The pendulum eventually had to swing the other way. Since the Second Vatican Council the Catholic Church has wrestled with the true significance of the common priesthood of the People of God based on Baptism. It rebalanced in many fundamental ways the relationship between priests and people. But in the process, the ordained priesthood has undergone a silent upheaval. Some reassertion of priestly identity was overdue, a reminder that the ordained priesthood is essential to the encounter with Christ through word and sacrament that the Church exists to foster.

Clearly Pope Benedict's inauguration of the Year for Priests, which starts next week, was not designed to undermine the place of the laity. It is a recognition, nevertheless, that especially in the developed countries of the West, the ordained priesthood is surrounded with problems. Numbers coming forward are falling; many who are ordained do not stay the course; those who remain can easily be dispirited and demoralised. The clerical sex-abuse scandal had many victims but it is rarely recognised that priests were among them. Many good priests felt ashamed and betrayed in their vocation by the despicable actions of a few. It even affected their body language, their ability to walk the streets with confidence and look the world in the eye.

Professionally, priests have come to feel an existential uncertainty as to their role. Many people in their congregations will be as well educated as they are, and have a working knowledge of theology that was almost non-existent 50 years ago. The laity in most parishes has taken on an active commitment to justice and peace. At diocesan level and nationally, lay people have taken on leadership functions. The decline in the use of the confessional has transferred the pastoral emphasis to less formal settings, a change which many priests welcome without being sure how to make best use of it. Are they laymen in a dog collar, whose job is to do good in the local soup kitchen? Are they, ...

Something of a consensus exists among church historians that, had the Vatican treated Martin Luther and his circles in a more conciliatory manner at the start of what became the Reformation, it might not have happened. Many of the theological points he was raising were subsequently found to be valid, not least his denunciation of the sale of indulgences. But the rough rebuttal he received led him to adopt positions ...

Catholic Ireland has suffered a series of moral earthquakes that have shaken it to its foundations. The latest shock arises from the publication of the Ryan Commission Report into the industrial school system that used to be run by religious orders, where appalling cruelty was endemic and institutionalised. Other reports are expected this summer into sexual abuse committed by priests and the efforts by church authorities ...

There was an unexpected echo of President Barack Obama at the heart of Archbishop Vincent Nichols' installation sermon at Westminster Cathedral. Spelling out what he means by calling for "respectful" dialogue in modern society, the archbishop declares: "Let us be a society in which we genuinely listen to each other, in which sincere disagreement is not made out to be insult or harassment, in which reasoned principles ...

Pope Benedict's visit to Jordan, Israel and the West Bank appears to have achieved all that he set out to achieve as a pilgrim and man of peace. He applied gentle but effective pressure on Israel's coalition Government and its Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, not to wander too far from the road map defining the "two-state" peace process, which in the view of the Vatican, Washington and most of the rest of the world, ...