The Priests' Confession

ABC's Spirit of Things did an episode titled Candid Clerics - discussing with the authors the revelations of their study Our Fathers (What Australian priests really think). One of the first points was that the burdens and demands of the system prevent priests from doing effective ministry.

they were having to spend their time doing things that had to be done rather than things that should be done.

Instead of outreach, or spiritual matters, priests admitted that "their life was becoming bureaucratised and they were reduced to ritual plus administration."

And it seems that the ritual isn't actually helping people connect with Jesus.

A lot of priests argued that the parish is now obsolete, it is not the way that we connect with people or can connect to people. We're spending all our time trying to maintain a parish structure when the parish structure is not the way to connect with people. We can't do what we should do because we have to do what we must do.

When asked about alternatives, one of the authors said they were "completely opposite to the current structure of the Church. They all spoke about the need for smaller church communities, a lot spoke about house-based communities..."

Quite a few confessed "we are keeping alive a structure which really needs to collapse and lead to some rebirth".

It seems the powers-that-be continue to prop up ineffective ministry, rather than engage with anything new or different. Alternatives which (according to the priests) would be more effective are simply ignored in favour of patching up the status quo.

[Listen to the whole discussion]