Cardinal Vincent Nichols used a homily to celebrate ordained ministry to thank priests for their endurance and steadfastness in the face of ongoing revelations about abuse within the Church.
Speaking at Westminster Cathedral at a Celebration of Diocesan Priesthood on 28 June Cardinal Nichols acknowledged the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse’s “sharp criticism” of the Church’s safeguarding efforts and his own ministry in Birmingham in a report last week.
However, he said, the Mass for priests “was not the time or the place for such matters”.
“Today is about you, my brother priests, about your faithfulness, your steadfast generosity, your ministry of healing, your endurance, not least under the burden of the grievous damage done to innocent victims by just a very few of our brother priests. I thank you for your faithfulness, your generosity, your perseverance,” he said.
The service of thanksgiving, he said, was a service of thanks for the heritage of the priesthood. “We recognise that along with our failings, which are many, we are blessed to be part of a stream of courage in times of persecution, single-minded determination in adversity, enterprise in times of opportunity, compassion in the face of suffering and need, and of partnership between so many in the service of our Lord, his Church and the good of all,” he continued.
He spoke frankly about priests’ struggles with loneliness, and said that it was often during moments of loneliness that the heart struggled with dissatisfaction.
“When that happens, resentment, weariness and indifference can dominate our mood and shape our disposition,” he warned. Instead, he said, being alone should become an opportunity for “creative solitude”.
But he also warned against priests becoming too isolated: the modern priesthood, he argued, should model neither the traditional independence of the secular priesthood of the past in this country nor a “reluctant dependence on others”. Instead it should be lived within a network of relationships as a kind of “spirited interdependence”.
Finally, he said, priests should remember that they are missionaries and not professional clerics. In an age of established parishes that meant being in uncomfortable places saying uncomfortable things. “The uncomfortable things we say need not be judgmental or harsh, but simply counter-cultural,” he said.
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