Sean O’Conaill: “Take the Risk for Christ” and the National Vocations Office
Is God Calling You to be a Diocesan Priest? Come and See. Take the Risk for Christ.” This is what faces you when you click on the website of Ireland’s Catholic “National Vocations Office”.
Asked by Ardal O’Hanlon on his RTÉ documentary what risk was involved in opting for the celibate priestly vocation today, Fr Willie Purcell responded:
“Anyone who is presenting himself for priesthood nowadays is really being counter-cultural. It really is a radical decision. The risk really is giving yourself completely to Christ that others might come to know him through you. There really is a lot of humility involved in it, of self-sacrifice involved in it, but most important of all a vocation is a selfless decision, to give yourself to Christ and then to give yourself to others.”
Yet again we are being asked here to ignore what the Gospel clearly tells us about Jesus, viz.:
That he was never a member of the priestly religious institution of his own time and place;
That his definitive role in ‘salvation’ was not sacramental or liturgical (i.e. symbolic) but the direct prophetic challenging of a religious system he saw as both exploitative and hypocritical, to the danger of his own life;
That it was therefore his integrity, not his celibacy, that constitutes the central sacrifice that he did indeed ask us to repeat in memory of him;
That the definitive Christian calling to ‘follow’ him was therefore NOT to males only to join an exclusively male religious institution but to the same self-giving and integrity in whatever social role we baptised Catholic Christians find ourselves – whatever our gender, age or occupation.
That any social role can and does involve these challenges – and that risk can attach to any of those is also obvious now – and not only from the lives and trials of individuals such as Veronica Guerin and Maurice McCabe. Public service, especially for women, has become notably more risky and challenging for anyone who approaches it with integrity. With Pope Francis now calling all of us, even teenagers, to ‘mission’ today – and with Garda, nurses, firefighters and paramedics at risk on every callout in certain locales – why was this not obvious to whoever dreamt up the slogan ‘Take the risk for Christ’ – implying that the risk of Christian witness attaches solely to the celibate sacramental calling?
Did not the Pandemic teach us that in an interdependent society the lives of all of us can depend upon those who risk turning up even to man the check-out in the local supermarket or the counter in a dispensary?
Isn’t even any Irish teenager who stands in school against sexual harassment or homophobic bullying – or online trolling of a friend – at risk, and is not this the risk that attaches to the common priesthood of the people of God, the risk that comes to all who affirm their Baptism?
As for the specific risks that do indeed attach to the sacramental priesthood, how would Fr Purcell account for what happened to those Irish priests who did prophetically challenge the injustices of church policies in relation to women, the LGBT community and the mishandling by bishops of the issue of clerical sexual abuse of children in Ireland, back in 2012?
What a shame that Ardal O’Hanlon did not think to ask if that was indeed the ‘risk’ that the vocations office has in mind!
And if he had asked that question, would Fr Purcell have recalled that we have never yet had an open conversation on the role and obligation of private conscience when faced with an abuse of authority in the church, as could happen, for example, to any of the child safeguarding personnel we now depend upon?
With synodality far from firmly embedded in our Catholic culture, and canon law still a mess, the risks for every servant of the church that are still posed by the church itself are far from merely notional or historic. Does Ireland’s ‘National Vocations Office’ truly serve the church by apparently forgetting all of that?
Why, in 2024, can we not instead have a properly balanced understanding of ‘vocation’ that does not associate counter-cultural Christian self-sacrifice and ‘humility’ solely with the male celibate sacramental priestly role or imply that for all lay people the risk of Christian witness must be secondary?
Is it not to this clericalist talking-up of the sacramental role alone – and the consequent forgetting of the priestly and prophetic calling of all of us – that we must ascribe the incomprehension of so many young people about the Christian call to themselves?
Finally, given the paramount importance of communicating the meaning of our common priesthood, why is the restoration of the primacy of Baptism still lagging totally in Ireland? Is that no concern of the National Vocations Office, or of the Irish Bishops Conference?
Sean O’Conaill
Recycling and patching up the old wineskins won’t do for the new wine…
If the Church was 200 years behind the times in 2012, to quote the late cardinal Martini of Milan, has it moved yet into the 21st century?
“Reality is where the Truth lives – and a male, celibate, hierarchical priesthood no longer rings true. In the words of Paul Brady, it is “trying to reach the future through the past!”
https://www.laoistoday.ie/2024/01/20/fr-paddy-the-last-priests-of-ireland/
At a recent enlightened Liturgical day organised by the Limerick Diocese, I heard Professor Thomas O’Loughlin suggest that the success of the Synod will depend on all the baptised gathered around the Table as equals. He went on to say that those gathered around the Table will discover that the Spirit is alive in them and that all the ministries (including Presider) will emerge there. In that light, vocations as we have traditionally understood them are foreign to this model.
Yes indeed, Professor O’Loughlin has shared his Wisdom. Many have waited a very long time so let us Begin NOW and sit around the table, and listen to one another. Send down your Spirit O Lord to us to Recreate, Renew your church. Amen
“We don’t need more vocations. The problem is we’ve had too many vocations.” The Last Priests and Nuns in Ireland programmes on RTÉ were both enlightened and enlightening, as the above quote illustrates. The collapse in vocations to the Roman Catholic priesthood is perceived by some as threatening the very future of the Church itself, and to others, as the timely demise of a once great, but corrupt, institution.
Paddy Ferry, in another thread, bemoaned the lack of engagement on this site with the topics these programmes raised. I, like many other people, find the whole discussion about vocations frustrating and pointless. It is a nonsense to believe that the incarnate Christ is somehow dependant on a male, celibate priesthood to be made sacramentally present among his people! In the words of Judge Judy: “If it doesn’t make sense, it’s probably not true.”
The power structure of hierarchy, mandatory celibacy, the denigration of women and the non-ordained in general, the appropriation of ritual to the ordained, all examples of priestly power, no longer make sense to a growing number of people who stream away from Church in a “silent schism” (Fr.Owen O’Sullivan).
Ardal O’Hanlon, as Fr. Dougal in the Fr. Ted series, epitomised the absurdity of life for many an Irish priest who had “idleness thrust upon them”, yet I felt he treated the “Last priests of Ireland” topic with great dignity and respect, in deference to those who agonise about the future of the Church and who are led to believe by the clerical and patriarchal Church that they are in need of priests to act as mediators between the Creator and the created.
I found the “Last Nuns of Ireland” programme more emotionally engaging as we were brought face to face with, not the Almighty, All Powerful God of the priesthood, but the suffering servant, the Crucified Christ whom women, who joined religious communities, had embraced to comfort, educate and sustain in the ordinary lives of the people they served, at great cost to themselves. Dearbhail McDonald was more willing to delve into the nuns’ acquiesce and participation in abuse of power over those in their care. It was again evident that the communal burden of pain and regret for the suffering their congregations had caused pierced deeply into the hearts of sisters today. As Sr. Marian O’Sullivan (whom I quoted at the beginning) said, the work that the sisters did, on behalf of Church and state, should have been the work of the whole people of God.
We will always need people who are trained to act as facilitators within the community to help people to connect the “physical with the meta-physical” and to see the Divine in every thing in this “Christ-soaked” universe. There will always be people who will work with and for those in need, because that is vocation.
In the words of St. Francis: “Preach the gospel to everyone. If necessary, use words.”
Liturgical images, as in comment 2, can be very helpful when trying to lift the curtain on the future to see what kind of Church may emerge from the synodal process.
With apprehension my active imagination unfortunately flicks back to Susan (the wife of Geoffrey the vicar) in Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads who says in ‘Bed Among the Lentils’: “At the thought of celebrating the Lord’s Supper in Benylin (cough mixture) Geoffrey now has a complete nervous breakdown but, as I point out, it’s red and sweet and nobody is going to notice. Nor do they.” Having “got it right for once” Susan felt quite pleased with herself.
What, I wonder. If the synodal process bears fruit will those assembled on a future Sunday, as described in the Limerick liturgical day, be celebrating, and what will be on the Table?
Meanwhile, when celebrating Mass, I will stay with my Roman Missal and continue to “kiss the altar” and if appropriate also “incense the cross and the altar” [49]
It’s the not noticing by the people in Susan’s (Maggie Smith) observation that keeps me alert to the ongoing synodal process.
A really excellent piece, Seán, thank you.
The power structure of hierarchy, mandatory celibacy, the denigration of women and the non-ordained in general, the appropriation of ritual to the ordained, all examples of priestly power, no longer make sense to a growing number of people who stream away from Church in a “silent schism” (Fr.Owen O’Sullivan).
Eugene@4, so, so true.
Btw, Paddy @ 7, Fr. Owen has also fallen foul of the CDF, for an article he had published in The Furrow, “On including the gays”. This article opened my mind and heart to understand how natural it is be gay, when you are gay. It was some years later our eldest son would come out to us as gay. My late wife and I will be forever grateful to Fr. Owen for liberating us from our prejudices and enabling us to embrace our son as he is, without hesitation.