Young priests, old labels: how the Church is mortifying its new vocations

You can tell from the order in which he arranges the books in the presbytery, from the way he prepares his homily the night before rather than half an hour beforehand, from his insistence that the parish council reopen a discussion everyone thought had been shelved years ago. The young priest newly arrived in the parish carries on like this - eager and methodical - for a few months. Then the reports to the bishop begin: "he's rigid", or "he's too casual", "he has ideas we don't understand", "he doesn't fit in". The verdict varies according to who is delivering it, but the function is always the same: to file that priest away into a pigeonhole, preferably an uncomfortable one, where he will stop being a nuisance. And in far too many dioceses, the available pigeonholes are still principally two: modernist or traditionalist. Convenient categories, because they save one the effort of listening. And categories, above all, that are old.
Categories that no longer mean anything
The modernist …