‘The truth will make you free…’

John 8:32

Contemporary Catholics have an experience of priestly ministry and leadership that they assume is well established in history and tradition, based on structures and government found in the earliest church documents, including the New Testament. But others interpret the received tradition differently.

Paul Collins is by profession a church historian. He brings that experience to his assessment of the role and function of priesthood as it developed over the centuries. He argues that many of the accepted characteristics of contemporary priesthood – including male leadership, celibacy, seminary formation, hierarchy, lifestyle – were impositions based on authority rather than the servant model of the earliest witness found in Scripture.

Prompted in part by the serious decline in priestly and religious vocations and the growing disenchantment of many Catholics with contemporary church, he proposes new models of priestly service and explores how these models may renew and encourage a form of priesthood that reflects the realities of contemporary Catholicism. A fresh understanding of priesthood – he argues – is vital and integral for the life of the church; and to our response to the perennial call to offer Christ’s message to our world and to pass on the faith to coming generations.

Paul Collins is an historian, broadcaster and writer. A Catholic priest for thirty-three years, he resigned from the active ministry in 2001 following a dispute with the Vatican over his book Papal Power (1997). A former head of the religion and ethics department in the ABC, he is well known as a commentator on Catholicism and the papacy; and also has a strong interest in ethics, environmental and population issues. www.paulcollinscatholicwriter.com.au