c. 2005 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Amid all the hand-wringing over a shortage of priests and nuns, one frequently overlooked statistic may offer a glimpse of the future of ministry in America’s Catholic churches:

More than 18,000 Catholics are enrolled in lay ministry training programs _ a figure that is six times larger than the number of men studying to be priests, and one that has nearly doubled in the past 20 years.

These so-called “lay ecclesial ministers” are frequently women on the front lines of Catholic life, educating children, preparing couples for marriage, welcoming converts, and coordinating the songs and music that are central to Catholic worship.

In short, they’re doing the jobs that priests don’t have the time, or the manpower, to do anymore.

“Even though we have a shortage of priests, we don’t have a shortage of ministers,” said the Rev. Eugene Lauer, director of the New York-based National Pastoral Life Center.

When the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops meet here next week (Nov. 14-17), they are expected to approve new guidelines for lay ministers, a tacit acknowledgment that the church is relying on lay people to carry on the work once done mainly by priests and nuns.

The dwindling number of clergy has meant most priests concentrate on the things only a priest can do, such as celebrating Mass, hearing confessions and providing other sacraments.

Increasing numbers of lay people _ about 30,000 in the United States, according to a survey by Lauer’s office _ are now working part-time in U.S. Catholic churches to fill the pastoral and administrative gaps in parish life beyond the Sunday Mass.

Two-thirds of U.S. parishes now employ part-time lay ministers, up from 54 percent in 1990, according to Lauer’s survey. The most striking change has been a dramatic drop in the proportion of nuns (who are counted as lay people) in those positions, down from 41 percent to just 16 percent today.

Many lay ministers are known as “pastoral associates” who work side-by-side with a priest. About 75 percent of them are women, Lauer said, and it’s easiest to think of them as filling the role traditionally held by associate pastors. “Everything but the sacraments,” he said.

But a surprisingly large number _ about 800 or so, by Lauer’s count _ of lay ministers are “parish life directors” who basically run the parish in cooperation with a priest who visits once a week to preside at Mass.

“We’re going to have to solve the problem of the presiders,” Lauer said, “and I don’t think anyone is sure how we’re going to solve that problem.”

Most lay ministers are part-time; many receive some kind of payment. Full-time Catholic school teachers, who are 95 percent laity, are usually counted separately and not considered “lay ministers.”

Those categories also do not include the countless Catholics who assist at Mass each week, or the estimated 2,000 Catholics who work as chaplains in prisons, airports, hospitals and colleges.

The largest group of lay ministers (42 percent) are involved in parish education programs, according to Lauer’s study, making them important transmitters of the faith to the next generation of Catholics. They are also pastoral ministers, youth ministers, music ministers and liturgists.

James Davidson, a sociologist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., said lay ministers tend to be women in their 40s and 50s, overwhelmingly white, well-educated, married with children and alumni of Catholic schools. More than 60 percent had been active in the church for a decade or more.

“The majority of them look at their work with the church as a ministry or a calling, not simply a job,” said Davidson, co-author of a 2003 book, “Lay Ministers and Their Spiritual Practices.”

While lay ministers provide stable leadership at many parishes, the proposed guidelines from the bishops are clear that they do not replace ordained priests, do not operate as free agents and must work “in cooperation with the hierarchy and under its direction.”

The guidelines call the growth of lay ministers a “necessary, welcomed reality” in U.S. Catholic life but do not establish firm policies. Instead, they offer broad outlines about how ministers should be recruited, trained, supervised and evaluated.

Included in those guidelines are recommendations that ministers not be divorced and remarried outside the church, that they demonstrate “adherence to church doctrine” and that they exhibit “chaste living as a single, celibate or married person.”

Indeed, policies vary from diocese to diocese. Last year in Baker, Ore., for example, Bishop Robert Vasa required all lay volunteers to sign a 13-point “Affirmation of Faith” that promised obedience to church teachings on abortion, homosexuality and other issues in order to continue serving in their churches.

A recent Vatican assembly of Catholic bishops showed little desire to change from an all-male celibate priesthood. Absent other solutions, the church has come to rely on growing numbers of deacons _ mostly married men who are ordained to perform some but not all sacraments _ and lay ministers to fill the holes left by the priest shortage.

The bottom line, Catholic scholars say, is that U.S. Catholic life will be increasingly steered by lay Catholics.

“There’s only one of three options: You can give larger and larger portions of ministry to lay people, you can open the priesthood to married men, or you revisit the question of who can be ordained,” said the Rev. Mark Massa, co-director of the Center for American Catholic Studies at Fordham University in New York.

“But as I always tell my students, in a world where carpenters rise from the dead, anything is possible.”

MO/PH END ECKSTROM

Editors: Suitable as an advance for the Nov. 14-17 U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Conference in Washington.