The Black Madonna

I'm constantly reminded by the mainstream media of the horrific shortage of priests in America. But I have to admit I'm puzzled.

First: since 1988, I've never taken residence near a parish with less that four priests - my current parish has six (though two are retired and in residence). Do we really need four priests in my parish, or four at the next-nearest? Whose job is it to make sure some parishes aren't overloaded and others aren't understaffed? Is any recruitment conducted in dioceses with too many priests, to bring them to dioceses with not enough?

More important, how many of the stories we hear in the MSM are a self-fulfilling prophesy?

Necessity, more than desire, has dictated a similarly unconventional approach in St. Fidelis Parish in a downtrodden downtown Chicago neighborhood. For 10 years, the parish has been run without a priest by Sister Leonette Kaluzny, who is entitled to do everything a priest can do except administer the sacraments, which include hearing confessions.

"I hear confessions anyway," the Polish-born Kaluzny, 69, said with a smile. "You do a lot of counseling in this ministry."

St. Fidelis was once home to eight priests, but when she arrived, Kaluzny filled a vacuum now shared by more than 3,100 U.S. parishes. Each weekend, visiting priests take turns celebrating Mass in the basement of the former parish school -- rented by the diocese to the Chicago public school district to help pay the bills.

Appointed by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin as the first layperson to head a parish in the Chicago archdiocese, Kaluzny faced resistance at first. "This was something so new to our Catholic people," she said, "because a priest was next to God."

Yet after a decade of watching her in action, some of the same people wonder why she is not ordained. The Catholic Church does not permit women's ordination.

"At one time, I wanted to be ordained," Kaluzny explained. "But right now I feel freer. I feel I can do almost more than the priest does. Rome for me, it's so far away. I push the laity to take their rightful role in the church as baptized Christians."

Sister Leonette once wished she could be ordained, but now she runs a parish and her parishoners allegedly whisper of heterodoxy while she sighs that 'Rome is far away'. Is this all mere coincidence?

Lastly, and interconnecting both of the above sets of questions: what's the relationship between heterodoxy in a diocese and how many priests it enjoys the services of? The article makes the claim that what I view as heterodoxy is merely necessary reform and a natural response to a lack of priests, and that the lack of reform is what's causing people to leave the Church. I think it equally (if not more) plausible that the lack of priests is caused by the decline in Church membership, spurred on by heterodoxy and the failure to stand firm on the Truth.

This is a demography student's thesis waiting to happen. We can't know what the most effective solution to our problems will be until we know how we got into this situation in the first place. And no matter the cause, the solution to curing this disease cannot be to kill the patient: we cannot save the Catholic Church by becoming Protestant.