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In 1990, I had the privilege of attending the second Worldwide Encounter for Priests in Rome. One of my fellow participants was an Australian priest who had spent most of his active ministry in the Highlands of Peru. One night on a dark bus coming back from the sessions to our hotel, he began to tell the story of why he was on sabbatical. In the previous year, all through Lent, he had prepared an astonishing number of people to receive the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and First Holy Communion as they were received into the Church along with blessing a number of marriages. With a gathering of villages, they had celebrated all of Holy Week and they had a triumphant Easter which culminated with an Easter Vigil that finished at dawn. After that, the fiesta began. He was exhausted and went off to a local village to sleep. After about 12 hours, his villagers came to fetch him back to the main village which had just been attacked by the Maoist Shining Path guerrillas.

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As is obvious to everyone reading this newsletter, the priestly vocation crisis in Canada has been dire for the last two generations. Priestly vocations have plummeted, and every diocese and religious order has seen the hollowing out of our ranks. Steeply raising the retirement age of our active priests and merging parishes are only some of the drastic moves taken to keep the pastoral care of Canadian Catholics going.

Luckily, we have benefitted enormously from the influx of priests from many other countries. The source countries have changed but the Canadian Catholic Church has seen the face of the priesthood literally and irrevocably change in the last 50 years.

As we priests are pro-life leaders this means that a change in pro-life thinking must also take place.

Recently, I gave presentations to Oblate priests many of whom came from Poland and serve in our far north. One mentioned that he was a “foreign“ priest. “Father,” I replied, ”You have been here for 40 years. That is longer than most Canadians have been alive. You’re Canadian now, surely!” He answered, “No, I am still seen as foreign and you have to walk carefully in a different culture.”

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Looking back at the stable in Bethlehem can seem so far away. It becomes almost fairy tale like. The association of children and our memories lends a sheen of the unreal to the scene. But the reality of what happened there is very much what affects us today. The Child born in that stable became the Man who years later testified that he was the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Unlike every other sage or philosopher, Jesus did not point the way to truth. He claimed He was the Truth.

This is still the central problem of our time and, indeed, of all humanity’s time. In our battle it must be paramount.

In August 1993, St. John Paul II wrote an amazing encyclical- The Splendour of Truth - on the eternal nature of truth and morality. He reiterated that the search for truth is rooted in the human condition as a yearning for absolute truth. That same urge that propelled the pagan Wisemen inspires us even today. The splendour of truth shines forth from deep within the human spirit as clearly as the Star of Bethlehem.

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