THE dangers in vocational life nowadays were as great as the dangers of martyrdom centuries ago, Bishop Worlock of Liverpool said' at Christ's College, Liverpool, on Sunday, where he concelebrated Mass.
The Archbishop, who has recently become chairman of the governing body of the college, was recalling what a Dominican preacher had told him during a retreat before his ordination.
Archbishop Worlock said: "For some of my generation in other lands this has proved to he true." But it was also applicable in developed countries, where the priests "have had to face the temptations of permissive secularism and the cold water of apathetic tolerance, rather than the cold steel Of execution."
This was not, however, restricted to religious life, he said, but to a.11 who saw their "task in life as a vocation". For never in recent years had there been such a degree of insecurity for teachers.
"You know, even better than I. all that is said today about
job-prospects, about unemploy merit in the profession of your choice, about the falling birthrate and redundant places in schools.
He stressed the importance of viewing the profession as a vocation, while seeing that remuneration and security for members of the teaching profession as part of their human entitlement as well as a just reward for the importance of what they did.