REGINA 22 | Page 36

This is acutely the case with young clerics:

•During the diaconate formation I've been taught that the church is not a hierarchy. That it's not some grand pyramid with the pope at the top, and that we are all the the same loving and inclusive level.

Until you start asking about tradition and or question something the pope said. Then all of a sudden you find yourself in a parody of 1930s-1940s Germany with "HOW DARE YOU QUESTION THE POPE!" "DON'T YOU KNOW IT’S A MORTAL SIN TO QUESTION A PRIEST, NEVER MIND HIS HOLINESS!!!?" And all of a sudden the hierarchy comes out and it's bashing you on the head with the book of liberalism.

I could go on, but you get my point. For a generation in love with irony, it seems these young Catholics don’t yet get the great irony of their situation: the old clerics now dismembering their Church are doing so in the name of the zeitgeist of the Sixties – that era of paens to the forever young.

But once the last gasp of the ‘forever young’ is heard, it will be this young generation that will have to pick up the pieces. As the damage should be considerable, perhaps it’s time they raise their voices now?