This scholarly book, subtitled “The Common Life of the Secular Clergy”, deals with a subject close to the author’s heart. Fr Jerome Bertram is an Oratorian, the order founded by St Philip Neri in the sixteenth century so that clergy might live a communal life while serving the needs of the local laity. Quite distinct from monastic life – the Oratorians do not take vows - this model has proved very durable: 32 new Oratories have been founded since 1965, making a total in 2009 of 81 autonomous houses around the world. Yet what has spurred the author to his task is not so much his own Order’s success as his conviction of the need for diocesan bishops to re-think the whole way they look after and deploy their priests.

Half the book is given over to a study of changing Church practice in this area during its first thousand years, with valuable insights into the differences between minor and major orders, the rule of continence and problems of simony and concubinage. The author demonstrates that throughout the Church’s history there have been repeated efforts to help priests do the essential work for which they are ordained: to pray, preach and administer the sacraments.

Fr Bertram reminds us that until the French Revolution it was the laity who built churches, administered parish funds and directed almsgiving and education, thus leaving priests free to be the “servants of the cult.” Today in the UK the situation is very different: one overworked and isolated priest, often running two Mass centres, struggles to do everything. The author states succinctly, “It would be impossible to think of any model of diocesan priestly life that could be worse than the one we have at present.”

He believes that in England most parishes are too small to be economically viable, given the administration required, and that few priests are called to be hermits. He suggests that if 6 or 7 priests of a particular area lived together in association – not quite a ‘college’ but more than a deanery - parishes could support them at much less expense than when they live separately. Indeed, he cites Vatican II for encouragement of a form of common life, “to deliver priests from the dangers that often arise from loneliness.”

The late Cardinal Lustiger of Paris did initiate a new method of training priests in his diocese in the early 1990s: seminarians are allocated to certain parishes where they live in community with the parish priests and curates. Currently ten parishes now house eight seminarians each.

Fr Bertram believes that the development of a more satisfactory manner of priestly life will result in increased congregations and that “the long steady decline...since 1964 could at last be reversed.” His thesis is well worth pondering: instead of “clustering” parishes, too often the solution where there are too few clergy serving too many churches, it might be more imaginative – and stimulate more vocations – if parish priests were brought together in fraternal association.

© 2010 Francis Phillips

Theotokos Catholic Books - Book Reviews Section - www.theotokos.org.uk