Children of the rock - John Paul II

Sydney
10 August 2003

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Children of the rock - John Paul II

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Children of the rock - John Paul II

Bishop-elect Julian Porteous, left, with Archbishop George Pell and Sydney’s other bishop-elect, Fr Anthony Fisher

By Bishop-elect Julian Porteous

During my short time as vocations director, “officially” fostering vocations, I have been learning more about and reflecting on the attitudes of young people in the Church today. I call them the “post post-modern” generation.

These are young people who have grown up in a world very much in flux - the era of the ‘70s and later.

Everything was being questioned, everything open to change, and adaptability was the key virtue.

In the Church these young people have grown up not knowing the pre-Vatican II Church and not knowing the Vatican Council and the euphoria that followed it.

They have experienced the Church trying to adapt, experiment, try new things. They want stability, a solid place on which to stand.

This is a generation who has only known one Pope, and to them he is the rock, the solid place, the sound hope and the clear direction. They look to him and to the Church he represents. The young people who have a strong faith are unquestionably “the Pope’s men and women”.

I have been involved in various ecclesial movements which have characterised the Church over the past two decades. I know that they have grown from a renewal of faith, grounded in conversion or significant personal religious experience.

Renewal movements have become key sources of vocations.

For a number of years I was involved in formation of young people for consecrated life.

What was in evidence was that as young people opened their hearts to God in faith and love, they heard a call to consecrate their lives to him in a priestly or religious vocation.

I have great hope for the future. I believe seminary numbers in Australia will increase, as they are worldwide. The statistics are worth looking at.

The Congregation of the Clergy has published its statistics on its website and they make very interesting reading. There were 41,553 seminarians worldwide in 1974, 46,649 in 1981; 66,305 in 1991 and 72,241 in 2001.

The numbers are increasing. There is good reason for hope.

I believe that the Church in the future will be stronger in its faith and witness to spiritual realities.

The embracing of the Pope’s call to the New Evangelisation will give credible witness to the Church being an active agent of proclaiming the gospel to a society that desperately needs to rediscover a spiritual and moral underpinning to life.

Bishop-elect Julian Porteous is vocations director for the archdiocese of Sydney and rector of the Good Shepherd Seminary at Homebush.