How Did CfM get under way?

CfM began when Frank Purcell and Paul Collins became concerned about statements from Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, concerning the Catholic doctrine of freedom of conscience. In his 1999 Acton Lecture in the US Pell said that Catholic religious educators should  'quietly ditch' the notion of the primacy of conscience. He continued 'This has never been a Catholic doctrine ... It is a short cut, which often leads the unitiated to feel even more complacent while "doing their own thing".' This is an extraordinary statement for a Catholic archbishop to make. He calls this 'the Donald Duck heresy' which, he says, 'rests squarely on the fallacy of overwhelming natural virtue.' This is the belief, Pell says, that all natural impulses are good. Donald Duck believes this and is never out of trouble!

Pell repeated these views on 30 May 2003 in the Catalyst for Renewal Bishops Forum when he said unequivocally 'I believe that this misleading doctrine of the primacy of conscience should be publicly rejected.' He went on to refer to the doctrine as 'mischievous'. (Paul Collins deals with Pell's views and the question of the theology of conscience in his book Between t6he Rock and a Hard Place. Being Catholic Today ABC Books, 2004, pp 148-160)

Purcell and Collins got a group of 25 prominent Australian Catholics together to write to the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to seek clarification on Pell's views on conscience. Needless to say the CDF ignored them, but the issue did get considerable publicity in Australia, and Pell doesn't seem to have repeated his peculiar views since then.

Collins and Purcell felt that working together with other Catholics on these kinds of ministerial and belief issues was important. They then got together 29 other Catholics, including priests and sisters and wrote to every bishop in Australia - both active and retired - setting out what became the Petition and asking the bishops to include these issues on the agenda of their November 2007 meeting. Fourteen bishops responded to the letter. Most were positive, a few non-committal and only one negative, but still friendly. CfM believes that Australian Catholics are very lucky. Fortunately we still have a big majority of bishops whose orientation is essentially pastoral and whose primary care is for people and the needs of their dioceses.

Back in July 2006 in the magazine OnLine Catholics (Issue 112, 7 July 2006) Father Eric Hodgens, then Parish Priest of Melbourne's North Balwyn, analyzed the Bishops' Conference and he divided it into three loose groupings.  We could call these groups...

* the ‘boots and all brigade'
* the ‘cautious'
* the ‘pastoralists'.

Hodgens describes the first group as ‘hard right wing and fundamentalist'. However, there are very few of them, probably no more than five. The cautious ‘support the Roman line for ideological or opportunistic reasons'. There are probably between five to six of these, many in powerful positions. The rest fit into the pastoral category.

That's why we're lucky in Australia. There are forty-two active bishops. This means that at least thirty fit into the more open, pastoral category. Hodgens argued in July 2006 ‘Now is the time for them [the pastorally-oriented bishops] to caucus, get a leader and act - redeem the situation. And they must do it urgently ... Their successors will simply not have the nous. Now is our last chance.' He is right.

Taking their cue from Hodgens, Frank Purcell and Paul Collins decided the time had come to try to find a way to support the pastoral bishops, while at the same time highlight that a bishop's primary responsibility is to his diocese. Only secondarily is he responsible for the universal church through his membership of the college of bishops. At the same time Purcell and Collins were concerned about the acute shortage of priests that was becoming more and more apparent in Australia. Again Eric Hodgens had diagnosed the situation. He shows that ‘the heyday for [priestly] recruitment was the mid-1950s. For every 100,000 Catholics 5.5 to 6.3 students [entered the seminary]. This was more than a 25% increase on pre-war recruitment levels.' The retention rate of students - that is, how many went on to ordination - was between 33% and 40% at the start of the 1960s.

Since the late-fifties recruitment has steadily dropped. ‘This continued for 35 years and settled in the mid nineties. The final rate was only 10% of what it was at the peak.' Only about a third of those recruited proceed to ordination. At present the church is ordaining about 0.15 to 0.25 priests per 100,000 Catholics each year. There is no sign of an increase despite claims of slightly bigger numbers in the Sydney, Perth, Melbourne and the Neo-Catechuminate seminaries (‘An Alternative to the Priest', Online Catholics, 28, 1/12/04).

Hodgens pointed out that the age of ordination has risen and that priests will have shorter periods of service. Until the mid-nineties men were usually ordained around the age of twenty-seven giving about thirty-eight years of service to the church. The average age of ordination now is thirty-five, giving around thirty years of service. ‘At this rate, even if they all stay priests, the long term result will be one priest for every 13,000 [Catholics] in Victoria and Queensland and one for every 22,000 in NSW'. In other words about 7.5 priests per 100,000 Catholics. Hodgens says ‘That means that Melbourne with its one million plus Catholics and 220 parishes will have only 75 priests'.

CfM believes that the result of this will be that more and more people, especially in rural areas, will be deprived of the Eucharist. This is an intolerable, even heretical, situation in an essentially sacramental church like our's.

So the Petition calls for an acknowledgment from the bishops that there is a major crisis in ministry in Australia, that there is no barrier to the ordination of married men, that we have a wide-ranging discussion on the ministry and ordination of women, that inactive priests return to the ministry and that the bishops begin a program to select, train women and men for ministry.
 setting out the terms of the Petition and asking the bishops to include these issues on the agenda of their November meeting. Fourteen bishops responded to the letter Most were positive, a few non-committal and only one negative but still friendly. CfM believes that Australian Catholics are very lucky. Fortunately we still have a big majority of bishops whose orientation is essentially pastoral and whose primary care is for people and the needs of their dioceses.

Last year in OnLine Catholics (Issue 112, 7 July 2006) Father Eric Hodgens, then Parish Priest of Melbourne's North Balwyn, analyzed the Bishops' Conference and he divided it into three loose groupings.  We could call these groups...

* the ‘boots and all brigade'
* the ‘cautious'
* the ‘pastoralists'.

Hodgens describes the first group as ‘hard right wing and fundamentalist'. However, there are very few of them, probably no more than five or six. The cautious ‘support the Roman line for ideological or opportunistic reasons'.  There are probably between seven and nine of these, many in powerful positions. The rest fit into the pastoral category.

That's why we're lucky in Australia. There are forty-three active bishops. This means that at least twenty-seven or twenty-eight fit into the more open, pastoral category. Hodgens argued in July 2006 ‘Now is the time for them [the pastorally-oriented bishops] to caucus, get a leader and act - redeem the situation. And they must do it urgently ... Their successors will simply not have the nous. Now is our last chance.' He is right.

What Has Happened Since Then

Taking their cue from Hodgens, Frank Purcell and Paul Collins decided the time had come to try to find a way to support the pastoral bishops, while at the same time highlight that a bishop's primary responsibility is to his diocese. Only secondarily is he responsible for the universal church through his membership of the college of bishops. At the same time Purcell and Collins were concerned about the acute shortage of priests that was becoming more and more apparent in Australia. Again Eric Hodgens had correctly diagnosed the situation. He shows that ‘the heyday for [priestly] recruitment was the mid-1950s. For every 100,000 Catholics 5.5 to 6.3 students [entered the seminary]. This was more than a 25% increase on pre-war recruitment levels.' The retention rate of students - that is, how many went on to ordination - was between 33% and 40% at the start of the 1960s.

Since the late-fifties recruitment has steadily dropped. ‘This continued for 35 years and settled in the mid nineties. The final rate was only 10% of what it was at the peak.' Only about a third of those recruited proceed to ordination. At present the church is ordaining about 0.15 to 0.25 priests per 100,000 Catholics each year. There is no sign of an increase despite claims of slightly bigger numbers in the Sydney, Perth, Melbourne and the Neo-Catechuminate seminaries (‘An Alternative to the Priest', Online Catholics, 28, 1/12/04).

Hodgens pointed out that the age of ordination has risen and that priests will have shorter periods of service. Until the mid-nineties men were usually ordained around the age of twenty-seven giving about thirty-eight years of service to the church. The average age of ordination now is thirty-five, giving around thirty years of service. ‘At this rate, even if they all stay priests, the long term result will be one priest for every 13,000 [Catholics] in Victoria and Queensland and one for every 22,000 in NSW'. In other words about 7.5 priests per 100,000 Catholics. Hodgens says ‘That means that Melbourne with its one million plus Catholics and 220 parishes will have only 75 priests'.

CfM believes that the result of this will be that more and more people, especially in rural areas, will be deprived of the Eucharist. This is an intolerable, even heretical, situation in an essentially sacramental church like our's. So the Petition calls for an acknowledgment from the bishops that there is a major crisis in ministry in Australia, that there is no barrier to the ordination of married men, that we have a wide-ranging discussion on the ministry and ordination of women, that inactive priests return to the ministry and that the bishops begin a program to select, train women and men for ministry.

The bishops didn't agree with us. (See their response in a letter from Archbishop Philip Wilson in the FAQs section of this web page).

Since then CfM held a meeting in Melbourne in mid-2009 bringing together from across the country some 50 representatives from reform-minded groups and interested religious orders. We spent the day building bridges between the different groups and individuals. For a full report see the article by Barry Morris in the News seection of this web page.

We have also asked the bishops to set up mediation structures so that Catholics can, in the tradition of the Gospel, work through their disagreements and conflicts in a Christian way. Even though it is mandated by the new Code of Canon Law and has been called for by Pope John Paul II, the Bishops' Committee on Canon Law have admitted that nothing along the lines of a grievance procedure has been established in Australia.

We have also worked closely with WATAC - Women and the Australian Church - on the new, or perhaps more accurately 'olde' English translation of the Mass. After Paul Collins published his pamphlet And Also With You. Is the New English Version of the Mass a Betrayal of Vatican II? Bernice Moore of WATAC approached CfM to see how we could work on this issue together. We sent copies of the Collins pamphlet and information on the US webpage 'What if we said Wait?' to every parish in Australia and asked for responses.These were many and varied and came via post, phone and email. All were honest and many were passionate. We compiled these responses into another pamphlet which was sent to all those who responded - almost all were parish priests- as well as to the Australian bishops.