ODDS & ENDS.

These days Catholic parishes with a roll call under 500 people need to be nervous. With more parishes than priests in many dioceses, peewee parishes are prime candidates for closure or consolidation when diocesan decision-makers caucus. If these tiniest of parishes are lucky enough, they might be assigned a pastoral admin-istrator, a nonordained person who pastors the parish. Such parishes then often are twice lucky because many nonordained pastors breath new life into parishes by emphasizing the lay-centered nature of the church.

Catholics hear and see a lot of campaigning today to remind them of what has become known as "the shortage of priests"--which refers not to height, but to numbers. All dioceses pray for vocations. Some dioceses fill airwaves and billboards with blurbs to attract more men to ordained ministry (no females need apply--not yet anyway). And a few dioceses swell their seminarian numbers by accepting any and every male who applies.

So when a Catholic priest is assigned to pastor a small congregation of 435 people, it's newsworthy. Add to that the fact that about 70 percent of the congregants are not Catholic, and something highly unusual is happening in the Catholic world. Maybe the much ballyhooed shortage of priests has been miraculously solved. Or, just maybe, the hype about the shortage of priests doesn't tell the full story.

When Father Daniel Coughlin, a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, was assigned recently to a small congregation in Washington, D.C., I wondered how this appointment jived with the shortage-of-priests rhetoric. Should the same archdiocese that spends a good chunk of change on ad campaigns to attract future priests squander one of its best and most respected priests by assigning him to this tiny congregation outside the archdiocese?

It's a hard question that needs to be voted upon. I vote in favor of this revered and respected priest taking on this unique pastorate of the House of Representatives. His appointment reflects a more public than parochial interpretation of what Catholic priesthood is all about. It models the mission of the church to the world. And what could be more worldly these days than American politics?

This appointment also challenges some of the shallowness around the imagery of a priest shortage and the rush to create more male priests through any means possible or probable.

Chicago, and many other dioceses, can do without one of its best priests because laypeople who now minister in ever increasing numbers know the church is their own.

One bishop echoed this reality when he was asked if he would like more priests. He responded: "Oh sure, a few more would be nice, but not a lot more, because then the people would forget it's their church."

All my good wishes go to Dan Coughlin in his new ministry to the House of Representatives. In addition to providing a competent and effective ministry to this unique body politic, his appointment also puts the whole shortage-of-priests rhetoric into new perspective.

Ultimately, it's one more vote for a lay-centered church.

PETER GILMOUR ([e-mail]) teaches at the Institute of Pastoral Studies of Loyola University Chicago.