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Passing generation of Vatican II clergy

 

Yet another religious order or congregation leaves our diocese. A much-loved Vatican II-inspired archbishop dies. Our parish priest tells us that relieving priests are more difficult to find. These are all striking moments in church life. Yet the biggest shock has been to learn of the seemingly inevitable decline of the National Council of Priests (NCP).

In any likely version of a future Church the clergy will play a central role. They will do this either as the traditional church’s clerical workforce in a largely unchanged hierarchical church or as equal partners with lay Catholics and religious in a newly reformed and co-responsible synodal church.

Pope Francis certainly recognises this fact and often gives the impression, when he condemns clericalism, that he frets about whether the modern church’s male priesthood is fit for the task and committed to his synodal agenda. As part of the consultation for the second assembly of the Synod of Bishops he called 300 parish priests from around the world to Rome to learn more about their views.

Within Australia church lay reformers have always been conscious of the role of parish priests as reform leaders and allies or stumbling blocks and adversaries. Reform couldn’t have proceeded without many priests and former priests playing their part. Where parish priests were indifferent or opposed to reform the going was very tough indeed because of their role as gatekeepers. This was the case in mundane matters such as communication with parishioners through access to parish newsletters and church noticeboards and in more serious matters such as the role of priests as spiritual and liturgical guides.

Clearly the priesthood in the church in Australia has been undergoing radical change. Attention often focuses on the quantitative decline in the numbers of vocations to the priesthood and on the dramatic upsurge in the recruitment of foreign-born priests.

Attention also focuses on the character and values of younger priests coming up the traditional route through Australian seminaries who often hold different values to their predecessors. This has led to frequent dissonance when a new priest takes over an established parish and overturns established practices. Parishioners are often outraged at the abrupt return by more conservative young priests to the old pre-Vatican II ways.

Polarization and cultural conflict within the church has certainly contributed to parishioners ‘shopping around’ for a ‘compatible’ parish priest. Generational change among clergy is one important part of this story.

 

'The NCP is not alone in its decline. Interestingly, the possible explanations mirror those found in the discussion of the future of other declining organisations, some mainstream like trade unions, and others within the church like religious orders and certain lay organisations, which have also failed so far to find solutions.'

 

Such generational change is not new; it is inevitable. Many older Catholics grew up with Irish-born parish priests and have seen them disappear.  But as the church in Australia fights for its very survival there is something new about this more recent cultural change.

The current dilemma of the National Council of Priests (NCP) is a striking example of the impact of such cultural and generational change. It is sketched in the current issue of The Swag, the newsletter of the NCP, by its chairman, Rev John Conway, committee member Rev Bill Burt SVD, and editor, Rev Peter Matheson.

The NCP, an Australia-wide organisation of Catholic priests and Associate Members (Lay, Religious and Seminarians), was founded in 1970 ‘in the spirit of Vatican II’. It is ‘committed to the fraternity and further education of clergy and to representing clergy in the public forum’. Its national conventions, the next one is planned for March 2025, have served as important gatherings open to issues of church reform. Its members and friends have included some bishops, although it has also been disdained by some others. In the current edition of The Swag the main feature article is written by the late Emeritus Bishop Peter Ingham.

The spirit of Vatican II was and is central to NCP. As Peter Matheson points out, its motto, ‘Sign of Unity. Instrument of Peace’, is taken from the first paragraph of Vatican II’s The Dogmatic Constitution of the Church (Lumen Gentium).

At its peak, perhaps about 1800 members, the NCP attracted large number of priests to its ranks. But now, in the words of its chairman Conway, it is ‘floundering’ and diminished. Its future is uncertain. Bill Burt describes the current membership as in a ‘dire state’.

Of the current c.3,000 priests in Australia, c.780, only about a quarter, are NCP members and their average age is about 80 years old. As Burt says, ‘By far the majority of these are senior citizens, mainly from Anglo-Irish/Caucasian backgrounds.’ Clearly, the trajectory of the ageing membership is heading downwards. Examining the membership, Burt concludes, ‘Very few priests from other ethnicities are current NCP members and almost no younger clergy from overseas in recent years have indicated any interest in joining the NCP. Quite frankly, we do not represent the body of active Catholic clergy today’.

This decline may not be irreversible, even though it looks likely. The NCP executive and The Swag team are trying to attract those who are presently choosing not to join. There are several possible contributing factors to this decline, most of which the NCP leadership has considered. NCP is not alone in its decline. Interestingly, the possible explanations mirror those found in the discussion of the future of other declining organisations, some mainstream like trade unions, and others within the church like religious orders and certain lay organisations, which have also failed so far to find solutions.

The most disappointing explanation would be that it signifies an active rejection of the Vatican II ethos represented by the NCP. If that is the case it endangers the success of synodality, an idea which draws heavily on Vatican II.

 Alternatively, it could reflect the individualism of younger priests who see no attraction in the idea of collective effort and networking. Perhaps they prefer to ‘bowl alone’, the term of the American social scientist Robert Putnam, like an increasing number of the wider community. It could be that the NCP itself has failed to reach out effectively to newcomers. It could be that new immigrant priests find their support networks within their own ethnic communities or that new religious order priests increasingly find no need for networks other than their own order. Perhaps NCP membership is actively discouraged by church leaders during seminary priestly formation, itself a subject of synodal discussion. There is probably some truth in all these explanations.

The NCP leadership is seeking feedback. Hopefully remedies will be found to enable some revitalisation. If not, it will pass away and the church in Australia will have lost something extremely valuable. Church reform will become less likely without this Vatican II-inspired generation of priests.

 

 


John Warhurst is an Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University.

Topic tags: John Warhurst, Church, NCP, Clergy, Priests, Catholic, Vatican II

 

 

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Existing comments

Thanks, John, for alerting us to this. I was invited to present my research findings about Catholic school funding and its implications for the future of Catholic Schools, when Fr Hal Ranger was NCP president.

At my presentation, attended by about 100 priests, some of whom were known to me, the audio-visual equipment failed. I was allowed ten minutes to speak to my research with a similar time for questions and answers. I'd have thought it a promising investment of everybody's time if there'd been some follow-up. Alas, none!

Shortly afterwards, Bishop Morris of Toowoomba was surreptitiously investigated by the Vatican and, within a year, removed from office and replaced by episcopal leaders widely regarded by traditionalists as 'safe'. Mass attendance plummeted!

The above two events, mirrored in a myriad other ways in the Church bode ominously for the future of Catholicism, with so much decision-making residing in the Pope Francis' hands. As the clock ticks down on his own timetable, it seems to have been a disheartening waste of time.

Addressing 'dead horse-flogging' and 'Neros fiddling' are everyday aspects of risk-management. Assuming synodality turns out another cunning conjuror's trick it would take madness not to plan for that contingency.


Michael Furtado | 02 August 2024  

I offer three points to consider:

1) It may be true that younger clergy are more individualistic, but it may also be true that they just want to avoid the polarisation that exists in the Church, and that the NCP represents one pole to them.
2) Your article entirely ignores the fact there is another association of priests in Australia called the Australian Confraternity for Catholic Clergy that appears to attract more of the active clergy.
3) In my opinion, the biggest issue is that from what one sees in The Swag, the NCP appears to promote and normalise dissent from magisterial teaching, is frequently highly critical of figures such as Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and appears to eschew clerical dress. In these times when pursuing a priestly vocation is profoundly countercultural, few young men would enter the seminary if they dissented from the Church's teaching or did not want to be visibly identifiable as a priest. Furthermore, their vocations are often to some degree inspired by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. I certainly don't think that makes them anti-Vatican II, but you may disagree.


Joshua | 03 August 2024  
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Unfortunately the clericalism and traditionalism present in younger clergy mentioned by Joshua is not healthy. In fact, it's part of the wider dysfunction in church culture that has already been identified in many abuse inquiries. I've found such young priests to be stuck in the past (1950s), arrogant and dismissive of laypeople and their gifts, obsessed over Latin and the supposed 'modernist' crisis, among other things.

The Australian Cofraternity of Clergy appears in my experience to be a hyper-conservative fundamentalist group with little mainstream appeal. Their website platforms many articles from Pope Francis's harshest critics, such as Athanasius Schneider, Raymond Burke and Cardinal Mueller. They appear to be mainly a fundamentalist outlift who push radical traditionalist talking points among a small sub-culture of ultraconservative Australian clergy.

The complaints over the Swag 'pushing dissent' are unjustified. The writers do not reject 'magisterial teaching', rather the hyper-conservative and fundamentalist vision of Catholicism promoted by some Bishops, Cardinals and also younger priests.

If 'clerical dress' means the 1950's long flowing cassock, it's not counter-cultural, but rather a form of 'spiritual worldliness' as Pope Francis put it and part of clericalism.

Such clergy are also strongly anti-Vatican 2, especially on social media.


Greg | 08 August 2024  

Perhaps the newer priests have the sense to see what claimed adherence to the 'Spirit of Vatican 2' has meant. To them it may mean a barren and self-worshipping version of the faith. It may mean the spirit and not the law of Vatican 2. It may mean liberties not actually permitted or even contemplated by Vatican 2. It may mean the death of the practice of the faith that they have seen and want to turn around. 

In those circumstances, it may be best to let it die. It is understandable that younger priests don't want a part of it. And just because they don't want to join your club doesn't mean they want to go it alone.


Bob | 04 August 2024  
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Unfortunately, nothing is more pointless than a policy of 'stop the world, I wanna get off'. To batten down the hatches never works except to redirect energies, such as in leaving & going elsewhere.
Millions of Catholics & others, living as we now do in a post-Enlightenment Age, have done precisely this while the Church still dithers about applying the grammar formulated by Ambrose & Aquinas about whether women have souls or not, which is what they were unsure about & which should automatically remove them from the Calendar of Saints as we once did Philomena when it was discovered that there was no such person.
A Jesuit cousin of mine, Noel D'Souza, when Rector of the Papal Seminary in Poona (Indian Jesuits sport the largest Province on the globe) once told me just how Anthony de Mello, a prominent member of his Province & famed spiritual director and writer, was hunted down by the Vatican for his work on bringing elements of Eastern spirituality to enhance its hitherto gravely depleted Western equivalent.
Since then, India's seminaries, from which we draw our largest cohort of imported priests, removed all vestiges of Eastern spirituality in supposed preparedness for re-evangelising the West.


Michael Furtado | 11 August 2024  

I said nothing about battening down the hatches. Things are not just binary and at extremes. Just because a young priest is sceptical of the National Council of Priests does not make him a reactionary. It may merely make him not blind.

I am not a priest. I am a soon to be divorced father of several children, for whom I have the care. But all of my life I felt robbed of our liturgical heritage by a bunch of older Catholics who were even more choose-your-own-adventure than the wildest of protestants. The narcissism of it all has always bothered me. Liberties taken in the name of the "Spirit of Vatican 2" while they threw the baby out with the bathwater. 

But were I a priest I would not be some reactionary obscurantist obsessed with the politics of the incumbent pope and preoccupied with dressing up. But nor would I be afraid of our past, of Latin, of our liturgy (I mean the Novus Order, not 1962), of actual obligations on the faithful.

I remember in my brief career as a teacher, I told some year 9 and 10 boys that they were adult Catholics and explained to them in clear terms their obligations in that regard (confessing grave sins annually, attending mass on Sundays, etc). Other teachers looked at me as though I had two heads, but these were young Catholic men in a Catholic school.

I know for a fact that during that Lent the degree of mass attendance among those students massively increased.

I don't see what Indian Jesuits being wary of the paganism that surrounded them has to do with anything.


Bob | 16 August 2024  

How depressing. We know from the latest Mass attendance figures in Australia (8%) that the Catholic Church is dying.

As John Warhurst reminds us, we are increasingly dependent on importing priests unfamiliar with the Australian culture as our pastoral leaders. Too often, those priests are comfortable simply serving as Sacrament providers loyal to the status quo and applying their own cultural norms to Australian situations – good people but unlikely to be successful change agents.

Most of our youth are leaving the Church seeing it as a hypocritical institution that does not practise the values it purports to teach. Those that stay include some who are quite happy with the Church as it is, who are blind to its failures. Those ‘failures’ include an autocratic system and culture controlled by celibate, unaccountable, males with little inclination to listen to the lived experiences of the faithful, a Church whose leaders have failed their most basic duty of protecting children. Our Church has sunk to the hubris of regarding its reputation and the status of its leaders as more important than its mission of modelling Christianity, the evangelisation of the Good News.

Of the few who join the priesthood, it seems that most are of a very traditional bent happy to resist any reform of the Church and comfortable in the Church's clericalist leadership. This is not a Church that welcomes Pope Francis’ commitment to synodality, to inclusive and listening leadership, at most pretending to be synodal in consulting the faithful for the 2nd Assembly of the Synod on Synodality.

Let’s pray that the Synod members will insist on true listening to the lived experience of the faithful. As is shown in Australia by the valiant but failing efforts of the National Council of Priests, it may already be too late. Perhaps the Holy Spirit has other plans.


Peter Johnstone | 05 August 2024  
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I think the Spirit does have other plans, Peter.

Of course, I have the greatest respect for John and his friends in trying to reform. But, to the question where are we at? I think we are back in the Last Supper room after Jesus’ execution waiting to be shown that “Christ is risen”.

Some claim they already know that. I doubt they even know Jesus has died!


Fosco | 09 August 2024  

The French Revolution was bigger than whether health inspectors at the Paris fish market were pre or post Enlightenment. Or, their dress codes.

Nor are we in Reformation Two! We are in death times: the Church must die. And be reborn with knowledge of what spirituality means now that humankind has put its footprint on the moon. We have never been this way before. And it’s not just Christianity. Buddhism, in the Asian powerhouse of Japan, is copping it too.

Those asking to be sent to seek the desert should be careful what they pray for. God can be very cruel with some people sometimes. I think it's the Sin of pride but I could be wrong.


Fosco | 06 August 2024  

The decline in Australian born priests - who know the ways of the people of this wonderfully idiosyncratic country - is a worry. The late Father Bob Maguire was a superb example of a post-Vatican II priest. Where Catholicism lives and flourishes - such as in France and Italy - it is part of a deep, rich, living culture. For a while we seemed to be developing our own. Sadly, there have been savage attacks on both Australian culture and Christianity from Marxist inspired deconstructionist sources. Many young suitable Australian men are put off the priesthood for a variety of reasons. These include the deliberate and sustained denigration of any man who dares to take on a leadership role; the dreadful pay and conditions compared with other denominations; atrocious, authoritarian leadership from many (not all) bishops and the inability to marry unlike Eastern Rite Catholic priests such as Ukrainians. Forget synodality, which appears to have come to a dead end. We really need to look at married, properly paid clergy who are treated with respect by their generally blinkered authoritarian leaders. When will we ever learn?


Edward Fido | 06 August 2024  

How sad that contributions here so far on the issue of Church renewal and reform fail to convey any sense of the adventure and joy that lies in the following of Christ, and of gratitude for the gift of his presence and nourishment in the Eucharist.
Though priests in Australia may currently be fewer in number than in days past, there are still among us many who bear personal witness by their faith, hope and love in response to their calling by God and the mission on which they are sent.


John RD | 08 August 2024  

I have two perspectives on the declining numbers. Firstly, it is natural for any institution to experience a decline in numbers. Therefore, let us not interpret this decline as a failure. Instead, let us embrace this opportunity and develop a creative response that warms hearts and heals wounds. Secondly, I have reservations about categorizing younger priests as "conservatives" and identifying groups like ACCC as conservative. As a young and active priest, I do not find ACCC appealing because I believe it deviates from preserving the unified tradition of the Church. In my opinion, ACCC tends to be divisive and fosters a culture of liturgical relativism and moral elitism. Additionally, I observe concerning aspects in ACCC's portrayal of a typology of the Church, which I fear may lead to a significant departure of the young priests it currently attracts from the priesthood in the near future, as their concept of priesthood conflicts with the reality of people's lived experiences. Therefore, I humbly request that we accept this period of decline and place our trust in God's mercy, as the gift of God's mercy far outweigh the fall of humans, as stated in Romans 5:12.


Francis Afu | 11 August 2024  

There is a wonderful, pretty self-explanatory Latin saying: 'Ecclesia semper reformanda.' Vatican II was an attempt to sweep away some of the cobwebs, not to burn the house down. I remember the Pre-Vatican II Church here. It seemed pretty morbid and hierarchical. Irish clergy in Ireland made jokes about it. The Synod was an attempt to streamline Church administration and make it less clericalized. Sadly, many people tried to use it to water down the Magisterium. That was neither possible nor part of the Synodal brief. I find it disturbing when some immediate past Popes and the current one are denigrated or even, in the case of Pope Francis, accused of heresy. This is diabolical and really threatens the Church, which, at the moment, seems to be walking its own Via Dolorosa. I am sure it will survive but I think its members need to fasten their seatbelts. There is turbulence ahead.


Edward Fido | 11 August 2024  

The reduction of religious practice in Catholicism from the pre-Vatican II level of 80% to 8% is precisely the same as the reduction which came from the great Protestant reformations of Catholicism that came from the renegade Catholic clergy in Germany, England and Scotland, and followed the self interests of the French and Russian revolutionaries who simply wanted all things to favour their beliefs and personal desires. Vatican II brought little good in its wake and much catastrophe, also because the personal beliefs and desires of those who found the following of Christ and his teachings a bit too tough.


John Frawley | 19 August 2024  

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