The following are excerpts from a story by Sarah Mac Donald that was published in the National Catholic Reporter on Dec. 1, 2016:
DUBLIN – The ever-increasing workload of priests in Ireland is threatening to turn an aging, demoralized, and declining group into “sacrament-dispensing machines” who find pastoral work less and less satisfying, a co-founder of Ireland’s Association of Catholic Priests has warned.

In his address to the association’s annual general meeting in Athlone Nov. 16, Fr. Brendan Hoban highlighted how suicide is on the rise among Irish priests, a group he said was also increasingly prone to depression.

With the vast majority of Irish priests now age 70 or over, elderly diocesan priests are living increasingly isolated and lonely lives and are constantly “reminded that we no longer really matter, that at best we’re now little more than a ceremonial presence on the sidelines of life,” he said.

The 68-year-old parish priest said that though “we feel we’ve done our best to carry the good news,” an “avalanche of criticism in the media” meant they were “ritually presented as bad news people, controlling, oppressing, limiting, obsessing.”

More than 150 of the 1,000 priest members that the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) represents heard Hoban explain how the “implosion of our church” in the wake of the abuse scandals had made them realize that they were, in author Fr. Donald Cozzens’ words, “the last priests in Ireland.”

Stark statistics were cited, such as the plight of “two very prestigious dioceses in Ireland, Dublin and Killala,” both of which have just one diocesan priest under 40 years of age. In 20 years’ time, both dioceses will have one or maybe a few priests under age 60 to cover 199 parishes in Dublin and 22 rural parishes spread over a distance in Killala.

Acknowledging that diocesan priesthood in Ireland is “a lost tribe,” Hoban said priests need to find a voice and the courage to name their truth.

“As the last priests in Ireland, we have a right to consideration, acknowledgement, support, encouragement and, above all, respect,” Hoban continued. “Priests who have served the church for so long deserve no less and it’s time to start a reasonable conversation about this.”

He highlighted how many priests are struggling at a pastoral level with issues beyond their training and competence, such as how to minister to parents of same-sex couples who may be upset or confused, how to respond to an invitation to a same-sex marriage of parishioners, and what does pastoral care mean in these situations?

In an interview with national television in Ireland broadcast following the association meeting, Archbishop Charles Brown, the apostolic nuncio to Ireland, spoke about the extent of the falling away of belief among the Irish people. He told Gay Byrne, host of the television program “The Meaning of Life,” that the “fall off in vocations — especially to the priesthood — is a huge challenge.” However, he added, the number of priests working today in Ireland is “almost sufficient for our needs,” although many of these priests, he acknowledged, were in their 70s.

“So, in 10 years we are going to be looking at a completely different situation here,” he said, adding that “it is a big practical problem.”

But he also underlined that globally, since the year 2000, the number of priests around the world is getting bigger every year. “We have more and more and more every year. In Ireland or in France – no. But overall, yes. So, I think we have to recognize one element in this question will be non-Irish priests coming to work in Ireland.”