COLUMN ONE : Filling the ‘Priestless Parishes’ : Short of clergy, Catholic parishes have turned to nuns and lay people to perform many duties. The experiments could shape the church’s future.

When 6-week-old Joseph Garcia Soares Jr., resplendent in his embroidered white gown, was baptized at St. Anthony’s Roman Catholic Church here last Sunday, Sister Mary Louise Deroin played a key role. Presenting a lighted candle to the infant’s parents during the ceremony, she challenged them to bring up Joe Jr. in the faith.

And although Father Timothy M. Ritchey was the one who conferred the baptism by tracing the sign of the cross on the infant’s forehead and pouring warm water over his downy black hair, earlier that morning the Holy Cross nun had led an entire Communion service by herself.

As “pastoral administrator” at St. Anthony’s and St. Catherine’s--her other rural parish 12 miles away in Hagerman, Ida.,--Sister Mary Louise intimately knows the parishioners, and she is in charge of the churches’ daily activities.

As the clergy shortage within the U.S. Catholic Church grows ever more acute, nuns, deacons and lay men and women are increasingly being appointed to fulfill roles and duties traditionally carried out only by priests. The practice, hailed by some and criticized by others, is sure to shape the way Catholic churches are run in the future.

Some church leaders fear parishioners will find the arrangement so satisfactory that they will feel less need for priests--downgrading the sacramental nature of the church and the importance of the all-male priesthood. Others worry that just the opposite will happen: Parishioners will shun non-ordained leaders who aren’t able to perform the sacraments--thus increasing pressure to ordain women and married men.

The phenomenon of “priestless parishes” isn’t confined to the wide-open spaces like the 83,000-square-mile Diocese of Boise, where more than a third of its 110 parishes are without resident priests. It’s also affecting big-city archdioceses like Seattle and Richmond, Va.

“It’s coming your way, folks,” warns Jean Marie Hiesberger, director of the church-supported Institute for Pastoral Life in Kansas City, Mo.

Her organization already has trained more than 100 men and women to take up the leadership slack left by the limited number of priests. And the institute is gearing up to train hundreds more to become pastoral administrators.

In Richmond, Father Tom Caroluzza, who chairs the diocese’s Task Force on Future Mission and Ministry, said that by 1996, 20 of its 131 parishes will need to be served by either a nun or a lay person. Four are so led at present.

“The big thing right now is communicating to . . . the people in the pews how to accept this new model of leadership,” Caroluzza said in a telephone interview. He added that he is asking every parish to be ready and willing to receive an unordained pastor.

So far, neither the Archdiocese of Los Angeles nor the dioceses of Orange or San Diego have parishes administered by non-ordained people. But a nun is pastoral leader of a new parish in El Cerrito in the Diocese of San Bernardino.

According to a recent survey, at least 1,000 of the nation’s 22,733 Catholic parishes have no resident clergy, and almost a third of the dioceses have parishes that at least occasionally hold Sunday services without a priest.

Within five to 10 years, that figure will have jumped to a full 85% of the dioceses, according to the Institute for Pastoral Life.

And, while the number of American priests has dropped from 59,200 in 1970 to 53,522, the U.S. Catholic population has increased by nearly 7 million.

Prompted by these trends, the nation’s bishops, meeting in Baltimore last month, authorized a new Sunday prayer service for parishes without priests. If approved by the Vatican, the “Order for Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest” would standardize ceremonies now performed by non-ordained leaders like Sister Mary Louise, who has been using a liturgical form adopted by the bishops of Canada.

Several U.S. bishops were deeply troubled by the prospect of a substitute service that might be confused with the central rite of the Mass.

Retired Indiana Bishop William E. McManus said he feared the rite would “bless a monster that could destroy the Sunday Mass tradition and Sunday Mass obligation.”

But he also asked his fellow bishops whether adopting the rite would “seem to make a value judgment that it is better to have a priestless prayer service on Sunday than to ordain married men or women to celebrate the Eucharist.”

It’s time, McManus said bluntly, to quit treating the topic of women’s ordination and optional celibacy “as if they were some kind of ecclesial obscenity.”

Such alternatives, of course, are not subject to discussion at the Vatican; Pope John Paul II has made it clear he opposes both women’s ordination and married priests.

Despite the objections by McManus and other bishops, the new Sunday worship service was approved by a 225-18 vote. It allows a bishop to designate a deacon, non-ordained sister, brother or lay member to lead prayers, read Scripture, preach, and perform a Communion service if bread and wine consecrated by a priest have been brought to the service or kept from a previous Mass.

That central act of consecration, according to Roman Catholic belief, is when the bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Jesus.

The Catholic Church isn’t likely any time soon to lift its 2,000-year-old ban restricting anyone other than a male priest from performing the sacraments. Sacramental rites such as consecrating the bread at Mass, and--except in extraordinary circumstances--conferring baptism, remain the exclusive preserve of priests.

But in this remote area of south-central Idaho, for example, because of the long distances between churches and because Father Ritchey, 33, is resident pastor at still a third parish, Sister Mary Louise, 56, preaches and officiates at Communion services every Sunday, alternating between St. Anthony’s and St. Catherine’s. Ritchey says Mass at each of the two parishes on alternate Sundays.

And in the outer reaches of the Aleutian island chain, a priest can only make it to St. Christopher Mission in Unalaska one Sunday a month. Laywoman Brenda Moscarella conducts services on the other weekends.

This new infusion of non-priests into the liturgy and administration of Catholic parishes has stirred mixed feelings, however, among both parishioners in the pews and professionals in the trenches.

Bea Martingale, who 10 years ago moved from Riverside, Calif., to Hagerman, where she attends services under Sister Mary Louise’s leadership at St. Catherine’s, was asked if she missed not having a priest say Mass every Sunday.

“Not any more,” she replied. “It’s no different” to have a nun in charge. “You have to adjust. It’s great to have a sister here rather than having to travel” many miles to another parish where a resident priest is in charge.

“It can be a steppingstone” for women into church leadership, added parishioner Teresa Folts, who called Sister Mary Louise “a pioneer in . . . a complex task.”

But Natalie Kavajecz of Wendell said not having a priest say Mass every Sunday “still bothers me. I guess I’m old-fashioned. I hope it doesn’t become more common.”

And Hagerman parishioner Faye Coates said she goes wherever Father Ritchey is saying Mass on a particular Sunday. The Communion service led by Sister Mary Louise “is not Mass and Mass is the whole core of our religion,” Coates complained.

Ritchey, an Idaho native who is casual and impromptu in style, supports Sister Mary Louise and says he’s not threatened by her authority.

“I say, ‘Whatever Sister says, goes.’ Except for the sacramental aspects, she has all the authority. And I think the spiritual needs of the people are taken care of better than if they had to be met by a circuit-riding priest who has to spread himself over a five-point parish.”

In the nearby archdiocese of Seattle, there are no Sunday services without a priest--yet. But six parishes are led by either a deacon or nuns, and Victoria Ries, a married mother of two children who holds a doctoral degree in theology from the University of Chicago, was recently installed as spiritual leader of a 230-family parish at the north end of Seattle’s Capitol Hill.

The Seattle archdiocese is projecting a net loss of 10 priests each year for the next decade, according to John Reid, the archdiocese’s director for lay ministry. Still, more than enough qualified non-ordained people are signing up to fill the gap, and the parish administrator arrangement appears to be working well, Reid said.

“When Catholic people experience quality, effective leadership, they feel well-served and this makes them more committed” to their parish, he said.

On the other hand, Reid pointed to “a danger . . . when we don’t clarify the distinctions between pastoral and sacramental ministries” and when the “archdiocese undercuts the authority” of non-ordained administrators.

In Gaylord, Mich., Sister Virginia Phillips, administrative assistant to the bishop, stressed the “partnership” quality between many of the priests and non-ordained parish administrators in the 21-county, totally rural diocese.

“Priests see that they don’t have to worry about some of the administrative areas. That frees them up to concentrate in other areas they feel called to do,” she said.

And Bishop Raymond Lucker of New Ulm, Minn., a pioneer in dealing with priestless parishes, predicts that even if priests became plentiful again, the emphasis on lay ministry will continue.

However many priests are ordained, said Lucker, the church can’t go back to the days when “Father did it all. What started as an answer to a practical problem has opened up a new vision.”

But Lucker, speaking up at the national bishops’ meeting in Baltimore, had warned his colleagues they can no longer ignore the ordination issue:

“Over and over,” he said, “I hear the question (from parishioners): ‘Why can’t we ordain people other than celibate men?’ ”