Ireland is soon going to run out of priests. This will not come as a surprise to anyone who has been attentive to news from the Church here over the past decade or more. A not insignificant number of dioceses have not seen any new vocations in that time, others one or two, the rare few a small, steady flow. So it is unsurprising that the Bishop of Derry, Donal McKeown, warned recently that we are going to see lay-led Eucharistic liturgies in the near future in Ireland. He is not the first to have mooted such a move, merely the most recent, so it is nothing against His Grace when I say that lay-led Eucharistic services are a very bad idea.

Consider first the case for lay-led liturgies: that 20 or 30 years in the future, when Ireland is facing a major shortage of priests, rural areas will not have a resident pastor. They will then have a choice of driving to their nearest town for Sunday Mass, or else participating in a lay-led Eucharistic liturgy. Now, it is questionable to me whether these conditions really demand a measure like lay-led liturgies, which canonically are only meant to be used in emergency situations and with the permission of the local bishop. This is not a massive mission territory like Brazil; it is unlikely that you will need to drive more than an hour to get to a town with Mass on a Sunday.

Taking this into account, the dangers of introducing lay-led liturgies far outweigh the benefits for three reasons: first, we already have a Catholic population who struggle to grasp what the Eucharist is; second, it runs the risk of clericalising laity in a society where the “privilege of the altar” is still coveted; third, the liturgies would maintain the status quo rather than encouraging a missionary outlook.

I won’t dwell too long on the first point as it has been amply covered before. A poll a decade ago found only 25 per cent of Catholics believe in transubstantiation – a stark figure indeed. This may well require more nuanced investigation, such as was provided in the United States by the Centre for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA). This found secular studies perhaps overegged the issue through confusingly laid-out questions. However, anecdotally, the problem is bad in Ireland and removing the Eucharist from the context of the Mass is unlikely to strengthen or clarify already confused beliefs.

Then there is the problem of clericalism, one of the key targets of Vatican II reforms. These were intended to encourage greater lay participation in apostolic works, particularly evangelisation. In Ireland, this was an issue, with the priest holding an unhealthy level of social power and evangelisation regarded as a priest’s job. In Ireland, there is still a perception that the priest holds a privileged position – I remember hearing one would-be permanent deacon speaking of his attraction to the “privilege of the altar” – and unfortunately, the liberal capture of Vatican II has tended to embed a clericalised vision of what lay empowerment looks like.

So we hear suggestions that women can only be equal if they are allowed to become priests and parish sanctuaries became full of not-so-extraordinary Eucharistic ministers. The language around greater lay involvement has tended to emphasise this, speaking of lay “ministries” rather than apostolates. Giving permission for lay-led liturgies risks further blurring the lines between the clergy and the laity, which does no good to either party.

This leaves me with my last and most pressing objection: that lay-led liturgies are another example of a maintenance mindset, not a missionary one. Ireland is running out of priests and those that are left are overburdened by a structure that was designed for a time of abundant vocations. Yet while there have been welcome introductions of lay bereavement teams and suchlike, we have seen no widespread structural reform like amalgamation of parishes or closing churches. Such moves would be very unpopular; Irish people are very attached to their local churches and understandably so given our history. But there is persistent refusal to address the fact that we have far more churches than we need and the present structure threatens to run priests into the ground.

This is where proposals like lay-led liturgies are especially unhelpful, suggesting that we can both have our cake and eat it. Some parishes have, as it were, jumped the gun and already introduced the practice, without apparent episcopal approval. Instead of Mass on a Monday, for instance, the priest will take a much-deserved rest and leave it to the parishioners to lead their own service. This is the quintessential “Irish solution to an Irish problem”, as former Irish prime minister Charlie Haughey once put it. Instead of addressing the fact that priests are overworked by structural reform, we have the development of lay-led Eucharistic liturgies that maintain a bloated Church structure. The broader introduction of such a model may cushion the blow for local communities, but that is not what is needed. What we need is to be confronted with the truth: that the lay faithful must either actively engage in evangelical outreach, or else risk losing their local church.