Sunday Worship in the Absence of a Priest: Some Disquieting Reflections


Kathleen Hughes, R.S.C.J., is professor of worship and academic dean at the Catholic Theological Union

I have divided this essay into two sections. In the first section I will describe what prompted me to explore what is currently known as Sunday Worship in the Absence of a Priest. I will also describe the preliminary research I have completed on this topic with the help of a grant from the Lilly Endowment. I hope to communicate what is actually happening around the country in light of the priest shortage, decisions that are being made, ritual patterns that are developing, catechesis on this topic and-in some places-the lack thereof, and some changing sacramental perceptions that Sunday Worship in the Absence of a Priest is occasioning.

In the second section, in light of developing ritual patterns and perceptions I will raise some disquieting issues, and I will cluster the questions I wish to pose under the following categories: linguistic, theological, which includes ecclesiological and sacramental issues, liturgical, pastoral, economic, sociological, and ecumenical.

And a final introductory comment: henceforth for the sake of brevity I will refer to Sunday Worship in the Absence of a Priest by its acronym, which is, ironically, SWAP!

Background
I became interested in SWAP shortly after arriving at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago fourteen years ago. One of my first class assignments was to teach the worship practicum, sometimes called the "How to Say Mass Class" by our students. This practicum was designed for ordination candidates and was a requirement for the master of divinity degree. Increasingly, lay men and women, brothers, and women religious were in the Master of divinity program and therefore in the worship practicum. Some of these women and men had experienced a call to orders, and the worship practicum was a very painful reminder of present Church discipline regarding candidacy for ordination. The class was also putting these students through hoops, since it prepared them for nothing immediately germane to the particular ministries they would be able to offer the Church. So I designed a parallel class entitled "Lay Leadership of Prayer."

The rituals we covered in the lay presiding class included catechumenal rites, Communion to the sick, the Liturgy of the Hours, penitential celebrations, prayer vigils for the dead, and graveside services. In addition we looked at the ritual for a word and Communion service contained in the document On Holy Communion and the Worship of the Eucharistic Mystery Outside of Mass. This is a very abbreviated ritual for situations in which Communion is given outside of the celebration of Eucharist. According to its directives such an abbreviated ritual might also but need not include a reading, intercessions, the Our Father, and so on. It is an unassuming and simple rite for unusual circumstances.

Recent developments have changed this situation. Now there is a new and ample ritual proposed and soon to be implemented across the United States, indeed, issued for the universal Church.

The official protocols for Sunday worship led by deacons or laity are found in the 1988 Vatican Directory for Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest. These protocols are further developed in the United States Bishops' Committee on the Liturgy document Gathered in Steadfast Faith: Statement on Sunday Worship in the Absence of a Priest (1991). The National Council of Catholic Bishops of the United States has also prepared and approved a SWAP ritual book, due for publication by mid-1994 in a bilingual edition.

It is interesting to note in passing that the phenomenon of parishes in which no priest is available to celebrate the Sunday Eucharist, while only recently familiar to Roman Catholics in the United States, is not by any means a new phenomenon. The so-called younger Churches, or mission Churches, have long experienced a clergy shortage. It may well be that we have seen a flurry of publication from Rome because this is now a First-World phenomenon.

In any case it was this flurry of publication that started to alarm me. Such publications, and especially a ritual book, seem to suggest that SWAP is a reasonable alternative to Sunday Eucharist-not an interim emergency measure but something quasi-permanent. SWAP is a phenomenon about to be supported and sustained not by purloined copies of the Regina, Saskatchewan, Canadian ritual, an interim ritual booklet developed locally in Regina that spread all over North America, but by a handsomely published ritual book originating in Rome for use in the universal Church.

The SWAP ritual book includes the following options for Sunday worship: the Liturgy of the Hours with or without Communion; a Liturgy of the Word; and a rite that includes a Liturgy of the Word, thanksgiving prayer, and reception of Communion. This last pattern, particularly with the inclusion of a great variety of prayers of praise and thanksgiving, is to the untutored eye a first cousin, perhaps even a fraternal twin, to the celebration of the Eucharist. The two are easy to confuse. For example, it is reported by Ruth Wallace in her book They Call Her Pastor, a book about twenty women who exercise pastoral oversight of parishes in the United States, that many people who participate in a SWAP celebration believe that it is a Eucharistic celebration or a close facsimile.

As I tried to teach these ritual patterns I was troubled by many questions, and so too were my students: is SWAP a good thing or a bad thing? Is this a wonderful threshold moment in which, for the first time, the gifts of some lay women and men to lead prayer will be recognized and welcomed by the community? Or is SWAP like a finger in the dike, postponing our dealing with the discipline surrounding who may be ordained? Is SWAP not, in fact, a drastic departure from the ancient unity of Sunday, community, and Eucharist, a theology well articulated as the norm in the introduction of the SWAP book itself? Will SWAP change the sacramental imagination of those who participate, and if so, could we eventually become a nonsacramental Church? Should we be implementing this new ritual pattern, or should we choose to fast from reception of Holy Communion rather than distribute Communion outside of a Eucharistic context?

Such questions prompted the research I began in the fall of 1992. Through a variety of projects during an initial planning year I hoped to determine what was actually happening in this country at this particular juncture.

I sent a twelve-page questionnaire to every diocesan Ordinary in the United States asking for demographic information about the diocese, the frequency of Sunday worship with deacons or lay presiders, where it occurs, who presides, what criteria of selection of presider have been used, whether training has been available and who finances it, whether these presiders are formally commissioned and deputed, what ritual patterns are most frequently used, whether preaching forms a part of the rite, whether stipends are paid to lay leaders, whether catechesis of the assembly takes place, what impact lay leadership has had on collections, on the assembly's understanding of Sunday Eucharist, and on the community's sense of responsibility for its parochial life. And finally there were questions about the frequency of other lay-led celebrations, for example, prayer vigils for the deceased and weekday word and Communion services. In conclusion I invited any comments the respondent chose to make.

An astonishing 82 percent of the questionnaires were returned, indicating a very high interest in this topic among bishops and/or those whom they asked to respond in their name. The responses give evidence that this phenomenon of priestless Sunday celebrations is growing like Topsy, without any discernible oversight or direction.

Consider these facts: SWAP is called by at least twelve different names; training may be as extensive as two years or as minimal as one day; lay presiders are both obliged and forbidden to wear liturgical vesture; preaching is encouraged in some places and discouraged or proscribed in others; the style and ritual content of services differ from place to place; there is great concern that SWAP not be confused with Mass yet some customs appear to foster precisely such confusion.

Among the comments appended to the questionnaires the following was typical:

For the past ten years or so, our senate of priests has encouraged the Bishop to prioritize the parishes to see which ones would lose their resident pastor first. This was only done this past year. Up to that time, our Bishop's response was "Pray for vocations; God will provide." But over the years, Churches which had one or even two associates have lost them. We've gotten some elderly priests to help out. These from religious orders. We have been stretched as far as we can go. Last year one of our priests retired. The pastor of the neighboring parish was named pastor at the parish of the retired priest. So we now have the situation of having one priest pastor of two parishes and three missions... We only have four seminarians, several of whom are older men. I am not trying to be negative here, but I am trying to be realistic.

I include this response both for its content and its tone. I infer from the material I have received that we are actually in a period of drift and denial. I also assume that SWAP will not become a topic on the agenda of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops until the priest shortage hits the northeast corridor of Boston, New York, and Washington.

When the bishops do address this topic they will discover that SWAP is a little like shrapnel, exploding in a variety of directions, touching many aspects of the Church's life.

Issues and Questions
What do we call this new phenomenon? Sunday Worship in the Absence of a Priest, or SWAP, is one title. The Canadian liturgist Frank Henderson and some other Canadians who write on this topic prefer Sunday Celebrations Animated by Lay Presiders. That acronym is SCALP! But to use either of these titles, SWAP or SCALP, seems to suggest we are describing our worship by who leads it rather than by what is led.

Names are important. It is also obvious from my questionnaires that no one is sure how to refer to such worship, since twelve different titles have appeared. There is reference to celebration "in anticipation of the Eucharist" or "in the expectation of a priest." Both have an eschatological ring, a little like "waiting for Godot."

"Priestless celebrations" was the language adopted by some. Others retort, "No, we are not really priestless but rather Eucharistless." In each of these instances we are defining what we are doing by what it is not rather than by what it is. But interestingly, the word "Mass" is used by numerous participants.

And what do we call the leader? Is she or he a presider, a minister, a parochial administrator, a pastoral associate, the pastor? The latter title is what Ruth Wallace has inferred in the title of her book, They Call Her Pastor. Unofficially but quite commonly that is what lay leaders are called, canon law notwithstanding.

THEOLOGICAL ISSUES
Ecclesiological. There is, for example, the issue of the integrity of the local Church. If there is no priest available to serve the community, should the community disperse to attend Eucharist elsewhere? Should this decision be based on distance alone? For example, if another parish is within a radius of X miles the community disburses, but if the neighboring Church is farther, the community remains intact. Is the question of distance superseded by the right of a community to remain as a gathered assembly constituted through its public ritual expressions? Does the community, in fact, have the right to Eucharist, as Schillebeeckx has argued so eloquently?

This raises a second ecclesiological question: the self-manifestation of the Church. Ecclesiological language since Vatican 11 has spoken consistently about the Eucharist as the most perfect expression or manifestation of the Church. The Eucharist brings the Church to being. The Eucharist, in fact, constitutes the Church. What about other services? Is the Church constituted, manifested, or expressed in a service of the word, of the Liturgy of the Hours, in SWAP? Is this of import in the discussion?

A third ecclesial issue is the ordering of the liturgical assembly in which, as The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy proclaims, each member of the assembly participates according to his or her role. Does it matter that in some places lay presiders assume diaconal functions, particularly when the sacramental minister is present?

For example, in one diocese I visited, the parochial administrator (a woman who has been entrusted with the pastoral care of the parish) co-presides with the sacramental minister (the priest who comes in on Sunday to preside at Eucharist). As the person entrusted with the life of the parish community, the parochial administrator believes she ought to be present, visible, and active in the liturgical assembly. A number of the functions she assumes are diaconal. Are blurred distinctions of role prelude to another form of ministry, perhaps even a new, fourth order? Or are they really more problematic?

A fourth and very interesting ecclesial question is the relationship of a local lay-led community, its leader, and its worship to the bishop. This is both a juridical and a sacramental question. If a bishop does not bless a leader to the service of the community-in my research it was clear that rarely are lay leaders deputed or commissioned publicly-is there a juridical or sacramental relationship between the parochial assembly and its bishop? What is the nature of the juridical and sacramental bond between the bishop and the lay-led liturgical assembly?

The bishop's role is not just juridical. The presentation of the candidate for leadership helps the community realize itself as apostolic and Catholic when the bishop is involved. Furthermore, one latent function of the installation of a community's leadership is the empowerment of the whole community. Does lack of public installation or deputation give a local community a lesser sense of participation in the local (diocesan) Church, and if so, are we simply inviting congregationalism, that is, autonomous communities cut off from the local Church and from the local Ordinary? Are there or should there be accountability structures between nonordained leadership and episcopal leadership? How are they defined and preserved for the sake of right order, of collegiality, of participation in the Church diocesan and universal?

Sacramental. In the first part of this essay I alluded to the problem of severing the ancient unity of time, event, and community, that is, of Sunday, Eucharist, and assembly. That unity appears to disintegrate when the celebration of the event of the paschal mystery of Jesus' death and rising is not focal.

The Eucharist is an event. It is the coming together of a community who, having heard the word, offer themselves with the gifts for transformation, who make memorial of the mighty acts of God in Jesus Christ, who join themselves to the perfect offering, the sacrifice of Jesus, who gather at the table and then are sent to live what has been proclaimed in word and ritual action. This action of sacrifice is primordial worship.

I tried to make these distinctions once in a talk in Boston, stating that the celebration of the Eucharist is totally different from a gathering for SWAP, and I spoke of the actions of preparing, offering, transformation, memorial, Communion, and mission as constitutive of Eucharist and largely absent from SWAP. Somebody in the audience responded, "That's fine for you to say, but who else knows that?" That's an interesting catechetical question and one the Church must face as SWAP continues to evolve.

An important sacramental issue in SWAP celebrations is whether they tend to objectify the Eucharist once again, reify it, make it once more a thing in a box. Will giving Communion from the reserved species reverse the contemporary sacramental perspective that the Eucharist is an event and an action rather than a thing received? Will we lose the consciousness that Eucharist is first of all something we do, not just something we get?

There are some who would argue that Eucharist is not something we do only when a priest is present. Some who experience SWAP and who refer to these celebrations of word and Communion as "Mass" have argued that Eucharist is the action of the whole community. In so doing they have made the active subject of Eucharist the local Church rather than the Church universal, evidence of another shift to congregationalism.

Another sacramental question is this: are there not parallels in the tradition that might shed some light on what we are now doing with word and Communion? For example, when a community gathers for a baptism in the Easter season the water is already blessed, so there is no blessing of the water but rather a prayer of thanksgiving over it. Similarly, when a community gathers for anointing, if the oil has not been blessed there is a prayer of consecration, but if the oil is already consecrated there is a prayer of thanksgiving. These parallels are strikingly similar to Eucharist/SWAP: a community gathered for Eucharist blesses bread and wine; a community gathered for SWAP receives the bread that is already blessed, and over that bread says a prayer of thanksgiving. Do these parallels suggest that proclaiming a prayer of thanksgiving over preconsecrated bread is not an anomaly but has a warrant in the tradition? The parallels are provocative.

A final and sobering sacramental issue must be mentioned in passing. There are a good number of feminists in the Church who struggle with their membership in this faith community that so often seems to exclude or demean women. Many feminists who choose to stay in the Church do so because of the Church's sacramental life. The Eucharist, for these women, is constitutive of their identity. If we accept SWAP as a rational alternative to Eucharist, will we lose large numbers of women who are trying very hard to find a reason to stay in the Church?

LITURGICAL ISSUES
First, an observation regarding ritual: could it be that many people confuse Eucharist with SWAP services because Eucharist is celebrated so badly in some places? If there is no offering of gifts, a mumbled Eucharist prayer, no visible fraction, Communion under only one species, and Communion from the reserved sacrament, all of these choices reduce Eucharist to SWAP's identical twin.

The implementation of SWAP raises a variety of ritual questions.

These include the design of worship space; the use of a presider's chair and where it is located, whether in the sanctuary or out of the sanctuary; who may go near the altar and at what point in the celebration; where the presider is located throughout the celebration; what garb is appropriate; whether there should be a distinction between the gesture and the ritual language of clergy and laity.

Another ritual question involves variations in the SWAP ritual being introduced by local and diocesan decisions. The question is, are these variations in the ritual based on sound liturgical principles, or are changes and adaptations initiated lest SWAP be confused with the celebration of Eucharist? In some instances it appears that changes are being introduced that may prevent confusion between SWAP and Mass but that do not make liturgical sense or that are ritually clumsy, presenting a pattern of prayer that does not seem to flow organically.

It seems important in this time of transition to weigh another liturgical question, namely, the pros and cons of fasting from Eucharist altogether rather than taking Communion from the reserved sacrament. If such an option were pursued a community might celebrate morning or evening prayer on Sunday, or a service of the word. Proponents of such Eucharistic fasting think SWAP celebrations lull people into satisfaction with the situation. The uncritical, continued celebration of SWAP may leave the impression that this is a reasonable alternative, in face of the clergy shortage, for the foreseeable future.

Another ritual issue is posed in light of the sacramental reforms of Vatican 11, which placed every sacrament with the exception of reconciliation inside the celebration of Eucharist: weddings, communal anointings, and so on. There is now the expectation that marriages, funerals, and baptisms will have a Eucharistic context. Publication and implementation of the revised rites have set up an expectation that Eucharist will be available at the sacramental threshold moments. What are we going to do about that?

And finally, because the National Conference of Catholic Bishops has yet to debate all of these concerns, some of their votes seem to take place in a reality vacuum. For example, several years ago it was proposed that lay persons be allowed to preside at funerals in the absence of a priest. The proposal was supported by, among others, Archbishop Francis Hurley of Anchorage, Alaska, where weather frequently prevents an ordained presider-even if one is available-from being able to get to the place where a funeral might be celebrated. The proposal was rejected.

PASTORAL ISSUES
What is or should be the relationship between resident "pastors" and itinerant sacramental ministers? How is this perceived by the community? The pastor exercises comprehensive pastoral care. A sacramental minister in some communities is seen only rarely; he is a circuit rider. How do these people relate to each other? How does the "supply" priest relate to the community?

That particular issue raises the question of priestly identity and morale. A good portion of priestly morale has to do with satisfaction from relationships, from knowing those whom one serves. But some priests now feel rootless, stretched, sometimes even unwelcome when they arrive to celebrate Eucharist.

Similarly, some communities report that they feel "second-class," not worth a priest. They even regard themselves as expendable from a diocesan point of view. These are communities on the margins: the rural communities and in some cases, inner-city communities. Will geographic distribution of clergy set up a kind of rivalry about whether my community is worth it? What determines the fact, as my questionnaire recorded, that a large majority of suburban parishes have priests and that rural, mission, and inner-city parishes are the regular centers where deacons and lay people preside? Is it sheer numbers or are there subtle, perhaps political, issues involved?

Parenthetically, an African American bishop told me that he feared SWAP would affect African American communities profoundly. If SWAP is located in cities more frequently than suburbs African Americans will be affected disproportionately, and furthermore, he added, because African Americans are people of the word, they might not miss Eucharist if it gradually disappeared. This is a thesis that, along with other ethnic and racial effects of SWAP, must be tested in further research.

Another pastoral question is that of present seminary training. How does such training support and prepare seminarians for the challenges that face them with SWAP, for example, education of the laity, the development of collaborative ministry including teamwork with women, and the need to clarify their own priestly role? I noted with some sadness that one section that had appeared in the first three drafts of the U.S. bishops' ill-fated pastoral letter on women disappeared in the fourth draft, namely, that the inability to relate with women was described as a contraindication of readiness for ordination. Why, one wonders, would that principle-one of the strongest in an otherwise disappointing document-disappear even before the debate reached its closure and the document was tabled?

Another pastoral issue concerns the preparation of communities that will be affected by SWAP. Are communities part of the decision-making process, or do the decisions about leadership happen apart from local communities in a priest senate or some other forum? What forms of catechesis are appropriate? What other preparations should take place before a lay person walks down the aisle? And should such preparation leave the community comfortable or uncomfortable?

What about a community's choice and training of leaders? Should there be any institutional recognition of competence? Questions of competence are questions of justice. Questions of theological training are questions of justice. However, issues of selection, training, term, and evaluation are unevenly addressed across the United States. Regarding evaluation, there is cause for resentment when lay leaders are held to professional standards not required of sacramental ministers.

Yet another pastoral issue is this: what kind of ministers are sometimes assigned in order to prevent Sunday Worship in the Absence of a Priest? One priest told me he was afraid he may never be allowed to retire. In contrast, some communities have reported they had not experienced appropriate pastoral care in their living memory until a lay person arrived. These same communities were on the fringe, or very small, or were recipient of the retired priest, or were assigned the priest who in years past would have been banished for one reason of another from the center to the edge of the diocese.

ECONOMIC ISSUES
Should a master of divinity degree or its equivalent be expected of one who exercises pastoral care in a community and regularly presides and preaches? There are costs involved in theological training. Who provides training and who pays for it?

What about salaries for lay presiders? These appear to vary from nothing in the case of volunteers, to annual salaries of $5,000, to salary and benefit packages of $30,000 to $40,000. Much depends on a community's expectation of pastoral care and presence from a full-time parish leader.

Does one pay a stipend for SWAP? The Liturgy Office in Ottawa did get such a phone call: "What's the stipend for word and Communion?"

There is also a financial consideration with regard to the very printing and publication of the ritual book, particularly in light of the fact that the Sacramentary from which the opening prayers and prayers after Communion have been taken is itself undergoing extensive revision as it nears completion. How soon will the SWAP ritual book be out of date?

A final, perhaps puzzling, economic reality is this: collection patterns do apparently shift when SWAP is celebrated. What is interesting to note, however, is that where records have been kept collections appear to have increased at SWAP.

SOCIOLOGICAL ISSUES
If someone is trained and hired, is there any job security? The SWAP Ordo suggests that at every celebration in the absence of a priest a prayer for priestly vocations should be included. That's a little like a presider saying, "Get me out of here!" There is, in fact, no job security for those who make this fragile vocational choice.

Other sociological questions include whether lay pastoring and presidency of the assembly should be residential or itinerant. Is mobility of the lay minister a possibility? Is this even a good idea, particularly as families might often be affected.

Yet another sociological area for some interesting probing is the changing role and expectation of women. When women are SWAP leaders, subconscious perceptions are bound to break down concerning who belongs in sacred space. The lay leader will be seen as "at home" in the sanctuary and at the altar, as having been granted the authority to preach the word of God and to address God in the name of the community. Old subconscious taboos about "sacred" space and "sacred" roles are bound to be altered with SWAP.

Finally, under the cluster of sociological concerns I would mention demographic patterns, which have to be studied. There is enormous Catholic population growth in some areas. The numbers of priests and deacons for the foreseeable future need careful projection and planning. Lay ministers need training and support structures appropriate to their roles. Imagination and creativity will be needed to explore different ways for parishes, deaneries, and vicariates to be organized in response to changing demographics and available personnel and other resources.

ECUMENICAL ISSUES
The Catholic Church has been involved for years in bi- and trilateral dialogues with other Christian bodies as it works toward reunion. In the course of these conversations there have been recent breakthroughs in the area of ministry, particularly the broad acceptance of the threefold ordering of ministry. In light of these carefully articulated positions about the role of bishop, priest, and deacon, it is totally anomalous in most Protestant communions that a lay person would preside at worship.

Furthermore, to some Protestant observers the acceptance of SWAP as an alternative is perplexing. They wonder whether we are willing to separate word and sacrament and become a people of the word at the very time that our separated brothers and sisters are in a process of returning to the unity of word and sacrament. Are we passing like ships in the night?

Conclusion
This article has explored a number of issues and in the process has raised a number of questions that the phenomenon of SWAP presents. Many of these issues and questions demand further study. Perhaps of most interest now is the response of the community to the celebration of SWAP. What do people believe? What is their operative theology? ecclesiology? understanding of Eucharist? How is the Catholic sacramental imagination changing? What are the community's expectations? What can researchers learn from other movements, for example, base communities? What parallel developments are taking place in other countries and cultures, and how are these developments being interpreted?

Sunday Worship in the Absence of a Priest may be something proposed by the Church for short-term expediency. But we have the responsibility to explore what the long-term ramifications may be. If SWAP proves to be a good thing then we should accept it and promote it, discover competent liturgical presidency, provide the best training, establish the most appropriate ritual forms, and catechize thoroughly and thoughtfully.

If, however, SWAP is not a good thing, then such critical questions and issues as those it raises must continue to be explored.