Black?
Inevitably some of this disenchantment with the church is reflected in a fall-off in Mass attendance. Surveys indicate that in 1973/74, 91 per cent of Catholics in the Republic attended weekly Mass. A survey last month showed that that figure is down to 54 per cent. Mass-going in Dublin - as low as 10 per cent in some disadvantaged areas - is significantly lower now than is the case in rural Ireland.
However, figures for those who describe themselves as Catholic in this State are still very healthy. The last census which included a question on religious affiliation was in 1991. Then, approximately 92 per cent of the population in the Republic was Catholic. But there has also been a surge in the number of those who described themselves as having "no religion" or came within the "not stated" religious category; a trend that must worry a church used to the unwavering faith of the vast majority of Irish people.
(More tomorrow)
