(i)

For twelve years I had the good fortune to work as a Catholic chaplain at Oxford University. During that time many people who were not Catholics came to see me – graduates and undergraduates, dons and other members of the University and their families – to talk about the Catholic faith and explore the possibility of their becoming Catholics themselves. It was fascinating and rewarding work. Sometimes after a long series of sessions people might decide not to proceed. I never regarded it as time wasted. At least they would have clarified their own position and after all faith is a gift. And sometimes people were in more of a hurry. Occasionally someone would say, ‘Look, I’m sure that 1 want to be received. 1 believe what the Church teaches. So could I be received soon? Perhaps we could just have a few sessions on the controversial issues, like the real presence of Christ in the eucharist, papal infallibility, and the teaching about Mary.’ But I would always refuse. To examine only the problem issues can easily distort our understanding of the whole. More often, someone who had announced that transubstantiation or infallibility or Marian doctrine might be a sticking point, found when we reached that stage in our conversations that seen in context the difficulties had evaporated. I remember one person, now a friend, smiling wryly and expressing mock disappointment when we came to consider Mary. ‘I was looking forward to a really good argument about that,’ she said.

The point is significant here as we begin this reflection on Catholic priesthood. There are many controversial issues today surrounding it, not only the scandals arising from the sexual abuse of children. Why are so few people in Western Europe, the United States, and Australia recognizing a vocation as presbyters? Why have so many priests left the priesthood? Should celibacy remain obligatory? Should other married men, besides convert clergy, be ordained? Should women be ordained? What should be said about sexual orientation? And then there are the scandals that have engulfed priests time and again in more recent years. Those are some of the questions which are raised constantly. They deserve to be considered, although they have already received thoughtful attention in church documents, as well as in a range of books and articles. However, I want to offer an account of Catholic ministerial priesthood which is not governed by those issues. I have no wish to shy away from them, but would rather address them as they may arise, integrated within a larger view.

By doing so I would hope to encourage and support those who have become dispirited, informing people and reminding priests about what this commitment entails. I want to offer an account which allows the sheer goodness of this way of life to be acknowledged once more. It would be wonderful too if anything written here helped someone recognize a call to this life which until now they have not identified. And I am prompted to write partly because of a minor coincidence.

There is a common tradition that Jesus of Nazareth was thirty three years old when he was crucified and I have now been a priest for thirty-three years, as long as Jesus lived. The coincidence is as tenuous as that, but they are years for which I can only be grateful. It seems in its way a good moment for me to pause and reflect; and if I am to share what I may have learnt with others, it may help if I begin by sketching my background and how those years have been spent.

(ii)

My family was Catholic and the faith was important in our home. My father had decided to become a Catholic before marrying my mother in 1939, but the wise Jesuit who was instructing him advised delay until after the wedding to spare his parents’ feelings. Was that symbolic? The commitment was clear, but neither narrow nor rigid.

I went to school at Stonyhurst. There was a large number of Jesuits on the staff at the time and during those years the possibility of my becoming a priest occurred to me. I didn’t cling to it desperately. If my mind had changed, I wouldn’t have been devastated. But I came to realize it was a notion I ought to explore. On reflection I felt drawn to the diocesan priesthood rather than the Society of Jesus. I applied to my home diocese of Shrewsbury and was accepted. I was sent to Rome and began my studies in 1963. I was seventeen.

Today that seems extraordinary, far too young. But things were different in the sixties. When people left school in those days, they had usually decided what they wanted to do with their lives. And it was an exceptional time to be in Rome.

Each autumn of my first three years the Second Vatican Council was sitting. When documents were to be promulgated, there were public sessions and I attended as many as I could. They were wonderful days. There was a sense of being part of historic events. And the years which followed were as absorbing in a different way. In the immediate aftermath of the Council the flow of visitors to Rome continued; they were attending sessions of the post-conciliar commissions which were seeking to put what the Council had taught into effect. It was a privileged time to be training for the priesthood and it has shaped my life. The Council’s vision inspires me.

I was ordained a priest of the Shrewsbury Diocese in December 1969 and after my return from Rome the following June, I was sent to Oxford to study Newman. I lived at the University Catholic Chaplaincy for the next four years. Crispian Hollis, now the Bishop of Portsmouth, was chaplain. He had just succeeded Michael Hollings who in the previous eleven years had transformed the place. He had established it as an open house and Crispian maintained the practice. The doors were unlocked at seven in the morning and closed at midnight. It was an inspiring model of priesthood to meet in my formative years. And at its heart was prayerfulness. The early mass was said at 7.45 in the morning in a small upstairs chapel, but a good halfhour before that fifteen or more people would have gathered to prepare themselves in silence. You could set your clock by Bill Frerking, an American philosophy graduate, who had had polio as a child, climbing those stairs on his crutches at 7.10. He is now a Benedictine abbot in the United States (2).

I left Oxford in 1974 and returned as one of the Catholic chaplains to the University in 1977. During those three years I was an assistant priest in a parish, English Martyrs in Wallasey, and also chaplain to the large Catholic comprehensive school, St Mary’s College, which is next door. After Oxford, when I returned to the diocese in 1990, I was appointed parish priest of St Paul’s, Hyde, and in 1993 I became Director of the Diocesan Religious Education Service for five years. I also spent eight years as a member of the National Conference of Priests and served as its chairman from 1994 to 1997. I had been moved from Hyde back to Wallasey in 1996 to facilitate the R.E. work and then in 1998 I was invited to return to Rome as Rector of the Beda College which has the responsibility of preparing for priestly ordination older men from the English-speaking world. The invitation could not have surprised me more.

Parish and school, university and seminary, and like all priests a variety of other responsibilities besides, my years as a priest have offered me a range of experience and that experience is one of the sources on which I draw and reflect here. This book is not, however, disguised autobiography, but having had the experience, in Eliot’s phrase, I don’t want to miss the meaning (3).  And I would want to state something clearly from the start. I have loved being a priest.
I
During my time as a student in Rome I became friendly with Jack Pledger, a priest from the Archdiocese of Southwark, who used to come out on holiday. I learnt a great deal from him. By his own admission Jack did not suffer fools gladly, but he had great zest for living. ‘What’s the point of being a priest,’ he would say, ‘if you’re not going to be happy about it.’ His own delight in priesthood was transparent. And it was because of him that the card commemorating my ordination bore the simple statement, ‘Serve the Lord with joy.’ I have tried to be faithful to those words. So what path shall we follow now?

(iii)