Anniversary of Ordination Mass: Corpus Christi College's Class of 1985
Anniversary of Ordination Mass: Corpus Christi College's Class of 1985
Cardinal George Pell
Good priests: essential foot soldiers in age-old struggle
Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, celebrated the Eucharist on 16 August [2010] to mark the 25th anniversary of the Ordination Mass of Corpus Christi College's class of 1985 in Clayton. The following is Card. Pell's homily, delivered at Mary MacKillop Church, Keilor Downs.
It was 1517 when the German Augustinian priest Martin Luther pinned his thesis to the door of the Wittenberg Church and started the Protestant Reformation. The Papacy was at that period more interested in politics and art than religion, which lapsed not infrequently into significant levels of personal corruption.
This Protestant call for a return to the Christ of the Gospels forced the Catholic Church to take her religious claims seriously as she incurred enormous losses, especially in Northern Europe, not to unbelief, but to an alternative, hostile, largely non-sacramental form of Christianity.
The Church leadership was slow to react as the Papacy feared that a new Council would resurrect Conciliarist claims to supremacy, but eventually the Council of Trent (1545-1563) plotted the successful course of the Counter Reformation, led by an extraordinary new and vital religious order called the Jesuits.
Trent brought in a series of decrees and measures, reaffirming a hard Catholic line with the reassertion of mandatory clerical celibacy. Under pressure from the Catholic princes the Council Fathers brought out their version of a universal Catechism, which had been a Protestant invention. However the Council's most important and long lasting reform was the Tridentine seminary where seminarians were gathered together for spiritual, personal and communal formation, as well as academic training. Philosophy became a necessary prerequisite too, as the Church moved decisively away from relying on attendance at Cathedral schools, universities and an apprenticeship model for seminarians living with the local clergy. Trent mandated a seminary for every diocese where possible and drew heavily on Cardinal Pole's reforms in England under Queen Mary. Seminaries today are generally changed and improved, but the basic Tridentine model remains.
So it was in such a seminary, Corpus Christi College where I was briefly rector, that I met the class of 1985. The year is remarkable for a couple of good reasons. Twelve men were ordained, allegedly the largest group for 40 years, and 10 out of the 12 are still working well as priests and serving their people. Fr Tim Tolan died in his parish.
We are gathered today to thank them for their generosity and contribution. We pray that God continues to bless them with health and happiness. We pray that they are not even half way through their innings, through their long lives of priestly service.
The Council of Trent and the great Counter Reformation Popes realised that the office of the priesthood is crucial to the vitality of the Church and that the proper preparation of priests is the major factor in achieving such an ambition. What was true 450 years ago is equally true now. Unless the seminaries are in good order, communities of prayer and purity, sanctified by holy routines of life, study and service, thenthe Church is self-destructing. At a different level I believe that the Gospel quality of our religious education programmes for the young is equally important.
We have only a limited capacity to battle the relentless external pressures on our communities and especially on our youth, but our internal life is another matter. We can and must help ourselves effectively.
This is far from the worst of times. The Church is not in crisis and the priesthood is not in crisis. In fact the challenges are primarily in the First World to which we belong. Elsewhere we find huge problems, but they are problems of growth. In the Western world and in Australia we are slowly emerging from the great post-Conciliarist crisis which almost destroyed the Church in some countries and which threatened to do so in Australia.
Over the years I have mentioned publicly on a number of occasions the collapse of the Catholic Church in Holland, provoking anguished letters from a few Dutch Australians who did not so much dispute my claims, but beseeched me not to make them publicly. Things are still not good in the euthanasia capital of the world, where Church practice is rarely above five per cent and the number of baptised Catholics has fallen significantly since the 1970s. But a couple of years ago when I last checked the figures, seminarian numbers had increased to 185, which is more than we had in Australia when our Catholic population was only slightly larger. There too the wheel is turning.
In Australia we face a varied religious situation. We have faced up to the scandals of sexual abuse, which have damaged our moral authority, but effective measures have been in place now for over a decade to help the victims. The worst has passed.
We still experience pressure for a married clergy from a number of the older priests, some of whom also want women ordained! But in many places in Australia, including Melbourne, under the leadership of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict we are doing better, acting more intelligently for Churchly self-preservation than we were when the class of 1985 was ordained.
All of them have made their contribution to this mighty struggle. All of them, with the wisdom they have acquired as we move forward haphazardly, — two steps forward and sometimes one step sidewards or backwards — all of them are now poised to consolidate further the gains we have made. Look at this beautiful Church of Mary MacKillop here in Keilor Downs —proudly known as Charles' Basilica by the locals — symbolic of the spiritual vitality of this community, as we saw last night with the prayerfulness of the oversize congregation.
Nothing is perfect. Much remains to be done among the young married and their children, but these good priests are the essential foot soldiers in our age-old struggle. They need others to join them and we pray that their hard work and fidelity will inspire successors.
These men were prepared for the priesthood in interesting times. One of the consequences of seven years of seminary formation is that the graduating priests always believe they are much better informed about the nature of the Church, about theology and what has to be done, than the seminary staff. The class of 1985 shared these convictions in spades, although they differed profoundly among themselves on the way forward. So did the staff.
I learnt a lot as rector and every hostile press conference I have faced since (and I have faced one or two) has been an anti-climax after the hostility of some of the community meetings at Corpus Christi. This was not entirely bad for any of us participants. We find no pearl in an oyster without some grit.
The Catholic priesthood in our Latin Church with its traditions of mandatory celibacy and effective service is a source of endless fascination and provocation to our secular friends. Priests are deeply appreciated by the Church goers in every good parish.
The priest is a bearer of Mystery, following the example of Christ to be a mediator, a bridge builder between the world of heaven and our valley of tears and beauty, goodness and sin.
The priesthood serves the greatest mystery of all: the Incarnation of the Eternal Son who by his death has opened for us the way to eternal salvation. To deny this is not a Christian option. It is the heart of revealed faith which no human wisdom can fully comprehend or exhaust.
Pope Benedict has had much to say on the priesthood in recent times. Naturally he begins with the mission of Jesus Christ. Both the novelty and the centre of the New Testament are Jesus. The Holy Father writes that "what is new about [the New Testament] is not, strictly speaking, ideas — the novelty is a person: God who becomes man and draws man to himself".
Benedict's emphasis is on Jesus' mission, on the fact that He is sent by the Father, that He represents God's authority concretely in His person. Benedict hones in on the following formula given by St Augustine: "My doctrine is not my own but His who sent me".
Christ's teaching comes to us in an uninterrupted tradition, which does not admit radical or revolutionary discontinuities. The identity of the apostolic tradition is always maintained.
So the priest teaches Jesus as Saviour and Redeemer, the ontological foundation and historical motivator of all things. Following St Paul, the priest is to preach "the wise mystery of God that is Christ crucified" (1 Cor 1:21,23). He has to preach and explain God's wisdom, mysterious and hidden, which God predetermined before the ages (1 Cor 2:7).
So in this vein, when the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews reflected on the cultic sacrifices of the Temple, he saw them as a type of education which pointed towards the true High Priest whose sacrifice would fulfil all others. The blood of bulls and goats could only change things very little. It is the sacrifice of the Incarnate Word which truly restores us to friendship with God. This sacrifice was made once and for all time on Calvary. Its effects are renewed by each celebration of the
Eucharist, the memorial of the Passion, death and Resurrection of the Saviour. As St Paul says, we celebrate the death of the Lord until he comes again.
God's grace and glory are at work in the sacraments, usually through the actions of the priest, which generate grace or spiritual energy through the Passion of Christ. We thank God for the
sacramental contributions of our priests.
I am sure that those celebrating their Silver Jubilee today thank God for the grace of serving His people and the wider world in the ministerial priesthood. As always, and especially because of our losses, they need to be fishers of men and women, agents of evangelisation, as well as shepherds of their own flock.
I am equally sure that they think with special affection and gratitude towards all those who helped them to priesthood and sustain them now in their work, fellow priests, family, friends, and work colleagues.
God continues to call each of them to be a preacher and teacher of the word, a celebrant of the Sacraments, a bearer of the Mystery of faith, a servant of their brothers and sisters.
We thank them for their contribution, pray that they go from strength to strength, remembering Paul's words that it is the love of God which urges them on for many long years before they meet Him, who is Goodness itself, face to face.
May Mary the Queen and Mother of all priests continue to protect them and may the Lord Jesus continue to feast and feed their minds with his truth.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Taken from:
L'Osservatore Romano
Weekly Edition in English
1 September 2010, page 9
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