[Via Catholic Review]

If the goal of a “synodal” church is to have all the baptized recognize their responsibility for the life and mission of the Catholic community, Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet said that necessarily means taking a new look at priesthood.

The cardinal, outgoing prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, organized an international conference on the theology of priesthood in February 2022, which drew some 500 priests, religious and theologians to the Vatican.

Yet one year later, he and other conference organizers said that coming to grips with the clerical abuse crisis and trying to promote a real understanding of the vocation of all the baptized — priests or laity — is an exercise that cannot be limited to priests and theologians.

To that end, the Vatican presented a two-volume book, “For a Fundamental Theology of the Priesthood,” cataloguing the conference’s articles and providing complementary academic documents that contextualize…