Priestless Sundays

The old stone church of St. Michel in the tiny French village of Rodlinghem is full this Sunday morning. A strapping, red-bearded farmer named Gilbert, 22, leads the choir and congregation in the first hymn. As the notes die, 28-year-old Jean-Paul, a wiry, lean-faced legal clerk standing at the sanctuary lectern, launches into a short homily on the meaning of Lent, likening the penitential season to an automobile overhaul. After more songs and the reading of the Gospel, Pierre, 66, a sturdy, gray-haired retired farmer, leaves his pew and walks to the tabernacle. There he removes a ciborium of communion hosts consecrated by the parish priest the week before and distributes them to his fellow congregants. Later, as the worshipers rise to leave, Jean-Paul makes a hasty announcement. "We forgot to take up the first collection, so please be extra generous as you leave."

Scenes like the one at Rodlinghem are becoming more and more common in rural France these days, as parish after parish takes its turn at a "priestless Sunday." The country that anticlericals once thought priest-ridden is now facing a severe shortage of Roman Catholic priests (as are most European nations). In 1965 there were 40,000 French priests; by 1975 there may be as few as 30,000. As one result of the shortage, French bishops, meeting last year in Lourdes, tacitly authorized laymen to hold "prayer assemblies" in churches that cannot offer Sunday Mass.

For some small French communi--ties, depopulated by the rush to the cities, the prayer services have meant a new lease on life. In the Rodlinghem area, for instance, the village of Hocquinghen seemed to be dying. There were only 85 inhabitants left, and the school and cafe had closed. The Abbe Marius Gobert, dean of the church at the nearby town of Licques, did not have enough help to serve the four parishes in his area and decided to close Hocquinghen's church. But the town's young people, distressed at seeing the parishioners splinter off to other towns for church, asked to hold the new prayer assembly in place of Mass. Soon the district's other three towns--Licques, Rodlinghem and Ecottes--were offering to share their priest by taking one priestless Sunday each month.

The homemade prayer assemblies have ignited an enthusiasm for worship services that is unusual for modern France. "I thought no one was interested in religion any more," says Abbe Gobert. "Now, in my old age, my parishioners are active in the church and really participate. I have volunteers for everything. I let it all come from them." At Rodlinghem, a permanent committee of 20 prepares the service, but rotates some tasks among other parishioners so that as many as 150 can participate each year. The enthusiasm has spiked over into the regular Masses, in which the congregants now take a more active part.

So far, the prayer assemblies have been started in eight dioceses in France, and will almost certainly spread to more. Advocates of the practice, like Bishop Henri Derouet of Sees in Normandy, recognize that people worship best in their own communities. "If they have to go some other place to Mass, they do not feel at home," says Derouet, "and eventually they stop going." There are critics, of course. While lay-led Catholic services are commonplace in mission countries like Africa, and have become popular in priest-short areas such as East Germany, some of the French clergy still see them as dangerously close to Protestantism. Some parishioners object too, but they are, says one Rodlinghem layman, "the same ones who haven't approved of the Mass since it stopped being said in Latin."

A few scrupulous congregants who like the service have a different worry: they don't feel it fills their Sunday obligation. But Abbe Gobert finds their reluctant enthusiasm a good measure of the assemblies' effectiveness. "One woman always takes part in Licques' prayer assembly," he notes. "But she goes to Mass on the Saturday night before to be on the safe side."

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