Bishop Anthony Fisher's TALK AT THE Vocations Reflection Afternoon

Our Lady of the Angels Parish, Rouse Hill, 24th June 2012

The phoney vocations crisis

There’s a priestly vocations crisis at the moment right? Actually, I’m not so sure – for a few reasons…

First, because no bishop ever thinks he’s got enough priests. You can always do with more. I’ve got good work for at least another hundred to do, in my diocese alone, right now. If Fr Warren finds me another hundred, as I expect he will, I’ll have tasks for another hundred after that. That’s because the work of priests, proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ to the world, offering the eternal sacrifice of the Son to the Father and mediating its graces through the sacraments and pastoral care, and leading and co-ordinating a community of service to our world, is a work that’s never done. No matter how well we do it, we could do more and better. There’s no right number of God’s agents. It’s like the old magic trick that starts with pick a number, then double it…

Some people peg the right number at the number we had in 1950 or 1970 or 1990. But why are those the years that we had it right? Or they peg it at the number of parishes. But why only one priest per parish and what’s the magic in the present parish boundaries anyway? Or they set a goal based on one priest for every 500 Catholics or 5,000 Catholics or 15,000 Catholics. But again: why that ratio? If we went by the number of active priests per active Catholic, you’d have to say that things just get better and better! Why? Because the number of active Catholics has been falling faster than the number of active priests, making the priest-to-practising-Catholic ratio better: but is that anything to be proud of? Not good enough, I say. So if there is a vocations crisis it’s the same shortage of labourers for the divine harvest which Jesus himself identified in around the year 31 ad and which the Church has had ever since: the shortage that means there’s always more we could do.

Secondly, the ‘vocations crisis’ in marriage and family life is much graver than that for clergy at the moment. Fewer and fewer people are deciding to marry at all: fewer than half in Australia of marriageable age are married today. Those who do, marry much later, usually after cohabiting with a series of partners, which sociologists tell us significantly reduces their ‘marital sticking power’. Most now marry outside religion and many decide from the start to have few or no children. A larger proportion of married vocations ‘fail’ (in the sense of being abandoned) than priestly and religious vocations fail. As a result many children grow up in fragmented or complicated families. All this presents a massive social challenge, as well as a tragedy for many individuals, including people we all know and love. And people are more muddled than ever about what marriage is these days, with talk of same-sex marriage, multi-partner marriage, even marriage to yourself! Yet we don’t hear sky-falling-in talk of a crisis of married vocations: perhaps we should, but until we do it is premature to talk about a crisis of priestly vocations.

Of course there is a case to be made that there is a problem at present amongst some priests regarding their sense of priestly identity and morale, though both are I think overstated. There is a case to be made that there is a crisis of reverence or regard for the priesthood amongst ordinary people and certainly in the media, especially as a result of celebrated sexual abuse cases and spectacular priestly defections. Yet, again, the disappointment that ordinary people feel when priests fail is tribute to the tenacity of their high regard for the priesthood. No one is disappointed when thieves prove to be inept or unfaithful to their trade because no one expects much of them. But with priests it’s still different because deep down ordinary Catholics – and maybe even some journalists – expect more of them, want more from them.

Now when I call into question the talk of priestly vocations crisis, I’m not jumping on the bandwagon of those who say good riddance to the priesthood, or that numbers of priests don’t matter, or that lay people can do and do do and will do the job better anyway, or that we should explore new models of ministry, or that we should ordain people not traditionally regarded as ordainable, or that we should pretend that protestant ministers are Catholic priests, or that we should plan for ‘priestless parishes’. There’s no such thing as priestless parishes: parishes are Eucharistic communities and units of pastoral life served by a parish priest. Some parishes might be waiting for a priest, hungering for a priest, but we should never resign ourselves to having parishes without the Eucharist and the rest that priests do. Nor can we ordain what we can’t ordain, or recognize as valid orders that are invalid. And nor can we reasonably rely upon the laity, who already do more and more to relieve their priests of unnecessary burdens, also to take on what are necessarily priestly burdens. So we do need priests. We always do.

My main reason for saying there is no crisis in priestly vocations is that God always provides. He doesn’t hold back the supply and let us wait it out for a while as a punishment for something, and then let just a few through to tantalize us. There’s no such thing as a ‘vocations shortage’ in the sense of a ‘water shortage’, because God always calls as many as He knows we need. The shortage, if any, is not in God calling but in people responding to His call. 

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 Not rocket science 

This year we celebrate fifty years since the opening of the Second Vatican Council. That’s like ancient history to most of you guys. But let me tell you it was an important moment for the Church, and still is today, and one of its central messages was that Christ calls every human being to holiness. That means you! You are called to holiness. You are called to be a saint. No excuses. No ‘I don’t know enough theology’ or ‘I’m not prayerful enough’ or ‘I’m not pastoral enough’ and ‘I’m not gifted enough’. Christ has called you to be a saint, His Church calls you to be a saint, and Christ and His Church never ask you to do what you cannot do. If Christ calls you to be a saint He gives you the wherewithal.

So if you don’t want to be a saint, if you are not planning on being a saint, go away, think about joining the Catholic Church, and once you do, you will know that that’s what we are, that’s all we are, sinners becoming saints.

Once that’s clear in your heads, you’ll notice there are an enormous variety of saints - every temperament, walk of life, history and interest. The Church has its scholar saints it calls ‘the Doctors’. It has its witness saints, who testify to Christ even unto death, it calls ‘the Martyrs’. It has its radically religious saints it calls ‘the Virgins’. It has its lay saints in the world it calls ‘the Holy Men and Women’. And it has its priest saints it calls ‘the Pastors’. So, one way of being a saint is by being a good priest. The process of figuring out what kind of saint you can best be is called vocational discernment. It’s an issue for every Christian, not just for certain young men. And it’s not rocket science.

I think there is a lot of nonsense talked about vocational discernment and that some of it is quite off-putting for people who might very well be good priests.

First, being a Catholic priest is a pretty ordinary thing for Catholics and so something every Catholic boy and young Catholic man should think about. The great English Catholic novelist and commentator Evelyn Waugh once remarked in his diary that being a priest is as ordinary as any other trade. Some men see to the water, electricity, gas or laying-on of bricks. Others lay on Grace. When a priest goes to the altar or font or confessional he has his tools like any other tradesman. He has to do an apprenticeship and, like modern apprentices, he also does a bit of college learning as well. He has to practice and listen to the older tradies. He has continually to see if the same thing can be done better. He isn’t a pagan shaman following the whispers of ancestral spirits; he doesn’t conduct auspices over the entrails of small birds – unless in reputable restaurants. He most certainly is not a psychotherapist trying to make people feel good about themselves. He just has a job to do – bringing Christ into people’s lives by preaching the Gospel and celebrating the sacraments – and that’s the easiest and most difficult of callings. It requires nothing except everything.

Our Lord Himself, when He spoke to His disciples, who had until that point been members of a very honourable trade – fishers – said, “Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men”. Jesus knew and used as examples various trades: shepherds, fishermen, vignerons, day labourers, builders, investors, stewards, waiters, bridesmaids, pearl merchants, home-makers. Particularly often he used imagery from the agricultural and cooking trades – seeds, shrubs, trees, wheat, tares, harvests, vines and vineyards, yeast and bread, oil, figs, mustard and various herbs, eggs, a fatted calf, fish and birds. What is required from the agricultural and cooking trades is patience. If faith itself is like the mustard seed, then we wait for it to grow in God’s time – a slow business. The fish and fowl too have minds of their own and dart hither and thither without any thought for fisher or fowler. You have to sneak up and lurk with intent. The yeast in the dough doesn’t rise as we want – it has its own rules. Just because you don’t feel holy enough, or smart enough, or dedicated enough doesn’t mean that Christ can’t teach you His trade. You just have be ‘ready, willing and able’, in fact only willing: the Church decides when you’re ‘ready’ and Christ supplies the ‘able’.

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Discerning which kind of saint to be

You can begin your priestly apprenticeship now. You don’t have to wait till you go to a seminary or monastery to learn the tricks. Let me give you some practical, tradesman-like advice. If the road to hell is paved with grand intentions, the road to heaven is paved with small daily acts of fidelity. A good place to start is the Creed. You say it every Sunday at Mass. You say it when you pray the Rosary. If you don’t go to Mass or don’t say the Rosary, do. And when you do, you attend to the Creed.

The Creed tells us that God started it all and sustains it all – not us, God. God the Father Almighty made the world and God the Son in Jesus Christ remade it. By His Holy Cross He redeemed the world. Like the good carpenter that He was, He didn’t just fill in the cracked wood with wood putty, He gouged out the termites, replaced the foundations, restored the roof. He replaced the bad timber of the tree of the Fall with the good timber of the tree of the Cross, sin with grace. He set the table of the Eucharist at the heart of His new world, so that His bride the Church might live here joyfully until the end of time. From the ashes of sin and ugliness arose the Glory of God, from the corruption of the Tomb, Life Himself. Recite the Creed daily and remember that it’s a summary of the Gospels: so don’t forget to read them to. Let Christ speak to you through them.

What Christ has given to us, though, in His Gospels and in the Church’s creed, is more than words and doctrines, beautiful as they undoubtedly are. He has brought them to life in the Holy Liturgy, most especially in the Holy Eucharist. The divine tradesman hasn’t just left us instructions, the Bible and Creed as our cookbook, as it were. No, He actually cooks for us. The real Master Chef still kneads and bakes the bread that will become His Body. He still changes the water of ordinary life into the wine of the promise, then changes the wine of promise into the Precious Blood of divine life. The Gardener still wanders around watering, fertilizing, harvesting the wheat, dressing the vines, pruning us from time to time with little humiliations. The Shepherd still has us in His keep, the Fisherman in His net. So go to Him in the Holy Eucharist. If you want to know Him, spend time at His house – like any friend. Make sure you go to Mass on Sundays and sometimes during the week as well. Drop in for a quick word, then stay a while. That way, any seed of vocation that Christ has planted can be watered, and yeast can expand. It can grow through Him, with Him and in Him. Don’t forget to invite Him back to your house too – into your heart and into your life.

Like any apprentice, you learn by doing. Do as He does. Follow the Master in His trade. Keep His Commandments of love: to love Him above all, to love your neighbour as yourself, to love your enemies as if they were neighbours, your neighbours as if they were brothers, to love as He has loved, love even to laying down your life. Keep His Ten Commandments or words about what to reverence: God, Church, family, life, health, sex, relationships, creation, truth, beauty, people and things. Start now being a good priest by being first a good man, a good Christian, a saint.

Christ understands our weakness, though, just as a builder understands the flaws in the wood or a cook the limitations of the ingredients. He taps and mends, digs and prunes. Let Him do His thing in you. Go to Confession regularly. Grace is everywhere, but for us discerners it is especially present in this wonderful sacrament. It is embarrassing to kneel in the dust and admit that you are a sinner – a leaky roof, a straggly plant – but such self-examination, such admission of defeat, of need, is always pleasing to God. It is you admitting that you need the Master Chef, the Master Builder, the Master of Mercy. It will also teach you how to be, one day, a good confessor yourself – the minister of forgiveness must first be forgiven himself. A faithful heart is the most important tool of the priest’s trade. The Cross of Christ enters our lives in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Go there!

Fasting and penance with youthful enthusiasm, is a good discipline at this time in your lives. With enthusiasm, I say, but not kooky stuff like carving Christ’s name in your flesh or getting yourself nailed to a cross in Holy Week. Better to go to bed early, get up early and pray for a while. Or fast for a time from SMSes. Or smile when you feel least like it – especially at your family – not like chimpanzees do, baring their teeth before attack, but with real love; not just when you don’t feel it, but especially when you don’t feel it.

Sometimes people think priesthood is out of the question because chastity is difficult. Well, to be frank, nearly everyone, married or unmarried, young or old, professed celibate or living in the world, finds chastity a challenge. My novice master told us it only stops being a challenge about fifteen minutes after death. This is not a get-out-jail-free card, merely a statement of the obvious. It’s no harder or easier for priests. If most people today are unmarried then most people today are called to a chastity without sexual activity, perhaps for life, certainly for long extended periods; but even married people must learn a faithful chastity and resist various temptations. The world of billboards, TV and internet are full of sexual titillation. Through them the Evil One whispers: ‘if you’re not getting it you’re dead’, ‘try before you buy’, ‘sew your wild oats’, ‘it’s only human’ and the rest. They are lies. You are not the only celibate on the planet. Most people are not having sex most of the time. Some for a very long time. Some never at all. There’s self-denial in that. Not just of pleasure, recreation, but also of intimacy, bonding, family. But there are many good things in life, and opportunity costs in them all: you just can’t have everything, despite the petulant demands of modernity.

Apart from guarding your senses you can make them strong by feasting the heart and mind on really beautiful things. Great art, music, films, literature and Nature itself all lead us to God – they make his Mysterious Glory manifest in our world. Our city is full of theatres, galleries, opera and museums – make the effort to go. (Some of them are even free.) Most of you will have iPods and CD players that can help you learn about the long tradition of music in our culture – including, dare I say, classics from before 2005, and even the long tradition of sacred art and music. Branch out, listen to and see different things. Above all you ought to find some way of serving Christ in others: in the poor, by feeding and clothing them; in children ignorant of their faith, by instructing them in CCD classes; in the old and sick, by visiting them; in the bereaved by grieving with them. Nothing burns up vice quicker than the flames of an ardent Faith expressed in works of Charity.

Good friends, as well, are an aid to purity – as well as many other aspects of your humanity. Getting to know people, learning about them, enjoying their company, being chastely affectionate, discussing things with them, are indispensable for any human being. Priests especially need to exercise the art of friendship. When you and your friends share the same Catholic values and can help one another through trials and temptations, can pray for and with one another, go to Mass together, study the Faith together, this is a battle line against Satan, this is what he fears most – Christians, “one heart and soul in Christ, brothers dwelling in unity”, as St Augustine put it. 

One step at a time

My generation didn’t hear much about religious and priestly vocations, whether at Church, at school or at home. Research suggests that one of the reasons for my generation’s relative absence from the clergy is that no-one ever invited them, gave them the space, the permission, to think of such a thing, to think about themselves and their suitability for vocation. The world around says: get into sex early and often; focus on career and accumulate lots of experiences, lots of possessions; keep ourselves busy and keep the noise levels up. Discernment calls for space, quiet, reflection. I grew up in the noisy world and it’s only got more so since. But even as the noise and the whispers conspired with my own cowardice and ungenerosity, there remained a nagging feeling that this is what God wanted from me: no thunderbolts, no angels, just an increasing certainty that in the priesthood and religious life I could be most happy and could help most others to experience ‘life to the full’. If you are waiting for an apostle, dressed in shining white robes, to appear and point his finger at you and say, ‘Hey, you, you’re called, get to the seminary’ well, here I am, a successor of the apostles, dressed in a whitish habit, and I’m pointing my finger at you!

God is usually more discreet. In my first days in the Dominican Order I recall an elderly lady giving me a copy of a prayer for vocations which was prayed in that parish every day. She said she had been praying it for me, long before she ever met me, that she was pleased to know who she was praying it for, and that she promised to keep doing it every day into eternity. I guess she’s still praying it now before the throne of God. It was and is deeply consoling that God’s people still want us priests, want holy priests, and will support us in so many ways if we are willing to be that for them. And that God calls us through them.

Well, I took about ten years to make up my mind, and when I finally decided to give up my life as a lawyer, my big income, my good social life, and all the rest, some of those closest to me thought I was mad and sometimes I thought I was too. Can you be sane and happy as a priest or religious? Well I’ll leave it to you to judge how sane I am, but after 25 years in vows and 20 in holy orders, with the little old ladies praying for me and now, as a bishop, a whole diocese praying for me, I can tell you I am happy, very happy. I love being a priest. It’s the best of lives.