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Elements of Serra

Blessed Junipero Serra

Bishop Pat, Bishop Robin, Bishop Takuira, Bishop David, Rev. Fathers, Members of Serra International, Ladies and Gentlemen, tena koutou katoa!

I am honoured to be able to speak to you today on the theme Be Not Afraid, Challenge for our Church today.

Do not he afraid: It is a phrase precious to me for a number of reasons. Not least is the fact that it is the motto of my Bishop! But as you will hear, it is a phrase significant to me personally.

In this address, first of all I will tell you something of myself in order to situate myself personally within the topic and the challenges we face. Then 1 want to address some of the challenges that I see both within and without the Church, and finally I will return to the theme precious to the Serrans, that of vocations to the priesthood.

So to begin. The story can start with Archbishop James Liston, who was ordained on January 1, 1904, almost exactly ninety-nine years before I was. He accepted me for priestly training, and a few years later in 1969 he sent me to Rome, where I studied at the Collegio de Propaganda Fide with young men from many different countries of the world. It was a great privilege to share with them a wonderful sense of the world church, and also to be taught by professors who were present at the Second Vatican Council, and who both enthused us with their teaching and entertained us with back- room stories of the Council proceedings.

If we jump forward four years, the new Rite of Ordination was promulgated on January 1, 1973, the last of the seven sacraments to be renewed after Vatican II. Six days later, on the feast of the Epiphany, I was one of a group of thirty-nine students to be ordained priest by his holiness Pope Paul VI, and very probably one of the first to be ordained according to this post-Vatican II rite.

His homily that day was, naturally, a memorable one for me and appropriate to our theme. Three times he repeated in that homily: Do not be afraid!

Let me quote two of those phrases:

We wish we could speak to you of the world for which You are, intended, ad of the fascinating and adventurous prospects Of your future ministry. But now we will entrust the exuberance of our feelings to a few words. the words so often repeated by Jesus to his disciples: “Do, not be afraid!”

Pope Paul concluded his homily with these words:

Do not be afraid, we will repeat to you, beloved sons and brothers! Always be fully and vigilantly aware of your Priesthood; and your life will have its new and true figure; it will have its form of resistance and of action: it will have its originality and vitality of love for every soul, for every community, for every activity ordained to the good of the church, with passionate support of your local Church, and with the boundless dimensions of love for the universal Church; it will have its perennial Epiphany of quest, possession and proclamation of Christ!

These words come back to us today, thirty-one years later, as we stand at the threshold of this new millennium. Do not be afraid!

So with this attitude in mind, let me now turn to our topic.

Let me say at the outset that I love the contemporary church: and that I am very hopeful for the future. The Church is much more open and participatory than it has been for centuries. All our issues and problems are 'out there' and to be shared by us all, from the Bishops down. I think the renewal that Vatican II envisaged is indeed taking place, and that we must not lose sight of that fact.

That does not absolve us from the task of being completely realistic when we assess the challenges facing our Church. God comes to us only on the level of the real. Thus, I want to look first at coming to terms with mission in our secular society, then I will look briefly at the so-called ‘vocations shortage’ and then I will sketch out some challenges that arise from there.

Coming to terms with Mission in our Secular, pluralist Society

If we paint a picture of the lives our church members live these days, the general impression is one of busy, fragmented lives lived in a busy, fragmented society. Most married couples have to work, and they see and have time for one another only in a limited space of time. Looking after children and supporting them in their various sports and pastimes takes up further time. Business is now a seven-day-a-week affair; Sunday is a pressured time for families, like most other days.

If we add to this the values promoted in our media - many of them good ones such as individual freedoms and human rights in a democratic society, but some of them highly damaging - then the choices facing Catholics and particularly our young people are numerous indeed.

The particularly pernicious aspect is that these choices are all presented as choices of equal value in a select-your-own lifestyle. Pluralism is thus a central feature of our society: In a family today, husband and wife may hold different values, and children, while ostensibly absorbing values from their parents and their schools, in fact can hold values that neither of their parents share.

One further aspect of our society which affects our Catholics, just as much as anyone else, is the increasingly transitory nature of relationships. Very few families these days would have all members in stable, faithful marriage relationships. Children likewise have to cope with the breakup of their parents. On the one hand all this leads to the distorted view that one should not even try for commitment, and on the other a high regard for happily married couples. Our current government has pushed the secular boundaries almost as far as it can, with a civil union bill which caters for any and all kinds of relationship, and makes it relatively easy to move in and out of them at will.

This is the reality of the challenge that our ordinary Catholics must live in, and must also find their mission. It affects the Church on its inside. I can think of three major examples.

The first is that coming to Sunday Mass for many is a matter of choice. How they exercise it is the challenge. Sometimes There are very good reasons concerned with the balancing of all life's demands. But other times, it is simply because their priorities lie somewhere else. It is the supermarket mentality now applied to the Church. A further issue occurs with the young, for many of whom the weekend does not start until 11.30 pm on Saturday night!! Sunday Mass has to compete with these realities for the minds and hearts of our Catholic people.

The challenge here is to make our Sunday celebrations both faith-filled and relevant to these busy lives. I know of many parishes which are full and lively. It is wonderful to see people moving from the supermarket mentality to the unconditional belonging to the Church community that is the mark of deep faith and adherence to Christ

The second example is that of Catholic Schools. Many parents treat the School as their Church community, and see it as their primary religious commitment. They give their total support to the school in a wonderful way. Many schools have waiting lists of parents who would want their children in the School not for faith reasons, but for something vague, which probably includes faith reasons, called "values", which they see to be missing in our society. So I salute our schools. They do a wonderful job, and the environment they create is replete with 'catholic character'. However, a good number of parents would not see the parish, or Sunday worship, as relevant unless it entailed some participation on the part of their children - for example, they will faithfully support all sacramental preparation which is done in the parish. The critical question, however, is: where are they - and their children - after the children have left the School? The challenge is similar to the first. Those moments of contact between parish and school are privileged moments, and upon them depends much of our future.

The third example is similar. It has to do with couples who my have had little or nothing to do with their church since school days. They arrive and ask to be married. Or couples arrive and ask for their child to be baptized. In many cases they arrive at a church which they truly do not know, and are taking, in their minds, a huge risk in asking for these sacraments. This is the moment of evangelization, one of the few times when we have privileged access to the young or the young married. The challenge here is to offer hospitality and acceptance on the one hand, and on the other, a meaningful and worthwhile preparation for the sacraments in the company of other young people. If relevance to the reality of their lives is not found here, then I think that we have lost these young people for years ahead, and sometimes for good. The aim must be that they have a positive and happy community experience of a supportive Church in which their lives and their struggles make real sense.

The 'Vocations Shortage'

As you know, across New Zealand we are currently going through a major change in terms of vocations. I would call it a mixed blessing, but a blessing nonetheless.

On the one hand, the ordinary lay person's sense of vocation has increased. We are all called by Baptism! I think this sense of vocation lies at the basis of the flourishing of lay ministry in our Church.

On the other hand, vocations to Religious life and Diocesan priesthood have declined markedly, and are cause both of concern, and also of the significant restructuring that is going on in our Church.

Let us pause for a minute to think of religious and priestly vocations. If a vocation has two components, one a call by God and the other a call by the Church community, and if God is not ceasing to call people to priestly service or religious life, then one can draw only one conclusion: the call by the Church community is not being beard by our young.

In our secular pluralistic society this is in some ways understandable. Stability of life and clear career paths are not part of the experience of many of our young. A changing Church offers a moving target for them to say, 'I would like that kind of committed life in the Church.' Life commitments in themselves are often in the toohard basket for many young people.

Furthermore, numbers leave parish life in their early teens, follow the voices of society, and do not return until some years later, when they must catch up both with the fact that the church they knew has moved on, and also with their own issues that caused them to move away in the first place. The call to vocation thus takes place in this new context.

The challenge then is to accept that God knows what he is doing, and to try and work as creatively as possible to develop vibrant parishes filled with broad exercise of lay ministry, and to preach priestly ministry and service as an extraordinary and wonderful challenge in the real of this new context. That is where the call to vocations will come. God will look after the rest.

Challenge 1: to work creatively with this emerging Church

I see three parts to this challenge. The first part, as I have said, is to work as creatively as possible to develop vibrant parishes with broad exercise of lay ministry. If the people feel that their contribution is welcomed, and they find that they can work together, then parishes come alive.

The second point to note is the growing involvement of women in ministry in our church. If my parish experience is any indicator, women perform the majority of ministries, and are represented by at least 50% on all our committees. I think we all welcome their contribution. Part of the job description of a priest is to be able to work comfortably and creatively with these generous women.

A third phenomenon, however, raises issues and challenges.

That is the rise of people aspiring to paid employment as ministers of one kind or another in our churches. It is widespread in America, for example. There are 38,000 people working 20 hours per week or more over there. The phenomenon is facing us, as we contemplate many parishes without: resident priests, and as we contemplate people studying, and simply aspiring to this kind of service. At present, at least in this Diocese, there is no career path, no assured employment, no provisions for adequate remuneration, or superannuation. Nor is there policy in place setting standards for such aspiring ministers - standards of education, professional standards and so on. All these lie ahead of us. At least in this country, our parishes seem willing to accept such ministers, but our people are not geared for the costs of employment and the support structures that a Church with such ministers will need.

The third part of this challenge is a more theological one, but it is eminently practical. That is the challenge to negotiate, on a day-to-day basis, the relationship between the priesthood of the laity and the priesthood of the ordained. Where does the role of the priest end, and the role of the laity begin? Who does what? At a time when priests are growing older on average and when they are diminishing in number, this boundary is changing, as lay people take over many tasks formerly done by the priests.

It is helpful to re-visit the theology of this relationship as taught by Vatican II. The council taught that Christ is the priest, the prophet, the king or servant. We all share in these offices of Christ. From them arises the priesthood of the laity and the priesthood of the ordained, or ministerial priesthood. Vatican II taught us that there is an 'essential difference' between the two. The task of the ordained priest then is to maximize the priestly, prophetic and servant gifts of the laity.

There are, however, particular challenges when it comes to the relationship between priests who stand in diverse roles such as employer, co-worker, pastor, and others undefined, and lay employees of the Church. Our success as a church in the near future is dependent upon our success in training and forming professional, fully paid lay workers to work alongside our priests.

As priests we have had to learn and develop new gifts and skills in this situation. The word "empowerer" comes to mind. The words of Gerry Fitzgerald, a priest late of this diocese, come to mind:

When a priest arrives in a parish, he arrives at the heart of the action and the periphery of the people. If he does his job, he finishes at the periphery of the action and at the heart of the people

To speak personally, I have found my own priesthood enhanced and my personal satisfaction increased in this new situation. Around me, lay people do many, many things that I cannot do, and 1 thus consider my own effectiveness increased. My task is to ensure that ministry takes place, not to do it all myself.

Do not be afraid!

Challenge II: The cultural challenge

A more particular challenge lies in the interface between Gospel and culture on the local level of our parishes. We all know that the reality of migration has changed our churches. These refugees and new immigrants bring their sufferings, their hopes, and their experiences with them as they enter our parishes. But above all, they bring them wrapped up in their own cultures.

The challenge then is to be able to form communities of faith which welcome the stranger, which attain to the unity for which Christ prayed, and yet which hold and celebrate diversity. My former parish of Beachhaven, for example, can sing hymns in six languages. I believe that this challenge is the one upon which the success of our church will be judged in future years. Many of our parishes are filled with first generation immigrants, who are unswervingly faithful to the Church. If their children, who will grow up in the secular world we have examined, also remain and stay unswervingly faithful, then we can contemplate a wonderful future, Such bi- and multi-cultural parishes will be microcosms of what our society as a whole aspires to become. Do not be afraid!!

Challenge III: The Credibility of the Gospel in our Society

The third challenge that I would like to address is that of ensuring the credibility of the Gospel and of the Church in the twenty-first century. Perhaps this credibility is put on trial most in these days.

We have endured much public scrutiny of how we have handled the crime of sexual abuse in our Church. Another example is Church teaching in regard to condoms for Aids in Africa. However, I welcome such scrutiny. We can only witness to the reality that we are, and the reality is that we are a church of saints and sinners. That is not what makes us different from society. What has the potential to make us different is the way we respond to such scrutiny. If we value truth highly and if we meet it with conversion, then we have a chance of being different. Transparency in all our processes and dealings is to me the first and necessary step to any renewal in our Church. I am thinking of the beauty of the Gospel and the challenge to live it and present it in a transparent way. Truth and freedom go together, but it is the freedom that is lived with commitment that gives life. Only then can the Spirit light the way forward.

Looking inwards and to return to our sketch of the background situation, we do indeed need to have our goods on open display in the supermarket, so that people who come will freely see them, freely love them for what they are: the Gospel as witnessed in the committed lives of wonderful, ordinary people who find life and love, justice and truth in our Church.

Looking outwards, I am thinking of Pope John Paul with his stress that we fly by the twin wings of faith and reason, and that with these two assets we need to engage with our world: We need to engage with the worlds of science and technology and art with the surety that with them we have nothing to fear as we seek to probe the mysteries of life, where Christ is also to be found, But even more we need to link this with a commitment to justice and peace, and join with others in our increasingly globalized world, with its issues of too many people being poor, its issues of fair trade, of ecological sanity, its many struggles for justice and of peace, beginning here in our own Aotearoa, and in our own parish communities.

Conclusion

To conclude, I return to your own vocation as Serrans, devoted to the Church and to the furthering of priestly vocations. For this, I thank you. My own reflection is that the Priesthood remains as precious as it always has been. As I have sketched them, the challenges are at once the same and different. And for that our future priests need, as Jesus says, to bring out of the treasure chest something new and something old. Our recent seminarians have mostly a broad experience of life in the world; if I had a wish, it is that they would be able to bring some of that worldly realism with them into their ministry, and engage the rest of the society in which our Catholics live. Recently we had a priest Fr Steve Bevans deliver our Pompallier lecture here, in which he argued that we as a Church need to re-focus on mission in our world. I fully agree with him. If you as Serrans can accompany your seminarian friends and help them look at our church world with truthful and compassionate eyes, then you will be helping them prepare for that task and you will be performing and immense service to us all.