WASHINGTON — U.S. Roman Catholic bishops on Tuesday showed their wariness about letting lay people invade clerical turf.
The bishops’ anxieties came out as they voted down a move to allow trained lay members to conduct funerals.
They voted 136 to 113 against the proposal, which would have required a two-thirds majority for passage.
Heavy floor opposition had presaged defeat of the plan.
Accepting it would signal that “the role and value of the priesthood was being questioned,” said Bishop Donald W. Wuerl of Pittsburgh.
“Such a sweeping move has a lot of ramifications and implications,” he said, likely to make substitution of laity for priests “a common practice.” The measure, spurred by a sharpening priest shortage, was proposed by a liturgy committee headed by Bishop Joseph F. Delaney of Fort Worth, Texas.
It would have authorized local bishops to permit lay persons to preside at funerals when no ordained deacon or priest was available.
Bishop Elden F.Curtiss of Helena, Mont., said the step would indicate “acceptance of priestless parishes and ascendance of the non-ordained.
“It would signal that we are moving from an ordained to a non-ordained ministry…. The time people most want a priest is when dying, at death and afterward.”
A succession of bishops took the floor to assail the plan at the annual fall meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
But a few bishops defended it with fervor.
Archbishop Francis T. Hurley of Anchorage, Alaska., said “extreme distances” and “extreme weather” there make such lay-led services vital, and added:
“It would be corporately narrow-minded and shortsighted not to allow this provision for the pastoral needs of people at one of their most poignant moments, the time of death.”
Bishop Robert F. Sanchez of Santa Fe, New Mex., said the measure would help “us to reach out to the grieving and suffering with support” when no clergy was available.
However, opposition notes prevailed.
Bishop James P. Keleher of Belleville, Ill., said he feared the plan would “further erode the priestly identity” and the “traditional function of priests.”
Archbishop Adam J. Maida of Detroit said it “would be a bad signal to the people” who already are “mixed up about priestly and lay ministry.”
Delaney’s committee, in recommending the plan, reported it has been requested in 45 dioceses where parishes have experienced priestless Sundays.
“There is a danger that where no priest is available, the funeral liturgy will not be celebrated,” he said.
The bishops also took up a major document on the “new slavery” in America to alcohol and drug abuse.
Prepared by a domestic policy committee headed by Bishop James Malone of Youngstown, Ohio, the report says:
“Sadly, there are millions…caught in the deadly grip of addiction — millions of lives wasted in dependency and despair, lives diminished by fear and hopelessness, lives lost in sickness and violence.”
The paper urges families, dioceses, parishes, schools and communities to expand efforts against drug abuse, and recommends legislation assuring adequate treatment and services for the addicted.
“No persons suffering from chemical dependency should be denied access to the treatment that could free them and their families from this slavery,” it says.
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