A FEW weeks ago in The Leader, I read where once again in Queensland a number of parishes are being grouped together for one priest to handle, with lay parish leaders doing the administration.
It is great that the laity is sharing their expertise with the other parishioners, but why does it seem that Queensland is always so short of priests?
I am not saying that Western Australia has enough – far from it. As towns decline, places that once had a convent and boarding school now have few Mass attendees and need to be taken care of by a neighbouring parish.
But it seems, from what I read in The Leader, that seminary numbers are very low indeed.
Whereas in Western Australia we have a number of seminarians in the Perth archdiocesan St Charles Seminary, and at the other seminary in Morley which has many students of varying ages from overseas.
On top of that, at Toodyay in the Avon Valley, a branch of the Franciscan Friars has a foundation catering for newcomers, and only recently a novitiate for the Salvatorian Fathers was opened at Greenmount, an outer Perth suburb in the Darling Ranges.
The Diocese of Bunbury has a wonderful “League of Nations” mixture of priests who do a wonderful job.
We have Polish Salvatorians, Irish Spiritans, soon to have a Tanzanian as well, priests from the Philippines, from Malaysia, Sri Lanka and the Indian sub-continent.
These, with the Australian “home-grown” clergy keep our diocese going very well indeed.
A great help to our priests are the permanent deacons, whom we have had for quite a few years now, and I cannot understand why other dioceses in Australia did not take up the opportunity to reinstate this level when Bunbury diocese did.
In fact, I personally feel that a number of senior clergy in other areas more or less stood back and looked askance at this “rather interesting experiment” instead of participating and thereby gaining excellent men to help run the parishes and take some of the weight off the shoulders of the priests.
NOEL INGLIS
Albany, WA
