Jesus, "like all human beings, had to struggle to discern what his vocation should be", a meeting of priests has been told in Dublin.
"Mary had told Jesus he had been chosen for something special by God but could not say what." Hers was a limited revelation, Father Jerome Murphy O'Connor told the National Conference of Priests of Ireland (NCPI).
Father Murphy O'Connor, professor of New Testament at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem, lamented the downplaying of the humanity of Jesus in favour of an understanding of his divinity which had its origins in a pagan view of a god as all-knowing and all-powerful.
The nature of Jesus's divinity was revealed only in and through his humanity, he said. "He is God incarnate" and "only by accepting and understanding his full humanity can we begin to approach the mystery of his divinity."
The account of his finding in the Temple, where Jesus questioned the priests, was an early attempt by him to find out what God wanted him to do. It was why he went to John, becoming his assistant in the exercise of a temporary vocation during which he preached the law and carried out baptisms.
On John's arrest "Jesus dropped his temporary vocation as prophet and assumes the mantle of Messiah". This "radical change (and) new conversion" resulted from Jesus's association with sinners.
Jesus realised that such sinners were really victims. They had been reduced by crushing taxes and bad fortune.
The NCPI president, Father Jim Stanley, told the conference he hoped that the Synod of Bishops at the Vatican next month would "try to achieve a better balance between Rome and the local churches". He hoped it would "inspire the kind of leadership that facilitates positive action". Another document, "no matter how inspiring," he said, "will accomplish little".
He criticised media commentators who implied that the fall in vocations suggested something was wrong with the priesthood. "That is simply not true. We priests have our faults, and the scandals have not helped, but there is nothing wrong with the priesthood. It was established by Jesus and has served the people of God well for 2,000 years," he said.
He felt that the Irish church needed to organise "a well-planned national assembly" but didn't know "of anything else other than a new Church Council that might galvanise latent, apostolic energies in both the laity and clergy and give the church a fresh impetus" in the new millennium".
If current patterns continued "who will be in church in 25/30 years time? Very, very few, a mere remnant," he said.
