A report in its own newspaper warns of difficulty and decline in the Roman Catholic Church. There’s some optimism nonetheless.

NORTHERN Cross – acclaimed, informed and almost coincidentally tabloid – is the monthly newspaper of the Tweed-to-Tees Roman Catholic diocese of Hexham and Newcastle.

The splash in the January edition talks of devastating scenarios and of far-reaching consequences, of plunging Mass attendance and of swiftly declining numbers of active priests – within nine years, it’s forecast, just 73 to serve 181 existing parishes.

Some, it adds, may have to be “suppressed”

– the parishes, not the priests – while churches may have to close and presbyteries be rented out.

Most fearful of all, it warns of “rationalisation”.

Rationalisation, as any euphemistic fool knows, is a long word meaning cuts. Government spending is being rationalised, too.

The report concentrates on the Tyne Valley, specifically quoting Father Paul Zielinski, but embraces the whole diocese. Weekly mass attendance, it says, fell from 52,563 in 2001 to 39,216 in 2009.

A comment piece acknowledges that the report might be considered sensational and scaremongering.

“The bleak scenario is not one concocted by a tabloid journalist with a flair for exaggeration but by one of the diocese’s most experienced and most respected priests,” it says.

The Northern Cross headline is “Use it or lose it”. They said that about the buses, and look what’s happening to them – and in the Church, there are no free passes for over-60s.

IT’S a bright Sunday morning at St John Fisher RC church in Sedgefield.

The previous evening’s news bulletins have shown three former Church of England bishops prostrate before the Archbishop of Westminster, about to be ordained Catholic priests.

Effectively they are the first members of what the Vatican has called the Ordinariat, a sort of national diocese for disaffected Anglicans.

Though it’s a simplification, and there are other issues, their chief concern is that the CofE may soon consecrate women bishops just as, 17 years ago, it ordained women priests.

It’s what the Roman Catholic church calls the first Sunday of Ordinary Time, that battery-charging period between Christmas and Easter, though Sedgefield, for several reasons, is wholly out of the ordinary (and, possibly, the Ordinariat, too).

For one thing, a church that comfortably seats 130 has a congregation of around 150 – plenty of youngsters – with another 100 expected for the evening service.

For another, the 87-year-old priestin- residence is Father John Caden MBE – Jack to his friends – former Darlington Reserves goalkeeper, 44 years in the parish and a walking testament to compassion and to faith.

He’s joined by Father Barry McKenzie, himself a former Anglican priest in Durham, and by Vincent Purcell, a deacon who attended Ushaw College with a view to becoming a priest but who then decided to take a year out. “That was 31 years ago,” he says, his wife Christine at his side. Now he’s the threatened college’s director of pastoral studies.

The congregation might be bigger yet but for the unavoidable absence of Christen Peacock, the organist – “lovely musician,” they say – who’s given birth to twins a few days earlier.

“I’m a twin, the good looking one,”

I tell the informant.

“So I see,” she says.

FR McKenzie leads the service.

It’s impossible to hear his name without thinking of the poor chap in Eleanor Rigby, writing the words of the sermon that no one will hear.

“I know, I don’t know whether it’s fame or the opposite,” he says.

Vincent delivers the homily, announces that he thinks he has man flu, reckons the biggest problem that he won’t be able to shout at the radio when the Wear-Tyne derby kicks off at noon.

He’s a Jarrow lad originally, now in Coxhoe, wants the red-and-whites to win. “Catholic priests don’t retire, they just go freelance,” he jokes before the service.

His homily relates Ordinary Time to festive excesses. “Just imagine the harm we would do if we kept up the calorific intake of Christmas and Easter all year round. This is a bit of breathing space, good for the spiritual health.”

Anne Jeans, ballerina and former Sedgefield mayoress, says afterwards that much of the parish’s strength is down to Fr Caden – “a brilliant priest” – though she worries what might happen to their deacon if Ushaw closes.

She’s also unhappy about the new, high-profile arrivals from the CofE.

“I don’t want us to compromise ourselves, I want to have Catholic priests and bishops. I have great faith; we’ll survive.”

FR McKenzie has to leave soon after the service, Fr Caden’s joined for coffee in the presbytery down the garden by the Purcell family.

He still works several hours each day, has adopted the new housing estates of Wynyard, though strictly they’re in one of the Billingham parishes – Billingham has three parishes, 5,000 Catholics and one priest – recalls that when his ministry began, in Darlington, the town had 28 priests and his own parish four curates.

The black line’s altogether thinner these days, though might quite quickly be replenished were the Vatican to accept married priests – other, of course, than those who’ve been in Anglican orders. Vincent says that the report – the rationalisation, whatever – is a lot better than doing nothing at all.

“We could just carry on the way we are, see what God does, but there’s an old saying that God helps those who help themselves.

“I don’t worry, but we have to be realistic.

There’s a fundamental vocation in life and if there are fewer priests, it means more opportunities and more challenges for others.”

Married priests? “I think it will come. Jack always says that it will be in my lifetime, but certainly I think in my children’s generation.

“Celibacy is a great gift to the Church but I don’t think you need celibacy to be faithful. Certainly there are challenges; I think we can overcome them.”