Kirstyn Higgins |
Father Bergin has now been at the parish of St. Bride’s for 8 weeks, and has proved a very welcome and valuable member of the pastoral community in both the Church and the school.
I met with him to ask his thoughts on a number of topics including the refugee crisis, Pope Francis and the Catholic Church today.
In this second part, I ask him about the vocation crisis in the Church, and for his views on Pope Francis.
Do you think that there is a vocation crisis in the Church today?
Crisis is a very good specific word. There is definitely a problem here.
I was born in 1951, before the coronation of Her Majesty the Queen, and the seminaries were packed to capacity. Here in Scotland, places like Blairs and Langbank, these were the bees-knees people who were training for the priesthood.
In addition to that, in England, you had great places like Ushaw College, Upholland College, Oscott College, Allen Hall each with around 300 students and in addition to that, the Religious Orders, like the Jesuits, the Benedictines, the Franciscans all had their seminaries as well and they were all full. The convents were full, we couldn’t build enough Catholic schools or Parishes.
The Catholic Church in the 50’s and the early 60’s was on its trajectory up and up all over the United Kingdom. By the mid-60’s, something happened and it was if someone hald flicked a switch.
Now, there are no seminaries north of Birmingham. These famous places are all shut down. The convents are closing down, and if you look at most Diocese’, you’ll find that the average age is in the 50’s and 60’s and there aren’t that many people going into the seminaries anymore, and the ones coming out are just being used to try and keep pace with the chaps retiring.
You’ll find in this Diocese and many other Diocese all over the country, you have priests looking after 2, 3 even 4 Parishes. So, if you’re talking about shortage of priests and vocations, I would say yes in that regard, and also something of major consideration is the lack of Irish priests.
If you went back to the 1950’s or 60’s, you would find that most of the priests around here were probably Irish. The Irish are not forming new priests at all and are going through a cataclysmic shift of faith, I suppose, and change.
So, I think that there is a bit of a crisis from that point of view, and in some ways that will mean a change in the future. Those things that we tend to expect as the norm will not be there. It’s not quite bitten into a place like East Kilbride where there are four parishes, a 10 minute drive away, and on any given weekend there are probably as many as 16 masses.
Will that be the case in 4/5 years’ time? I don’t really know. We’re going through a great change, a great revelation, and no one really knows the answers to it.
What are your thoughts on Pope Francis and what many would call his contribution to changing attitudes in the Church?
People nowadays talk about the “Pope Francis Effect”. He seems to have been a man who has a bit of the common touch.
I think he displays characteristics of South American Bishops, in his attitude towards refugees and his own personal lifestyle – he doesn’t live in St. Peter’s, he lives in a little hotel around the corner, he was spotted the other day in an opticians and that sort of thing.
It’s interesting, I have a bit of an empathy towards him because he was educated by a religious order called the Salesians, as was I. He is a Jesuit, but he seems to be well respected both by those with and without a religious persuasion.
TIME magazine had him as Man of the Year a few years ago (2013), so he seems to be having an effect. He’s about to go to America and I think where he goes he tends to be able to have an effect for good on people.
It’s interesting that beginning on December 8th this year and running for a little more than a year, he’ll be having something called The Year of Mercy, and he describes it almost in military terms, like a dressing station in a battlefield, where no one is turned away and everyone is welcome.
My personal belief is that Church is not for goody-goody’s, Church is for recovering sinners, so he has my support in that regard. But I think in an age when people are possibly looking for good leadership and for effective answers in a world where there are more questions than answers, he seems to be speaking the type of language that everyone likes to hear, and he also has a certain gentleness and understanding that says, “Who am I to condemn this if that happens, or if someone is like this or that”.
I think he’s a good man, and I hope God gives him enough years and enough health to finish his work and to continue to spread all those wonderful things that I think the world is anxious to hear, and which young people in particular love to lap up, because there is a thing in young people that they respond to authenticity.
In tomorrow’s extract, Kirstyn asks Father Bergin about Latin at mass, and the refugee crisis engulfing Europe.
(Part One)
