Pastores dabo vobis (n.70) quotes 2 Tm. 1:6, "I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you" as the key text to highlight the necessity for an ongoing formation that rekindles the "gift of God" which they have received at their ordination. The document expresses eloquently that while the priest is configured to Christ, "head and shepherd of the Church, and is sent forth to carry out a pastoral ministry" there is a need to constantly foster his personal growth. "Every life is a constant path toward maturity, a maturity which cannot be attained except by constant formation".

A priest in the parish pastoral situation learns through his pastoral experiences; however he must remain attentive to the subtle danger of developing certain types of pragmatism brought upon by a tendency towards activity which lacks adequate self-reflection in response to the myriad of pastoral situations that occupy him. A priest needs to have means to engage in an ongoing theological reflection on his ministry. There are many means for this to occur. Some broad indications of these means will be addressed in the second part of this presentation. The underlying basis for this tendency towards pragmatism in response to the pastoral situations the priest encounters, especially those of the parish, is in a crisis of priestly identity. This will be addressed in this first part.

The ongoing formation of a priest working in a diocesan situation is not just for his own spiritual wellbeing, but is directed towards his specific role as priest serving in a parish environment. Priests in countries like Australia have experienced much change in the nature of parish life in the years since the Second Vatican Council. It has led to some questioning of the traditional role of the priest.

The Church has witnessed the greater engagement of members of the laity in many aspects of parish life and ministry over the past forty years. This is a positive development in the Church which promotes the role of the lay person as sharing through Baptism in the ministry of the Church. But the developments have not been without their difficulties.

In recent years the terms "collaborative ministry" and an emphasis on consultation have led priests to consider the nature of the relationship between themselves and the people of the parish community. In a genuine pastoral sensitivity some priests want to ensure that the people have a real engagement with the decision making and future direction of the parish in its liturgical expression and pastoral activities.

These can be very fruitful, but they do carry a number of elements for concern. Priests can pass over too much responsibility to the laity. There can be too much attention given to consultation which diminishes effective and clear pastoral leadership. There can be on the part of the lay members of the Church a move towards expecting a democratic style of governance.

Ongoing theological reflection is needed to differentiate between the role of the priest as "pastor and leader" and the specific contribution of the lay members of the parish. Without this ongoing reflection on his self-identity the priest can begin to suffer the unwitting drag towards pragmatism in ministry and its tendency to reduce of the ‘mystery’ of priesthood to something functional.

Ongoing formation in priestly identity will continually call the priest back to experience the original and perennial call that initiated his movement to a filial ‘yes’ in response to the Holy Spirit inviting him to answer the call of Jesus the Good Shepherd to follow him. Pastores Dabo vobis (n. 70) speaks of a vocation "within" the priesthood. It reminds us that Peter, after being renewed in his call to leadership and entrusted with the care of the flock, hears a vocational call that goes to the very core of his being. It is a call that identifies him ontologically and so accompanies him for his whole life and mission. It is a call to be transformed and configured to Jesus, head and shepherd (cf. PDV n. 72).

Renewed in his ‘yes’ of his following Jesus as the Good Shepherd Pastores Dabo Vobis notes that this forms in the heart and being of the priest an ongoing response to the impulses of the Holy Spirit expressed in concrete pastoral charity towards the flock entrusted to his care. This in turn "impels the priest to an ever deeper knowledge of the hopes, the needs, the problems, the sensibilities of the people to whom he ministers, taken in their specific situations, as individuals, in their families, in society and in history" (n. 70). Ongoing formation, in all its dimensions, involves an ever increasing joyful and creative collaboration with them in building up the Church and evangelizing their society.

The ongoing formation in the spiritual and sacramental self-identity of the priestly vocation needs to run hand in hand with ongoing formation in ecclesiology. This is made imperative today in view of the rapidly changing societies in which the parishes find themselves. On a very basic level there is a perceptible need for ongoing formation for the priests in a correct understanding of the nature of the parish and the ever increasing collaboration with the laity on many levels within the parish community.

A parish is defined as "a specific community of the christifideles, established on a stable basis within a particular Church, whose pastoral care is entrusted to a parish priest as its own shepherd under the authority of the diocesan bishop" ( Priest, Pastor and Leader of Parish Community, n 18)

. Pastoral care of the parish is entrusted to the parish priest who acts in the name of the diocesan bishop. The direction of responsibility for the priest is firstly to the bishop who has final pastoral responsibility for all activities in the name of the Church in his diocese. The priest is not responsible to the people, but to the bishop. The Church has a hierarchical structure, and not a democratic one. Hence the priest is responsible for the specific community entrusted to his pastoral care; he is called to be responsive to the promptings of the Holy Spirit within the community and to the exercise of pastoral charity.

The role of parish members as vitally involved in the life of the parish has led to increased collaboration between lay people, exercising the common priesthood of the faithful, and the priests as belonging to the ministerial priesthood. The Church teaches that the common priesthood and the ministerial priesthood differ from each other not only in grade but also in essence. The difference between the two is not simply one of greater or lesser participation in the priesthood of Christ, but one of essentially different ways of participating in the priesthood of Christ. 

The ministerial priesthoodis based on the sacramental character received in the Sacrament of Orders which configures the priest to Christ so as to enable him to act in the person of Christ, the Head. A new and specific mission is sacramentally conferred on those of the baptized who have received the grace of the ministerial priesthood: to embody Christ's triple office - prophetic, cultic and regal - as Head and Shepherd of the Church in the midst of the people of God. 

The sacramental priesthood is both hierarchial and ministerial. It has a role of ministry to the parish community, while it does not derive from that community, is a service to the community which comes from Christ himself in the fullness of his priesthood.

The hierarchial aspect of the priesthood is connected with the power to form and govern a priestly people. This power of governance is an act of service, according to the injunction of the Lord who "came not to be served, but to serve".

In recent times, the Church has experienced problems of priestly identity, deriving sometimes from an unclear theological understanding of the two ways of participating in the priesthood of Christ. In some areas, these difficulties led to a confused ecclesiological understanding.  It is sometimes expressed as that of the "clericalizing" the laity and of the "secularizing" the clergy.

The engagement of the laity in the areas of worship, transmission of the faith and pastoral collaboration, especially in the face of shortages of priests, has tempted some sacred ministers and laity to go beyond that which is permitted by the Church and by their own ontological sacramental capacities. A clear theology of the role of the lay person in the Church is much needed. While the lay person is called by virtue of baptism to engage in the life and ministry of the Church, the key arena for this is the world in which they live. They are to go out as witnesses to Christ. However, the shortage of priests has required a greater involvement of laity in key activities of the parish. This very laudable contribution to the pastoral life must be kept in balance with the primary role of the lay person in the Church.

This same crisis of identity has also brought about the "secularization" of some sacred ministers. As lay people take on more pastoral roles in the ecclesial life of a parish, some priests can question the specific charism of their role, outside its clear sacramental dimension. Highly competent lay ministers can foster an environment whereby the priest abdicates certain traditional roles, eg. a ministry to the sick, or catechesis. The growth of large or multiple parishes served by a single priest can result in a situation where the priest is largely exercising an administrative role increasingly separated from immediate pastoral involvement with the people.

The key to a correct form of collaboration between priest and people is that there is a respect for the nature of each and the respective duties and functions.  

Theological reflection and ongoing formation for priests is vital to ensure that both priest and people have a true understanding of their respective identities and assist each in carrying out their rightful roles within the community of the parish. Indeed it is true that the more the laity's own sense of vocation is deepened, the more what is proper to the priest stands out.

This leads us now to briefly outline the basic principles and means of ongoing formation that the bishops, especially through their synodal meetings, have discerned as central in this post –Vatican II period.

The Directory on the Ministry and Life of Priests offers a very practical synthesis of the discernment of the bishops on this subject in the post-Vatican II period. The program basically outlined is that firstly the priest recognises the need for ongoing formation in front of the rapid changes our world and various cultures are undergoing today "so that he not lose his own identity and so that he might respond to the demands of the new evangelisation (n. 69). This ongoing formation will be a continuous task and hence needs to be organised in a systematic way. This requires a mutual trust and co-operation between the priest and the local and universal Church since ongoing formation "is a right-duty of the priest and imparting it is a right-duty of the Church" (n. 72). It is formation that must be complete and all embracing and so will involve formation that addresses the whole person: spiritual, psychological, moral, intellectual and pastoral (cf. nn. 69-80).

The Directory then proceeds to outline the time-honoured and perennial means that remain valid also for the priest today:

• Priestly Encounters which serve to experience and solidify the communion of belonging to a presbyterate and "for a growing consciousness and adequate scrutiny of the problems corresponding to each stage of life" (n. 81).
• "Sabbatical" periods "facilitate longer periods spent with the Lord Jesus, thus recovering strength and courage to continue the road to holiness" (n. 83). This may require the local Churches to organise amongst themselves adequate places to fulfil this need, a type of "House for Clerics" (n. 84).
• Annual spiritual retreats and regular days of recollection are time-honoured ways of contributing to ongoing formation. There is a lot to be said for these also being moments of also experiencing the participation in the presbyterate if these periods can be organised on a diocesan level (n. 85).

The Instruction from the Congregation for Clergy, The Priest, Pastor and Leader of the Parish Community (2002) indicates two important areas of challenge in the ongoing formation for the priest in leadership today. The first is in response to the situations that many priest find themselves today whereby a "largely secularised culture … seeks to isolate the priest within its own conceptual categories and strip him of his fundamental mystical-sacramental dimension" (n. 29). This can give rise in the priest to "several forms of discouragement … which lead to isolation, forms of depressive fatalism, and scattered activism" (n. 29). The second arises from within the Church itself today: "bureaucracy, functionalism, democratisation, planning which is more managerial than pastoral" (n. 29). If, confronted by these challenges, the priest closes the ears of his heart to the perennial voice of the Good Shepherd calling, "Follow me" to live out his "vocation’ within the priesthood and he takes his eyes of the Crucified One, the priest (and local Church if this becomes cancerous within the presbyterate) can also be misguided in what is of value in ongoing formation. The above time-honoured means outlined in the Directory are substituted with models and experiences from the corporate world which promise to better manage the situation but can tend to leave the priest as an empty gong; empty of pastoral charity as the soul and heart of his ongoing formation in holiness.

The priest needs to be certain that the principal goal and priority of ongoing formation is for holiness of life. It is a leadership in the way of holiness and prayer that is the challenge facing the priest and faithful together in the parish today: to become collaborators in holiness of life. In working out a systematic approach to ongoing formation in leadership it would do well to set continually before us the seven pastoral priorities indicated by Novo Millennio inuente: holiness, prayer, the Sunday celebration of the Most Holy Eucharist, the Sacrament of Penance, the primacy of grace, and listening to and proclaiming the Word (Cf. above Instruction n. 27). The priest knowing that his systematic program of ongoing formation was resonating with the recognised need of taking the Church forward in the Third Millennium and contributing to the task of the new evangelisation would be a help in his recognising the priority of ongoing formation in his life. Recognising this he is strengthened in resisting the temptation to answer the pastoral difficulties today with activism and excessive emphasis on management. Instead he is more willing to "waste time" on formation. Aware that what the faithful need today are experts in holiness and teaches of authentic prayer the priest with new enthusiasm would embrace the ongoing formation in priestly leadership knowing that the time-honoured ways outlined above lead to an authentic collaboration with the laity through the priest being renewed in his pastoral charity that is fuelled by his prayerful intimacy with the Bridegroom.