Vocations

Join me in listening

from Archbishop Mark Coleridge's monthly column in Catholic Voice

 1 August 2007 

I've almost completed one year in the Archdiocese, even though it feels like much longer.  A lot has happened in a short time, or so at least it seems to me.  As it turns out, I'm yet again overseas at Missal meetings - this time meeting in Leeds and Newry with a few days in Rome in between.  I may have escaped the chill of Canberra, but I certainly haven't escaped the relentless damp of the British Isles or the belting sun of the Mediterranean.  As a friend of mine once said, "I can be unhappy anywhere". 

  As I take stock of my first year as Archbishop, distance lends a certain perspective. One of the things I've been keen to stress in my first 12 months is the importance of vocations to the priesthood.  On a few occasions, I've stated the obvious that you can't have the Catholic Church without some form of the ministerial priesthood, and that it's up to all of us to work and pray hard to ensure that we have enough priests to meet the needs of the Church in a time of both threat and promise. 

 Some seem to think that we've lost the battle to recruit excellent candidates for the male celibate priesthood.  I'm not one of those.  I think the battle is far from lost and that there's a shift in the religious culture of the young which bodes well for future vocations to the priesthood.  One sign of that shift was the recent national conference of the Australian Catholic Students' Association in Canberra.

  If it's true that you can't have the Catholic Church without the priesthood, it's also true that you can't have the Catholic Church in good health unless you have the flourishing of religious life.  Consecrated religious life in some form or other has been part of the Church's life from the very beginning, and its flourishing has always been a sign of a Church which is full of fresh vim and vigour.  So one of things I would like to put at the heart of my second year as Archbishop is a focus on the renewal of religious life in the Archdiocese and beyond.  

  In this part of the world, religious - especially religious women - have made an extraordinary contribution.  You have only to think of the heroic pioneering work done by the Goulburn Sisters of St Joseph and the Goulburn Sisters of Mercy to see what I mean.  The Church in this part of the world owes those women an unpayable debt of gratitude.  And if I speak of a renewal of religious life in the Archdiocese, I mean a new surge that builds upon the heritage of women like the Goulburn Joeys and Mercies and that therefore builds upon the insights of women like Mary MacKillop and Catherine McAuley.

  I myself have never felt called to religious life, but I have been mightily enriched by religious almost since the day I was born.  I had an uncle who was for many years a memorable De La Salle Brother, and he was a great influence on me.  I was taught by the Josephite Sisters and the Christian Brothers.  I was formed for the priesthood by the Jesuits, who also led me into and through the labyrinth of biblical scholarship in Rome and Jerusalem.  In Rome, I have been a chaplain to the Christian Brothers who gave me the crozier I carry as Bishop.  I have also lived with the Marist Brothers as a chaplain and been a friend to them in various parts of the world.  I am writing this in the Roman house of the Carmelite Friars where I'm staying with an Australian friar who's an old friend of mine.  So you can see how much religious have been part of my journey through life. 

 Yet one of the signs of the Holy Spirit among us seems to be the emergence of new forms of religious life, as young people go in search of a life and a community which responds to their desire to follow Christ more radically.  This has always been so through history, as religious life has passed through changes of every kind.  I saw evidence of it in Chicago just after Easter when I was there for a meeting. 

 At the same meeting-place, there was a gathering of what is called the Institute for Religious Life.  Many newer communities were represented, as were older communities which have experienced a new surge of vocations in recent times.  It was quite something to see so many young religious women and men in one place at the one time. 

 In our own part of the world, the Missionaries of God's Love have been one new form of religious consecration that has brought new energy to the Church.  The MGL Brothers and Sisters have attracted some of our finest young people to give themselves to a wholehearted life of discipleship and mission, attesting to the endless and overwhelming attractiveness of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. 

  Through the past year, a few young women have spoken to me of what they feel to be the stirrings of divine vocation in their life.  They feel called by God to consecrate their lives in a special way, but none of the existing religious communities corresponds to their sense of vocation.  They feel called to something different, even while respecting deeply the forms of religious life they now see.  As a bishop, I have to take these conversations seriously and discern what it is that the Holy Spirit may be saying to the Church in these young women.  And on the basis of that discernment, I have to act in order to allow the Spirit more space in which to move.  In that sense, I have to get out of God's way and let God act. 

  What these young women are looking for is a way of religious life which is both traditional and contemporary, both contemplative and missionary.  It's not a throwback to anything; it's not an exercise in reactionary nostalgia.  It wants to draw out of the treasures of the Church things both old and new.  By this I mean that these women want a form of religious consecration which takes some traditional elements of religious life and reconfigures them in a way geared to the needs of today and in particular to the needs of the new evangelisation.  They want a life of prayer, community and mission, all lived with a new kind of intensity.  They want a religious habit that offers a sign of their vocation and mission.  They want joyfully and simply to live a life which is centred on Christ and which is therefore a genuine alternative to the one-dimensional and ultimately soul-destroying secular liberalism they have known.  They want more.  

What does this mean in practice?  At this point, I'm not exactly sure.  It may mean that I invite into the Archdiocese experienced women from communities elsewhere who may be able to nurture the seed here in creative and sustaining ways.  It will certainly mean providing some kind of accommodation and support for the community, in its early stages.  It will also mean accompanying these women on their journey of discernment.  Part of this will be a discernment of the  mission which would best suit their divine calling and the needs of the Church here.  This will require a combination of realism and imagination, but in the end the sky is the limit. One of the reasons this has struck a chord in me is that it's women who are taking the initiative.  This is a crucial aspect of the new evangelisation, as it was at other threshold moments in the past. 

The Church has said clearly that we don't have the freedom to ordain women to the ministerial priesthood.  But we certainly do have the freedom, indeed the duty, to involve women in every other way imaginable in the life and leadership of the Church.  Through history, women have exercised many kinds of charismatic leadership in the Church, even if they haven’t exercised hierarchical leadership.  But hierarchical leadership is only one aspect of the mystery of the Spirit-filled leadership in the Church, and in these young women we're seeing the emergence of yet another new form of charismatic leadership in the Church - and not just in the Church, because religious men and women have always been at the cutting-edge of the Church's witness in the world.  It has been said to me that the Vocations section on the Archdiocesan website is incomplete because it mentions only the priesthood.  That's absolutely right.  It happened because the writing was left to me and the priesthood was what was uppermost in my mind through my first year. 

But now is the time for other voices and insights to enter that section of the website, so that together we can speak of all the vocations with which Christ enriches the Church.  But let's speak with a special focus and conviction of the flourishing of religious life in the Church, so that communities of consecrated women and men can speak to us all of what we are called to be as the Church in the world. 

I invite all of you to join me in praying and thinking about what the Holy Spirit is saying to the Church at this time.  I invite all of you to join me in listening....so that the Church can speak of Jesus in new and more powerful ways.

+ Mark Coleridge

 

IN GOOD TIMES AND IN BAD

By Bishop Pat Power, Auxiliary Bishop of Canberra and Goulburn

20 September 2007

   I often say that these are wonderful times to be a Catholic and to be a Catholic priest. Many people would argue the opposite: we are facing declining numbers, we have had some bad press of late and people no longer see us as relevant. While there are undoubtedly many challenges which we need to face up to as Catholics, I believe that Christianity has so much to offer to today’s world in presenting the message of Jesus with joy and conviction.

    This year I have been involved in two great celebrations with the Good Samaritan Sisters celebrating their 150 years as a genuinely Australian religious congregation. The witness of religious life lived out by these outstanding women has had a tremendous impact on the poor and struggling members of the Australian community and thousands of Australians including myself owe so much to the Sisters for our religious and general education. At the Queanbeyan celebration recently, I thanked the Sisters for their influence on me as a seminarian, priest and bishop. Many other people including our much revered former Governor-General Sir William Deane acknowledge their debt of gratitude to the Sisters of the Good Samaritan.

   While many people today express disillusionment with the Catholic Church, we should not lose sight of the fact that we are the bearers of a great tradition extending back 2000 years and beyond. I continually remind the Confirmation candidates of the fact that we are entrusted by the Holy Spirit to pass on to our contemporaries and to future generations the richness of the message of Jesus. How urgently our society needs this message in the complexity of life today. I remind the young ones that the fruits of the Spirit have the capacity to change our world: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control.

   As a priest and bishop, I have been enormously privileged to have had a special role in the lives of God’s people in bringing the “good news” to those to whom I have ministered. Two years ago when I celebrated 40 years as a priest, I wrote a reflection A Time of Grace in which I spelt out the joys I have experienced as an ordained priest. Being with people in “good times and in bad” is a very privileged place to be. A priest does not have answers to all the problems coming before him, but there is a real sense of the grace of God at work in the life of the priest and his people. Speaking the word of God, celebrating the Sacraments, walking with our people as a “companion on the journey” bring all concerned close to the heart of Jesus.

   Last July, I had the joy of ordaining Fr Tom Renshaw as a Jesuit priest in Queanbeyan, the home parish of us both. I commented that day that my ordination day was the happiest day of my life and that ordaining Tom to the priesthood brought me similar joy. Fr Tom’s outstanding gifts and his generous response to God’s call give me great hope and heart for the life of the Church. In the past few weeks, Constantine Osuchukwu has been ordained as a deacon for this Archdiocese as the final step towards his ordination as a priest next year. Everyone who knows Constantine, a native of Nigeria, recognise the blessings he brings to us. In a few weeks time I look forward to having lunch with three of our seminarians, Luke Verrell, Paul Nulley and Bernie Drum. While the priesthood is still some way down the track for them we can derive great hope from their response to God’s call.

   World Youth Day next year and the preparations for it provide an opportunity for us all to give thanks for our Catholic faith and to share the joys of it in a positive way. I have never been to a World Youth Day, but I recognise the many benefits derived by the participants. The way in which it enables the young people to have a sense of identity as Catholics is most significant. Another benefit which has clearly accrued to the whole Church has been that the increased awareness of faith has enabled many young people to reflect on the possibility of a vocation to the priesthood. I encourage young men to recognise that it is normal, healthy young people with a good sense of faith and good human qualities whom God may be calling to the priesthood. To my mind, it is more likely to  be an “ordinary” young person who is being called by God to the priesthood than one who is manifestly “different”.

  As I thank God for my vocation to the priesthood, I also see the burden being carried by so many of my brother priests in a way which is truly heroic in the mould of Jesus himself. It is my hope and prayer that  many Catholic young men may ask whether they too are being called to bring God’s love to the world as ordained priests. I can honestly say that the decision to become a priest has been one that I have never regretted and daily I thank God for my vocation to the priesthood with the opportunity to witness to God’s love in “good times and in bad”.