Paul Collins is a broadcaster, historian, and writer with nearly forty years of experience in radio and television. He has worked in various capacities, including as a producer, correspondent, and commentator on TV and radio channels in Australia, the United States, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Collins has contributed to channels such as the BBC, NPR, Sky TV News, and Al-Jazeera network. He covered two papal elections in 2005 and 2013 for ABC, SBS, and the Seven Network. Collins has also taught church history, theology, and ministry in Australia, the United States, and several Pacific countries, having served as director of the Weber Center in Adrian, Michigan, lectured in Australian history at the University of Papua New Guinea, and worked as a parish priest in Sydney, Canberra, Launceston, and Hobart. With seventeen books in print, including Absolute Power: How the Pope Became the Most Influential Man in the World (2018), The Birth of the West: Rome, Germany, France, and the Creation of Europe in the Tenth Century (2013), and Judgment Day: The Struggle for life on Earth (2010) Collins is a prolific writer. He has also contributed articles to many of Australia’s leading newspapers and magazines, as well as to international publications like the London Tablet, the National Catholic Reporter in the US, and magazines across Germany, Austria, and Italy.
Paul Collins has made a compelling case to open the Catholic priesthood to women and married men. Not a new call, but now an urgent one. As the Church grapples for relevancy, Collins calls for a priestly ministry that not only reflects the lives of those it serves but also looks like those lives because it is those lives. The resonance with the challenge of Pope Francis for priests to have the scent of their flock is strong. The potency of Collins comes from his scholarship and authentic pastoral sensitivities. The insight of Collins is that change trumps decay.--Francis Sullivan, AO, chair of Concerned Catholics There is nothing else comparable to this one short volume on the need to rethink and restructure the role of the presider in the Church in light of all the other ministries carried on by the baptized.--Charles E. Curran, PhD, author of Loyal Dissent: Memoir of a Catholic Theologian