GOING INTO THE CHURCH

HE ORDINATION SEASON is giving us three new priests and a new deacon for the churches that look to me for episcopal care. Looking down the list we are also likely to see three or four retirements in the coming year. Assuming that those who move out of the area are likely to be replaced by those coming into the area - and there is no shortage of enquiries - things seem steady….. But, looking closer, we see that most of the new clergy this time are self-supporting which means (with the best will in the world) part-time, and those retiring are full-time parish priests. The ordained ministry is slowly changing and we shall begin to see fewer full-time clergy and more self-supporting ones. Clusters of parishes will be formed, served by a full-time priest and an unpaid team of ordained and lay ministers.

Not so long ago, getting ordained was called 'going into the Church' - a bit like 'going into the army' or 'the law' or 'the medical profession'. We have learnt, thank God, that we 'go into the Church' by baptism and, though each and every one of the baptised isn't a priest, the baptised together form a royal priesthood. All of us working together are a priesthood to God's world, spreading the Good News of his Love. As St Augustine of Hippo says, we praise God by coming together to worship and we praise God individually by exemplary lives of love and service to others.

The clergy - the ministerial priesthood - have a particular job of preaching the Word, celebrating the Sacraments, caring for and teaching God's People, and leading the Mission of the Church. We continue to need a steady stream of mostly young men, prepared to offer their lives for full-time, life-time service in the parochial ministry. The supply never dries up but sometimes we get a trickle when we want a stream. Pray for a stream! The Bishop of Beverley tells me that he currently has more enquirers than usual. Let's pray that we may do as well from the 'Ebbsfleet parishes'. The clue, I am sure, is in effective work with children and young people, one reason why, once again, I shall be spending a week this August at the Walsingham Youth Pilgrimage.

I should like to see three more developments, each urgently needed. One is a reformed understanding and deployment of reader ministry. Another is a form of training which suits what is sometimes called 'local ordained ministry'. There are training schemes around but I am told that none is a good fit for Catholic candidates.

Indeed, some parish priests are not putting candidates forward because of this. A third is a renewed and uncontroversial ministry for Catholic women. In recent years we have all but lost the growing and valuable contribution of deaconesses and licensed lay workers. I should like to see these ministries rediscovered and relabelled: catechists, deacons, evangelists and pastoral assistants. Many of them could and should be stipendiary opportunities for women within the Catholic fold.

As we pray for the newly ordained, let us pray too for the renewal of the Church's ministry and for the calling of many not to 'go into the Church' but to play a particular part within the ministry of the Church to which we are all called. May God bless you in his service.

+ Andrew Ebbsfleet



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