PARRAMATTA (AUSTRALIA)
National Catholic Reporter
December 13, 2017
By Peter Feuerherd
Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen says culture of church contributed to sex abuse crisis in country
Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen of Parramatta, Australia, speaking to the National Council of Priests of Australia, urged an end to clericalism in the church and expressed hope that a newly revitalized Catholic clergy would emerge from the sex abuse crisis that has wracked the Catholic Church in Australia.
He spoke Aug. 30 to the National Council of Priests in Australia, which reprinted his remarks in the December edition of The Swag, its quarterly magazine.
Van Nguyen, 55, a Conventual Franciscan who became bishop of Parramatta last year, declared in a message to a Royal Commission investigating sex abuse in the Catholic Church that he himself had been abused by church members as an adult. He told the priests’ group that “we are in a big mess” as priests “bear the brunt of public anger and distrust in the wake of the sexual abuse crisis. It is one of the hardest times to be a priest.”
He suggested they look to the example of Pope Francis as a vision of priesthood based on a servant, not an authoritarian, model.
After Francis was elected, he eschewed the usual papal trappings and asked for the gathered crowd to pray for him at St. Peter’s Square. That gesture, said Long, “was truly the prophetic sign of the century.”
“The ground under our feet has shifted,” said Long. “There needs to be an attitudinal change at every level, a conversion of mind and heart that conforms us to the spirit of the Gospel, a new wine in new wineskins, not a merely cosmetic change or worse, a retreat into restorationism.”
In Australia, he said, “the priesthood no longer enjoys the prestige and the power it once had. For a lot of young people, it is no longer surrounded with the aura of mystique and fascination.” In response, he urged priests to embrace what he called a model of servant-leader.
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