Introduction
It is unusual, perhaps, for a canonical text to begin with a personal admission. Canonists are trained to think in categories of law, in the precision of norms, in the grammar of the universal and particular Church. Yet the law is never, in the Catholic tradition, merely the letter of a statute. It is always in service of the salus animarum that supreme law which the final canon of the 1983 Code declares to be the ultimate end of all ecclesiastical legislation.
I write, therefore, as a canonist and as a priest. And what I have to say begins not in the pages of the Corpus Iuris Canonici or in the decrees of the Council of Trent, but in a moment that I suspect many of my brother priests will recognise: the moment I watched Cardinal George Pell stand alone.
His Eminence was, by any measure, was a true prince of the Church. He had served as Archbishop of Melbourne and of Sydney, as a member of numerous Vatican congregations, and as the first Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, a role of singular importance in the reform of Vatican finances. He was, in short, a man of stature, of experience, and of unimpeachable standing within the hierarchy of the universal Church. And when charges of the most grave and humiliating character were brought against him in Australian courts; charges that were eventually, and unanimously, overturned by the High Court of Australia, not a word of public support came from the Vicar of Christ.
Some have offered charitable interpretations of this silence. It was prudence, they said. It was respect for the autonomy of civil judicial processes. It was the wisdom of a man who understood the complexity of the moment. Perhaps. I do not presume to judge the interior dispositions of any Supreme Pontiff. But I confess that this silence left in me, and in many priests I know, a deep and abiding unease.
The logic is simple and terrible: if this can happen to a Cardinal, a man whose scarlet marks him out as one whom the Church has placed in a position of singular trust and honour, what hope is there for those of us who are simple priests? What certainty do we have that, in our hour of need, the Church will stand with us? And if we have no such certainty, how does this affect the way we live our priesthood, day after day, in parishes, in schools, in hospitals, in prisons?
These are not abstract questions. They touch the daily lives of thousands of priests. They help explain, I believe, a crisis of priestly perseverance that is not sufficiently understood.
The Legal Framework
The 1983 Code of Canon Law does not leave the relationship between bishop and priest unaddressed. On the contrary, the Code provides a remarkably rich framework for understanding what this relationship ought to be. Canon 384 places a positive obligation upon the diocesan bishop: he is to “have special concern for his priests” and to listen to them as his helpers and counsellors. He is to “defend their rights and see to it that they fulfil their obligations.” This is not mere exhortation. It is a juridically significant obligation.
Canon 275 §1 reminds us that all clerics are united in the common goal of building up the Body of Christ, and Canon 275 §2 calls upon clerics to “acknowledge and promote the mission which the laity exercise in the Church and in the world.” But this horizontal solidarity is always embedded in a vertical hierarchical structure of authority and care. The bishop is not merely an administrator. Canon 369 describes the diocese as a “portion of the people of God which is entrusted to a bishop.” Entrusted. The language is that of stewardship, of pastoral solicitude and of a fatherly commission.
Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church promulgated by the Second Vatican Council, explains this further when it describes priests as “co-workers” (n. 28) with the order of bishops, sharing in the one priesthood of Christ, yet doing so in a relationship of dependence upon and cooperation with the episcopal order. The Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests, Presbyterorum Ordinis, is even more explicit: bishops are to regard priests “as brothers and friends.” They are to take “a special interest in the spiritual life of their priests.” This language is not bureaucratic. It is paternal.
Furthermore, Canon 1722 of the Code (which deals with the removal of an accused cleric from ministry during the course of a penal process) comes with significant procedural safeguards precisely because the legislator recognised the potential for grave injustice. The canonical tradition has always understood that even in the service of the common good, the rights of the individual must be respected. Due process is not a concession to secular liberalism. It is a demand of natural law and of the Church's own canonical tradition.
What, then, is the problem? The problem is that there exists, in too many dioceses and religious institutes, a significant gap between the framework the law provides and the lived reality that priests experience. The law speaks of brotherhood and fatherhood. Many priests experience managerialism and abandonment.
This gap is not, in most cases, the product of malice. It is the product of an institutional culture shaped by decades of crisis management; above all, by the catastrophe of clerical sexual abuse and its cover-up, which rightly demanded a radical change in how the Church handles allegations against clergy. The pendulum, however, has in many places swung so far that the presumption of innocence, the duty of pastoral support, and the obligation of canonical due process have been, in practice if not in law, subordinated to the imperatives of institutional self-protection and public relations management.
My canonical work has brought me into close contact with the process by which priests are reduced to the lay state. This is, in canonical terms, the most serious administrative, legal and penal consequence that can befall a priest: the loss of the clerical state, the permanent dissolution, in most cases, of all bonds of clerical obligation and privilege. It is, in the theological sense, a tragedy. Not necessarily a moral one; there are cases in which such a reduction is entirely just and necessary. But it remains always a tragedy, because it represents the end of what was meant to be a permanent configuration to Christ the Priest.
I have participated in such processes in cases where the necessity was clear: grave and persistent moral failure, incapacity for ministry, the abandonment of all priestly practice. In these cases, the reduction to the lay state, carried out according to the norms of Canon Law and the procedural requirements of the Dicastery for the Clergy, is an act of mercy for the priest himself and of justice for the People of God.
But I have also witnessed, with increasing frequency and increasing pain, the departure of priests who are not guilty of any grave moral failure. Young men, some of them with the oil of their ordination barely dry, who have quietly, without fanfare, sought and obtained laicisation not because they have sinned gravely, but because they have become disillusioned. And when I have had the opportunity to speak with them, what I have heard, again and again, is a version of the same story: “I was not supported… When I needed my bishop, he was not there… When I tried to do what I believed to be right, I was left to face the consequences alone… I cannot live like this for fifty years.” These are not men who lost their faith. They are, in many cases, men of genuine piety and pastoral zeal. They are men who were broken by institutional loneliness and by fear.
The Power of Fear
Now, the fear I am describing is not the salutary fear of the Lord, the timor Domini that is the beginning of wisdom. It is not the legitimate prudential caution that a wise priest exercises in navigating the complexities of pastoral life. It is something much more corrosive: a pervasive anxiety about institutional consequences that colours the exercise of priestly ministry at every level.
It manifests in ways both serious and mundane. I know priests who do not preach on certain subjects; not because they do not believe what the Church teaches, not because they lack the theological formation to articulate it, but because they are afraid that a complaint will be lodged with the chancery and that they will find themselves summoned by a bishop whose reaction they cannot predict. The diocese becomes, in their imagination, not a home but a threat. The bishop is not a father but a supervisor who must be appeased.
I know priests who retain problematic parish employees; music directors whose liturgical choices are a source of ongoing scandal, catechists whose formation is gravely deficient, members of parish councils who have appointed themselves as guardians of a vision of the Church quite at odds with her actual teaching, not because these priests are cowards by nature, but because they have calculated, on the basis of experience, that the act of removing such persons will result in complaints, and that those complaints will not be handled justly. They will be handled with an eye to conflict avoidance and institutional reputation management.
And I know priests, younger priests especially, who walk through their ministry in a state of permanent anxiety about episcopal phone calls, about chancery communications, about the dreaded summoning that might come at any moment, triggered by a parishioner's offence at a homily or a decision to celebrate the liturgy with greater solemnity than the parish had previously known.
This is not a healthy church. This is not the brotherhood of priests that Presbyterorum Ordinis envisioned. This is an institution in which fear has displaced fatherhood, and in which the vertical relationship between bishop and priest has become, in too many instances, a relationship of power rather than of mission.
The theological tradition of the Church has consistently understood the bishop as a father to his priests. The very title by which we address a bishop: ‘Your Excellency,’ ‘Your Grace,’ or simply ‘Father’ in many traditions points to a relationship that is not merely juridical but ontological. The bishop is the high priest of his local church. He is the source of unity for the presbyterate. He ordains his priests, he assigns them their pastoral charges, he bears ultimate responsibility for the sacramental life of the diocese. In the deepest sense, his priests are his sons in the priestly order.
This paternal relationship is not sentimental. It has real juridical content. The father defends his sons. He does not abandon them when the world turns against them. He does not calculate the reputational cost of standing with them before deciding whether to do so. The father of the Prodigal Son, our Lord's own image of divine mercy, and by extension of proper authority in the Church does not demand from the returning son a public statement of contrition before the press. He runs to meet him. He clothes him. He throws a party.
I am not, of course, suggesting that bishops should uncritically defend priests who have committed grave wrongs. Justice is also a component of fatherhood. A father does not pretend that his son has not erred. But there is an enormous difference between a father who accompanies his son through a process of accountability while maintaining his fundamental support, and an institution that, at the first sign of controversy, distances itself from one of its own in order to manage the news cycle.
This has been exacerbated in recent years, the term ‘clericalism’ which has become one of the most frequently deployed words in Catholic ecclesial discourse. It is a real phenomenon, and its dangers are real. A priest that that treats ordination as a licence for arrogance or laziness, that places clerical comfort above apostolic mission, is rightly criticised. The canonical tradition itself, with its insistence on the rights and dignity of the lay faithful (cf. Canons 208-223), provides the theological basis for such criticism.
But the word has also been weaponised. It has been deployed, with increasing frequency, against priests who do nothing more than exercise their legitimate priestly charism; who celebrate the liturgy with reverence, who preach with doctrinal clarity, who exercise genuine pastoral authority in their parishes. The accusation of clericalism has become, in some ecclesiastical quarters, a tool for the suppression of priestly identity rather than a legitimate theological critique.
When a bishop, instead of defending a priest against a groundless accusation, automatically invokes the spectre of clericalism as a reason for not intervening, he has not exercised pastoral wisdom. He has abdicated paternal responsibility. The canonical tradition offers no support for such an abdication. Canon 384 is clear: the bishop is to defend the rights of priests. Not when it is comfortable. Not when it is reputationally advantageous. Simply: he is to defend them.
Similarly, the term ‘rigidity’ used with notable frequency in the previous pontifical discourse to characterise priests who are zealous in their adherence to tradition, their celebration of the liturgy, or their doctrinal orthodoxy has functioned in practice as a rhetorical instrument of marginalisation. The result has been that many young priests who entered seminary with a genuine love of the Church's tradition, who were formed in a healthy seminary culture, have found themselves regarded with suspicion by their own diocesan leadership. This is not merely demoralising, it is a structural injustice.
And I write these words with the consciousness that the pontificate of Pope Francis has now ended, and that his successor has brought, in the opening months of his pontificate, a notably different tone. The constant stream of critical discourse directed at priests, the repeated warnings against clericalism, rigidity, careerism, and the ‘airport bishop’, is not part of the new pontificate’s discourse as it did the previous one. For this, many priests are genuinely grateful.
But the damage has been done, and it would be a mistake to imagine that a change in tone at the summit of the Church automatically heals the wounds inflicted at the base. The culture of episcopal institutions does not change quickly. The bishop who learned to use the rhetoric of the previous pontificate as a tool for managing priests does not automatically abandon that habit when the wind changes in Rome.
Moreover, the theological and psychological effect of years of sustained pontifical criticism directed at priests as a class has left a residue. Many priests, particularly those who were ordained during those years and who were already in a state of uncertainty about their episcopal support, have internalised a sense of institutional unworthiness. They have heard, again and again, that the problem with the Church is priests. They have seldom heard, from the highest levels of the institution, that the priesthood is glorious, that their ministry is irreplaceable, that they are loved and trusted and supported.
This matters canonically as well as psychologically. The 1983 Code imposes obligations of support and encouragement upon bishops. But there is a culture that shapes the exercise of those obligations, and when that culture is one of suspicion and criticism directed downward through the hierarchical chain, the obligations become more difficult to discharge. The bishop who has absorbed a pontifical rhetoric of generalised priestly critique is less likely to spring to the defence of one of his priests, and more likely to view the complaint from the chancery as prima facie credible.
The Case of Cardinal Pell and its consequences
The case of Cardinal Pell gives us an insight in this because it illustrates, at the highest level, the problems I have been describing. The charges brought against His Eminence in the state of Victoria were, by any legal and common-sense analysis, extraordinarily problematic. The alleged offences were said to have occurred in circumstances that many witnesses attested to be physically impossible. The complainant's account required a reconstruction of events that contradicted the sworn testimony of a large number of people present on the occasions in question. The subsequent history conviction, a lengthy period of unjust imprisonment, appeal to the Victorian Court of Appeal (where the conviction was upheld by a two-to-one majority), and finally unanimous exoneration by all seven justices of the High Court of Australia is now well-known.
What is significant is the conduct of many in the Church during this period. It is not my purpose here to render a judgment on the personal prudence or moral culpability of those who chose silence. I am not going to judge interior dispositions. But I can say, from a legal standpoint, that the silence of the Church's highest authority during the prosecution and imprisonment of a Cardinal, a prosecution that was manifestly, from the beginning, deeply problematic in its evidential foundations, was a failure of the paternal obligation that the tradition of the Church has always associated with supreme authority.
And the lesson that ordinary priests drew from this failure is the lesson I described at the beginning of this article: if this can happen to him, what will happen to me? This is not paranoia. It is a rational conclusion from observed institutional behaviour. And it has consequences that are concrete and, measurable for the perseverance of priests in their ministry when fear and anxiety takes hold in the mind and souls of priests.
Now, I want to be explicit about something that canonical analysis alone cannot capture: there is a spiritual dimension to this crisis, and it must be named. The tradition of Christian spiritual theology, from the Fathers of the Church through the Ignatian discernment of spirits, has always recognised that fear, not the healthy prudential caution of the wise man, but the paralysing, identity-destroying fear that prevents the exercise of one's vocation is a tool of the enemy. The one whom our Lord called “the father of lies” and the “thief who comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (Jn 10:10) does not need to destroy the Church from the outside if he can render her priests ineffectual and hopeless from within.
A priest who is afraid to preach the truth is not preaching the Gospel. A priest who retains a problematic employee out of fear of episcopal reaction is not governing his parish well. A priest who cannot bring himself to challenge a parishioner's error because he fears the chancery is not being a shepherd. He is being managed. And the faithful in his care are being deprived of the pastoral leadership they have a right to receive.
The relationship between a bishop and his priests should be, as Presbyterorum Ordinis says, one in which priests are treated “as brothers and friends.” The young priest should be able to call his bishop when he faces a pastoral difficulty and receive, not a guarded institutional response calculated for legal liability, but the counsel of a father and the solidarity of a brother in the priesthood. When that relationship does not exist, when the bishop is experienced as a source of threat rather than a source of support, the priest is left to face the challenges of his ministry alone. And many as I have seen it firsthand find that they cannot sustain that aloneness indefinitely.
What to do about it?
To fix this we could have more rigorous enforcement of existing norms. Canon 384 already imposes upon bishops the obligation to defend the rights of priests. This obligation needs to be taken seriously in the formation of new bishops, in the oversight exercised by apostolic nuncios and by the Dicastery for the Clergy, and in the processes of episcopal accountability that the universal Church possesses. We could also review the process for handling accusations against priests. These have been significantly reformed in the post-abuse crisis era, and rightly so. But we need to review them constantly with an eye to ensuring the presumption of innocence guaranteed by civil and Canon Law. And this is not merely something written and talked about, but it is something that has to be actualized in the administration of justice. The removal of a priest from ministry pending investigation should be the exception, not the default; and where it is applied, it should be accompanied by genuine pastoral support, not institutional abandonment. There could be even a more robust instruments for monitoring the welfare of priests and for receiving and acting upon reports of episcopal failures in pastoral support. The Code provides for such oversight in general terms; it needs more specific institutional implementation, but this will not be enough; changes in Law are never the only answer, there has to be a spiritual and pastoral dimension as well.
The language we use in these instances should also change. Words shape culture. A Supreme Pontiff who speaks habitually of priests in terms of criticism and pathology should not be surprised if the culture of episcopal leadership follows that lead. The new pontificate has, thankfully, brought a welcome change of tone. This needs to be sustained and deepened, and it needs to cascade down through the episcopate. Bishops need to know their priests not as subordinates to be managed, but as brothers to cooperate in the common mission.
Seminaries also have a role here; they need to form future priests for a realistic understanding of institutional challenges, without cultivating cynicism. The young priest who enters his diocese with no expectation of episcopal support will not be surprised when he does not receive it, but neither will he flourish in his ministry. He needs to be formed in a spirituality of priestly resilience that is rooted not only in divine trust but also institutional: the priest is of course accountable to the God as a higher authority than the bishop, but at the same time he has to be equipped to advocate canonically for his own rights when those rights are violated.
Finally, and most urgently, the Church needs to recover the language and the reality of priestly brotherhood. The presbyteral council, should be more than a legal body that rubber-stamps episcopal decisions. It should be a genuine locus of priestly solidarity, where priests can speak honestly about their experience of the institution and where bishops can hear, without defensiveness, what their priests are actually living.
Conclusion
I began with a personal memory and I will end with one. Some years ago, I was present at the ordination of a classmate whom I had known since my early years in seminary. He was gifted, zealous, and possessed of a genuine love for the Church that was evident to everyone who knew him. At the moment of his ordination, as the bishop laid hands upon him and the ancient words of the consecratory prayer were spoken, I found myself thinking: this is what the Church is for. This is the continuation of the apostolic mission. This is the priesthood of Christ, handed on from age to age.
That young man is no longer a priest. He left the ministry within a few years of his ordination, not because of any grave moral failure, not because of a loss of faith, but because he was left alone in a difficult situation by a bishop who did not see fit to intervene on his behalf. The last I heard of him, he was working in an unrelated field, married, and by all accounts content. But the Church is poorer for his absence.
The priesthood is not, in Catholic theology, a career that one enters and exits according to circumstance. It is an ontological configuration, a permanent imprint upon the soul, a participation in the eternal priesthood of Christ. The Church has always taught that the character of Orders cannot be removed. The man who has been ordained is always, in the deepest sense, a priest: sacerdos in aeternum, a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.
This theology places an enormous responsibility upon those who have the care of priests. If ordination is permanent, if it shapes a man at the deepest level of his being, then the abandonment of a priest by the institution that ordained him is not merely an administrative failure.
The Church is continuing to face a crisis of priestly vocations that many attribute primarily to demographic and cultural factors: the secularisation of Western society, the desacralisation of the clerical role, the competition of a thousand other life choices that were not available to previous generations.
These factors are real. But I believe, and my canonical and pastoral experience sustains me in this belief that there is another factor, less discussed, equally serious: many men who have the vocation to the priesthood do not enter, or do not persevere, because they do not believe that the Church will be there for them when it matters.
Until that changes, until the relationship between bishops and priests is genuinely one of fatherhood and brotherhood, until the institutional reflexes of self-protection and conflict avoidance are replaced by the pastoral courage that the Gospel demands we will continue to lose priests. Not to sin, not to burnout, but to the simple, devastating conviction that they are alone.
Fear is the tool of the enemy. The remedy is love; the love of a father for his sons, the love of brothers in the same sacred order, the love that, as St. John reminds us, casts out all fear. May God grant to the bishops of the Church the courage to love their priests as they deserve to be loved. And may He grant to priests the confidence to receive that love, and in receiving it, to give it back through their ministry, their preaching, their witness to the people they were ordained to serve.
