Pope Francis shakes up Catholic Church

[rug]

Many Catholics hope Pope Francis will strengthen laymen and women in church, who have been taking on responsibilities of priests in some rural areas. That might trigger a revolution, experts say.

Date 24.07.2013
Author Astrid Prange

The Catholic Church in Latin America has a way of dealing with contradictions: Instead of discussing whether women should be allowed to be ordained to the priesthood or debating the celibate, laymen go ahead and create precedents in their religious communities. They've come up with new forms of church services - services without a priest. Hopes are high during this year's World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro that Pope Francis will give more power to ordinary people in the church: the laypersons. That would ultimately change the Catholic Church.

Erwin Kräutler, bishop of the diocese Xingu in the Brazilian Amazon region, steers clear of tricky subjects such as women priests and celibate. Kräutler, an Austrian native who came to the Amazon region some 40 years ago, takes a more pragmatic approach: "I have 28 priests for 700,000 people in an area that's about the size of Germany," he said. "We started to ask ourselves: How can we enable people in the jungle, wherever they are, to take part in the Holy Communion?"

No priest around

Many laypersons have already come up with their own solution: they simply hold church services without the support of the clerics. They pray together, break the bread, administer wine, and care little about Catholic regulations, which specify that only priests are allowed to administer the sacrament of the Holy Communion.

"Lays take over responsibility, and the church moves forward. And even without pastors and priests, it works well," Sister Lucilene Antonio, who supports small religious communities within the Amazon region, said. "I have seen women who have done Services of the Word and broke the bread afterwards."

http://www.dw.de/pope-francis-shakes-up-catholic-church/a-16972679

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1. Apparently there is precedent for having communion services without a priest

I found this from the Diocese of Erie - it's for a service where there's no priest and the service is led by a deacon or layperson.

http://www.eriercd.org/pdf/comsrvp.pdf

But it's not quite the same as what the article quoted above says is going on here - they use reserved hosts that were consecrated by a priest at a previous Mass.

[rug]

2. Nagasaki is an example of the Catholic Church surviving without priests.

Catholicism was established there by Jesuit missionaries and thrived in the seventy years before 1640 when Japan was closed to the West. More than 200 years later it was discovered that there remained a large Catholic population which lasted more than two centuries without the priesthood.

However, in spite of persecution some vague and infrequent signs seemed to indicate that all the Christians of Japan had not perished. The Corean missionaries several times attempted to assure themselves of this, but without success, for since 1838 it had been impossible to enter "the mysterious empire" from any side. Interest in the Japanese mission, however continued to increase, and in April, 1844, Père Forcade was sent to Japan as a missionary. He stayed at Okinawa in the Riu-kiu islands with the Chinese catechist Ko as a companion. He was followed by Pères Leturdu, Adnet, Furet, Murmet, Gerard and Mounicou of the Société des Missions Etrangères of Paris. They waited for fourteen years, on the Riu-kiu or at Hong-Kong, seeking by every means to gain entry into Japan. During fourteen years of labour and sufferings they baptized two Japanese. Finally a treaty was signed between France and Japan, 8 October, 1858, and ratified 22 September, 1859. The missionaries were free to reside in open ports, and have there a church for the service of foreigners. Père Girard was provisionally named superior of the mission, and for the ratification of the treaty he went as interpreter to Yedo with the Consul-general, de Bellecourt. The three ports of Hakodate, Kanagawa-Yokahama, and Nagasaki were soon occupied. The labour in these places was difficult and the sojourn there dangerous, for prejudice against foreigners and Christians had not disappeared. Père Mermet built a house and a church at Hakodate and Père Furet did the same at Nagasaki. At first they taught French in order to make friends and prepare for the future. In the new church at Nagasaki on 17 March, 1865, occurred an ever-memorable event, when fifteen Christians made themselves known to Père Petitjean, assuring him that there were a great many others, about 50,000 in all being known. It is easy to imagine the joy which greeted this discovery after more than two centuries of waiting and patience. There were three marks by which these descendants of martyrs recognized these new missionaries as the successors of their ancient fathers: the authority of the Pope of Rome, the veneration of the Blessed Virgin, and the celibacy of the clergy. In the following year (1866) Père Petitjean was named Vicar Apostolic of Japan.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08297a.htm

A fascinating history.