Seminary numbers increasing: rector

Sydney
20 April 2003

Seminary numbers increasing: rector

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Seminary numbers increasing: rector

Seminary numbers are increasing in Sydney and elsewhere, says the rector of the Good Shepherd Seminary, Fr Julian Porteous (pictured).

There are “positive and hopeful signs”, he said, in contrast with the “depressing view” of the future of vocations proposed in a Sydney Morning Herald article entitled Fewer Priests have to make do on a wing and prayer (April 10, 2003).

The picture accompanying the article presented two 40-something seminarians in a stark church setting.

Fr Julian writes:

The article proposed that numbers of priests were significantly decreasing and that priests were “overqualified, overworked and under threat of extinction”.

It was a depressing view and suggested a lost and hopeless future for the priesthood in the Catholic Church in Australia.

Is this the true picture for vocations?

Let us visit some statistics, especially since the article was supposedly based on statistical research.

The Seminary of the Good Shepherd was established at Homebush in 1996, moving from the glorious if impractical site of St Patrick’s College, Manly.

That seminary had produced exactly 100 ordination classes, releasing since the 1880s thousands of priests to serve the emerging Church in Australia.

A mere 16 students came over to the Homebush site. Today the seminary has a student body of 40.

This year saw the largest intake of seminarians for more than two decades, as 17 new students entered.

This year the Redemptoris Mater Seminary was established to provide priests for the Archdiocese of Sydney; it has a further 10 seminarians.

Outside Sydney, students in the dioceses of Wagga, Parramatta and Broken Bay are also preparing for diocesan ministry.

The article in the Sydney Morning Herald suggested that the seminarians entering are mainly over 40 years old.

One man in the first year at Homebush is 47; the average of the rest of the seminarians in his year is 25.

It is not a time to be pessimistic about the future of the priesthood. Certainly we need more priests and the age of priests is increasing, but there are positive and hopeful signs.

The worst is over. Numbers are increasing, not only in Sydney, but worldwide.