A PROFESSOR of peace studies who is a former Catholic priest has called for the creation of part-time and temporary priests, and proposed giving non-celibate lay elders the power to preside over the Eucharist.
Dr James O'Connell, emeritus professor of peace studies at Bradford University, a practising Catholic who is originally from Cork, has outlined his proposals in the current issue of the British Jesuit journal The Month.
The article proposes a threefold ministry: full-time priests who may be married or celibate; part-time priests who will normally be married and who will bring their secular experience into the ministry; and temporary priests "who do not wish to spend all their lives as clerics but who willingly give their energies to God and the deprived" for a limited period.
The third group, whom he also calls "clerics of limited commitment", could spend three to five years in the priesthood. "I believe many would re-enlist, some permanently once they discover it's worthwhile and they are suited to it," Prof O'Connell said yesterday.
He said his approach in the article was based on the church's need to increase the number and calibre of priests, and to avoid the way celibacy diminished many existing priests.
"The present order of things, "misses out on many able and experienced persons and fails to give a full ministerial role to elders of the community, particularly in developing countries," he said.
In the article he describes proposals to revive the diaconate to give lay people a greater role in the church as "a miserable half-step".
He sees a crucial role for celibates but says that celibacy "best enhances those who have accepted it freely and not as a package deal with priesthood." He remarks in passing that the arguments against women priests are likely to prove as ephemeral as those that were directed in the last century against women doctors.
Prof O'Connell expresses profound unease about "the encroachment of bureaucratic organisation" on "the freedom of the Gospel". He cites the apostle Paul's argument that Christ's Gospel justified setting aside Jewish law and ritual.
Jesus set up a community which required organisation, he said. But such organisation had to change as times changed, and the Catholic Church must constantly reform itself if it was to achieve its mission.