EDITORIAL
Blessings for struggling priests
Given that we’re all laypeople
at NCR, we can’t really write firsthand on what the country’s
priests are feeling. But we can write from the heart, based on what we read and
hear from priests we know.
And in recent issues we’ve heard from many priests and read
wise words from Fr. Philip Murnion (NCR, Sept. 27). In NCR’s
Oct. 11 issue, an anonymous, distraught Los Angeles priest, writing to a priest
in another state, told us he feels abandoned, almost institutionally abused, by
his church.
NCR presented excerpts from each account to a priest friend
and asked if there is a common thread to them.
Murnion’s comment that “the church needs the priest to
be the minister of the sacred, not an employee of the organization”
resonated deeply with our priest friend, who responded: “The priest has to
carry the priesthood. What Philip says is real to me.”
The letter from the Los Angeles priest observed that bishops were
making distinctions between “good priests” and “bad
priests,” and said, “oh, the follies of Western dualism!” He
added: “The only reason I stay is because my people truly depend on me,
and my heart goes out to them.”
Our priest friend is a smartly dressed, smiling pastor, much loved
in his enormous parish. He is a man of many years experience in the
church’s two worlds. He preaches with a quiet conviction rather than
radical fervor. As he made the following points he seemed to suggest, without
actually saying it, that growth as a priest -- as with growth for any Christian
-- comes from learning as one wrestles with God.
The result, unquestioning compassion, sweeps all else before it.
“That’s what the Los Angeles priest is saying when he says the reason
he remains is because his people depend on him,” commented our friend.
“But the poor man is alone. He has no support. He should stand up and
identify himself and see who stands with him in his loneliness.
“I think the questions before priests are more profound than
we’re seeing. That’s a very complicated statement, I know,” said
our friend, “and I can speak only from my own life.”
“I think I got a passage of experience inside the system
[working in the top reaches of a major chancery]. I got a different passage of
experience outside it, as a pastor. What made me grow up -- to return to
Philip’s theme -- was a confrontation with my own humanity, my own
foolishness, and the emptiness of many things I presumed had value.
“I got to understand a God who was radically different from
the God -- a false god -- I had been worshiping for a long time. I got to a
place where I saw so much pain out there, I decided that the pain kind of
belongs to me.
“That pain and failure belongs to me. Therefore I must meet
my God in my pain and failures and your pain and failures. I don’t care
what your situation is, there’s a place for you in my life.
“Now I could only come to that when I discovered, when I
became conscious of the realization that I’m in no position at all to make
a judgement upon anyone,” he said.
Of the younger priests -- our friend was ordained in the early
1960s -- he said, “a piece of the church would prefer to circle the wagons
as damage control, coupled to an evocation of the past as the way ahead.
Certain laypeople would be very accepting of that. Some of the younger
generation of priests will stagnate in there.
“Others,” he said, “will in time come to terms with
their own failure. I’m absolutely convinced that the only reason I could
be an arrogant son-of-a-bitch, which I was when I was a young guy at the
chancery, was I had this kind of notion I was a demigod or something. White
cuffs, gold links, strong guy, perfect -- and in a position to say, ‘You
fit’ and ‘you don’t.’ And when I discovered, as I did, that
this was all superficial and there was no value in it that could console me
anymore, I got to a totally different place.
“Now that’s pretty desperate, isn’t it?” he
asked.
Desperate, yes. But profound. And it serves here as an invitation
to all of America’s priests to join in the conversation.
From our lay perspective -- to all priests out there struggling in
these times, and wrestling with God -- blessings on your work on behalf of the
people of God.
National Catholic Reporter, October 25,
2002
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