Practical Wisdom for a Confused Age: The Archbishop’s Advice to Young People

Practical Wisdom for a Confused Age: The Archbishop’s Advice to Young People

A Changing Landscape for Adulthood
The old cultural script was simple: finish school, go to university, find a career, buy a home, raise a family. For generations, this path was attainable, even expected, for anyone prepared to work hard. Today, however, that sequence often collapses under economic reality. Wages for young people have stagnated relative to living costs; house prices have risen far faster than incomes; and a university degree — once a near-guarantee of stable employment — can now be a debt-laden detour into underemployment.

In such a climate, following the “approved” route can leave a young adult entering their mid-twenties burdened with £50,000 or more in debt, earning little above the national average wage, and unable to afford the deposit for even the smallest starter home. In many cases, their qualifications prove irrelevant to the work they eventually find.

It is this hard reality that the Archbishop of Selsey addresses with his advice to young people: “Get a job, get a mortgage, and when qualifications become necessary or obvious for the career path, take them then. Rent out your house to cover the mortgage, and you’ll have credit history for loans if necessary. There’s no need to rush into anything.”

This is not a call to abandon education, but to reclaim the virtue of timing — to approach study as a strategic investment rather than a compulsory rite of passage.

The Economic Case for Early Earning
Statistics confirm the wisdom in this counsel. Graduates in England leave university with an average debt of £53,000¹. With interest rates on student loans now linked to inflation, many will repay for decades without ever clearing the balance. In the same years spent accruing this debt, a young person in work could be building savings, a deposit, and a credit history — the three keys to homeownership.

Meanwhile, the housing market has moved further out of reach. The average age of a first-time buyer is now 32 years and 7 months across the UK, rising to 34 years and 1 month in London². Those who buy early have the advantage of starting their mortgage clock sooner, potentially becoming mortgage-free before retirement — something increasingly rare among their peers.

The Archbishop’s approach flips the usual order: secure your financial footing first, then add qualifications when they will directly serve a clear career goal. This way, education becomes a tool for advancement rather than an expensive placeholder for indecision.

Universities in Crisis: Ideology over Education
But the Archbishop’s warning is not only economic — it is also intellectual and moral. Modern universities, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, have been deeply compromised by the capture of curricula by Critical Social Justice theory and its attendant orthodoxies on gender, race, and identity. Where the academy once prided itself on rigorous debate and pursuit of truth, it now too often enforces ideological conformity, punishes dissent, and substitutes activism for scholarship.

Employers repeatedly report that graduates lack the practical skills, adaptability, and interpersonal maturity needed in the workplace³. Instead, they arrive with fragile expectations and little tolerance for disagreement. This has made many degrees — especially in politically charged disciplines — not merely irrelevant but actively counterproductive to employment prospects.

ORA Formation Policy: Building Priests for Reality
These same concerns have shaped the Old Roman Apostolate’s approach to priestly formation. The Archbishop has directed episcopal administrators to exercise great caution with young men coming directly from university. “We are wary,” he has said, “of those who have been indoctrinated in institutions hostile to morality and faith. Too often they arrive with the intellectual and spiritual wounds of their environment still unhealed.”

Instead, the ORA favours the Formation House model. In these houses, candidates for the priesthood live together under a common rule, share in the liturgical life of the Church, and engage in regular work or study. This ensures they:

• Are not a financial burden to the faithful or the Apostolate.
• Gain practical work experience and economic self-sufficiency.
• Learn to pastor souls with an understanding of the daily realities — employment, budgeting, housing — faced by the people they will serve.

While a traditional residential seminary remains the ideal in theory, the Archbishop recognises that it is increasingly unsustainable in practice, especially when the majority of ORA missions cannot yet provide full-time stipends for clergy. The Formation House model ensures that priests are prepared both for the altar and for the world in which they minister.

Serving Families as Well as Vocations
This advice is not for seminarians alone. For parents, it offers a way to spare their children from years of unproductive study, debt, and disillusionment. A young person who stays at home, works, and contributes to the household while saving for their future provides immediate relief to family finances and long-term security for themselves.

In moral terms, this is an appeal to the virtue of prudence. In spiritual terms, it is a call to patient discernment. The Archbishop warns: “People make life-changing decisions far too quickly these days. Better to discern one’s calling with patience and prayer than to rush into commitments that may close more doors than they open.”

Countercultural Prudence in an Age of Haste
The modern economy rewards those who plan, who resist the pressure to conform to the debt-fuelled rush into adulthood. The Archbishop’s advice is not only financially astute but deeply pastoral. It calls young people to embrace responsibility in a way that will equip them for every path — whether to marriage, religious life, or the priesthood.

For a generation navigating economic instability, ideological hostility, and moral confusion, this may be the most radical — and the most sensible — counsel they will ever hear.

1. Office for Students, Student Loan Statistics 2024–25, June 2025.
2. Mojo Mortgages, Average Age of a First-Time Buyer UK 2025, July 2025.
3. Confederation of British Industry (CBI), Education and Skills Survey 2024.