The Primate of All Ireland Archbishop Eamon Martin has said that the Church is experiencing a number of young men coming forward to the priesthood who have “a joyful relationship with Christ” but sometimes need formation as members of the Church or in theology.
There are currently several religious orders in Ireland who no longer actively seek priestly vocations from within the country, sometimes pushing candidates to go elsewhere.
Asked about whether this is down to men pursuing priesthood being considered ‘far right’ or overly ‘radical’ Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh said that “it is not something I have encountered”.
However, Archbishop Martin said: “We are experiencing with young men, and sometimes now a little bit older men who have had experience of life, who have become attracted to the Church through a particular group or maybe a pilgrimage to Medjugorje and they have a wonderfully joyful relationship with Christ but perhaps have not the formation in Church or in theology or in the breadth of theology that is necessary and indeed in the challenges of theology.
“Perhaps in some cases they are working out of a very particular notion of theology, as something which we are simply telling everybody and teaching everybody what to do… rather than the struggles of being theological in a very culturally diverse world,” he said.
Pointing to the ‘Ad Theologiam Promovendam: The tasks of theology in Europe today’ conference in Trinity College Dublin which ran from August 20-23, Archbishop Eamon highlighted Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline of the Archdiocese of Marseille’s contribution.
He said the Cardinal “was asked about the formation of seminarians in his Archdiocese of Marseilles, and he made a very interesting point, first of all he said that in France at the moment there is a huge rise in the numbers of young adults from the ages of 18-35 wanting to join the Church and they are bringing with them a fervour and a deep relationship with Christ.
“But he did say that what they are finding is now – they have been involved in their accompaniment and in their preparation – the challenge now is to accompany them as members of the Church because they have a deep personal relationship with Christ but perhaps have not a familiarity with Church and with theology.
“Similarly, he said, that the interesting thing with his age group growing up was that ‘we’ were very familiar with the Church but perhaps did not have the relationship with Christ, so in our formation there was a need to be formed more in our love for Christ… and our deep personal relationship with Christ,” Archbishop Eamon said.
He added Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline highlighted that sometimes “seminarians nowadays… need a theological breadth of formation because so far their formation has maybe been picked up online or with only a particular branch understanding of the Church”.
