SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
news.com.au
October 13, 2019
By Gary Nunn
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/marching-to-hell-why-young-men-are-still-choosing-to-become-catholic-priests/news-story/6a3ec306353091c2994d2de09181e968
They’re in their sexual prime — but these men and others like them are flocking to a career that demands they swear off sex for life.
Why are young men still choosing to become Catholic priests? It’s a fair enough question to ask any trainee priest in the current Australian climate: who, today, is choosing to devote their entire lives to the Catholic Church?
In the context of George Pell’s imprisonment, the Catholic Church having the most cases in the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse, stories of paedophile priests moved from parish to parish and plummeting church attendance, few would dispute that the once juggernaut institution is in crisis.
The answer, then, might surprise you.
I was given rare access within the Catholic Church’s notoriously tight PR machine to three young trainee priests all based within Australia’s largest seminary: Melbourne’s Corpus Christi College — where Pell himself studied and the heartland of a network of paedophile priests who operated there in the 1970s.
I ask what motivated them to give their lives over to an institution facing such momentous challenges.
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