UP FRONT
The Clergy & the Wisdom People (Part 2 of a series)
Carroll Juliano & Loughlan Sofield

In the first article in this series, all based on interviews with a number of retired archbishops who were installed as archbishops prior to 1971—during or shortly after the close of Vatican Council II—we focused on some general relevant church issues identified by some of the archbishops. This article will address some of their observations regarding clergy.

Looking back on their own priesthood, which totaled over three hundred and fifty years of priestly life, the archbishops shared what was most important to them. Their insights and wisdom regarding priests focused on four key areas:

• The vocation and role of the priest
• Recommendations regarding the future of the priesthood in the United States
• Morale and priestly fraternity
• Celibacy and the priesthood

Vocation and Role of the Priest

Not surprisingly, the archbishops stated that priests, like all Christians, are called to be people of prayer. “There is no substitute for prayer.” They also acknowledged, “It is not easy. Sometimes you will try to be theoretical about it. Sometimes you will be bored. You must be persistent.” It was evident that their recommendations were not just pious platitudes, but the convictions and wisdom gleaned from their own lives.

They asserted that prayer is more than a private devotion, and they encouraged priests to pray with others, both priests and laity. The archbishops indicated that this life of prayer had a very special focus: “Priests must be converted to Christ and the Eucharist as the sole focus of the priesthood.” If the priesthood is not grounded in the Eucharist, all of what is done by priests will be for naught. It is the priests’s love of the Eucharist that touches the lives of the people they serve.

Priests must see their primary role as leaders of the Eucharist. If the people get a great experience of liturgy, they are going to come. When they come to Mass, they do not become community. They come to the liturgy as a community of baptized people, as a community of faith.

The Second Vatican Council proclaimed that the Eucharist is the “sun and center” of the Christian life. If that is true for all Christians, it is even truer for those who have been ordained to be the leaders of the liturgy.

Since priests are called to be men of prayer, particularly eucharistic prayer, there are consequent implications. Priests must examine their lives to assure that they spend adequate time in prayer and in preparation for the Eucharist. Priests today report high levels of stress, approaching burnout and depression. Coping with the stress of multiple roles and increased expectations forces a priest to make choices about how he will spend his time and what his priorities will be.

Their prayer must lead them to action. The archbishops emphasized the need for priests to see themselves as people called to animate the gifts of the entire church.

The priest must take seriously the role assigned him by the “Catechism of the Catholic Church”:

The ministerial priesthood is at the service of the common priesthood. It is directed at the baptismal grace of all Christians. The ministerial priesthood is a means by which Christ unceasingly builds up and leads his Church.

When a priest assumes this role of animating the gifts of all, he will provide an ecclesial leadership that encourages the laity to use their gifts more fully and to take their rightful role in the church. Such an attitude and approach free the priest to be the priest he was ordained to be, that he wants to be, and that the people of God need him to be. To the extent that a priest fosters an increased involvement of the laity in ministry and service, he has the time and energy to be a man of prayer, a man of the Eucharist. These two priorities of prayer and animating go hand in hand.

If we’re going to have a change of attitude in the minds of those who are placed in positions of authority, like priests, pastoral leaders, and bishops, it would be tremendous if there was greater emphasis in the seminary on how to relate to people and to rely on their talents.

This emphasis on developing relational skills and fostering the gifts and talents of the laity was the major recommendation that emerged from each of the interviews and from the subsequent meeting held at the University of Notre Dame.

One of the archbishops offered some very practical advice for bishops, which would also be relevant to priests.

Spend (time) every day in personal prayer. If you do that you will find that you’ll get everything done that you would have gotten done anyway. It isn’t going to take away from what you’ll be able to do every day. Answering the mail, seeing people, everything else, you never get everything done anyway, whether you pray or don’t pray. (If you pray) you will do it more peacefully, you will do it with better consideration and attention, and it will have greater fruit.

What would the priest who takes seriously the invitation of the archbishops to become more a man of prayer and Eucharist look like? Pope Benedict XVI, in his first pastoral, Deus caritas est, God Is Love, says, “A Eucharist which does not pass over into concrete practice of love is intrinsically fragmented.” It is the priest’s attention to the Eucharist that ultimately drives him to his pastoral ministries, his ministry of love. The priority that the archbishops have given to prayer and the Eucharist are the foundation of what molds the vocation and role of the priest.

“Priests must have the concept of service at the heart of their priesthood.” The priesthood is not a role a man assumes, it is a relationship with God that is lived. Another archbishop took this idea even further, suggesting, “In order to be effective, priests must be engaged with the people.” Holy priests are relational priests.

During the meeting at Notre Dame, while discussing the issue of the changing of structures, one of the archbishops suggested that there was another way to approach the subject. He observed that when individuals enter into dialogue, they develop trust. When they develop trust they build relationships. And if they build relationships less time is needed in focusing on structures.

Recommendations Regarding the Future of the Priesthood in the United States

It was evident that the archbishops have a special place in their hearts for priests. They have cried with, consoled, and supported them. Sometimes they had to intervene in the lives of priests in ways that precipitated anger and resentment. The archbishops desired to be true spiritual fathers to the priests, not paternalistic overseers.

Years ago we had the privilege of attending a diocesan convocation of priests. The archbishop of that diocese was one of the men interviewed for this project. On the last day of the convocation, just prior to the closing liturgy, he announced that he was aware that he had made decisions as the archbishop that he knew caused some of the men great pain. In the spirit of the liturgy, he declared that before beginning the liturgy he would seek out the men whom he knew he had hurt and ask their forgiveness. He then challenged each of the almost two hundred priests present to do the same, that is, to search out their brothers whom they had hurt and to ask for forgiveness. Watching 200 priests approach one another with tears in their eyes and ask the forgiveness of their brothers was a powerful, never-to-be-forgotten experience. The only reason it happened was because the archbishop modeled what he was asking them to do. As Pope Paul VI said, “People don’t listen to teachers: they listen to witnesses, and when they do listen to teachers it is because they are witnesses.”

The archbishop we just described was representative of each of the wise elders we interviewed. They loved the priests, had a great concern for them, but were courageous enough to call them to be, to paraphrase the U.S. Army slogan, “all that they can be.”

It was in this spirit that the archbishops made some specific recommendations about the future of the priesthood in the United States. These recommendations can be summarized as follows:

• Be sure that all priests are being prepared adequately during their seminary formation to implement the vision of the Second Vatican Council.
• Create a climate and structures that help priests live a balanced life.
• Consider developing new, creative structures to attract men to the priesthood.
• Revisit the issue of mandatory celibacy. We will come back to this issue later in this article.

One archbishop wondered about how well the seminaries “are preparing priests to involve lay people in the way it was intended by the Second Vatican Council.” Coupled with this was a concern about whether today’s seminarians are being “trained to minister to the changing cultural realities.”

The archbishops communicated their concern for the spiritual, emotional, and physical health of priests. This concern is based on the observation that the role of priests is constantly expanding to include new tasks. It is imperative that this trend be reversed. “There is a need to find the proper balance in many of the issues which face us as church, for example, the role of the priest as liturgical, sacramental leader and community leader, who is often forced to be the leader of two or more communities.”

It is doubtful that the present movement toward expanding expectations of priests can continue much longer without dire consequences to the priests and to the Church. We are experiencing a Church that is faced with a shortage of priests to serve the parishes. We need imaginative thinking…outside the box—to discover creative ways to bring the sacraments to the people.

The archbishops advocated a balance between caring for oneself and maintaining a zealous spirit. They suggested that in making decisions about priorities, the major criterion should be to respond to the pastoral needs of people. In discussing the liturgical and sacramental needs of the faithful, they called for solutions that considered every option, including the possibility of a non-celibate clergy and the ordination of women.

The archbishops offered a few recommendations for attracting men to the priesthood. One of the recommendations grew out of an archbishop’s experience of a shortage of priests in his diocese. Given the expanse of the diocese and the demands of the ministry, the priests had to travel to remote areas and had time only for Mass on Sunday. So he proposes that the bishops should consider ordaining “Mass priests.” These priests could have faculties to celebrate the liturgy but not to preach; or they could be priests whose only function is to offer Mass for the people. Such a proposal would require further thought on the pastoral, spiritual, and theological levels and have clear guidelines for candidates. The archbishop voiced that such a proposal should be discussed by the bishops, along with their people. Even just to discuss it would provide an excellent base for emphasizing the fullness of the priesthood, the ideals for the ordaining of priests, and the centrality of the eucharistic sacrifice.

Priestly Fraternity and Morale

There were recommendations that focused specifically on the issue of priestly fraternity and morale.

First, it is not solely the responsibility of the bishop to create structures and opportunities for building fraternity and morale. It is primarily the responsibility of the priests themselves to do this. It has been our experience in working with priests that these two issues of fraternity and morale are paramount in the minds of many priests today.

Second, the creation of priest support groups has provided a very positive step in helping to develop a stronger sense of priestly morale and support. Some of these support groups have made it a priority to meet in spite of the fact that sometimes they are being “milked dry.” They are finding it more difficult in these demanding times to discover times in their busy calendars to get together.

One of the archbishops articulated some experiences he has had regarding priestly fraternity. He had personally seen where priest support groups and deanery gatherings had very positive results, especially in priests providing mutual support to each other. The archbishops noted that priests coming from a common ethnic background appear to be more committed to holding gatherings that provide them with an opportunity for mutual support.

In reflecting on fraternity, one archbishop commented, “In all my years as a bishop, no priest ever came to me about another priest who was engaged in some form of destructive behavior.” The archbishops who met with us at Notre Dame cautioned about the possible misunderstanding of this statement. They foresaw two very different interpretations of this comment. On the one hand it could be interpreted to mean that priests should have a fraternal concern for each other. “There are times I might have been able to help a priest if someone had alerted me to what was happening.” On the other hand, their concern was that some priests might interpret this to mean that they should become overly involved in the private lives of other priests or even see this as a license for developing a culture of “tattling.” It was this latter interpretation which they felt should be challenged.

The archbishops identified a number of reasons why morale is a major concern among priests. As has already been mentioned, “Priests are stretched too thin. Parishes are becoming larger and priests often have one or more additional responsibilities beyond the parish.” The only solution to this that is seen by the archbishops is “to involve the laity in more meaningful ways.” (This will be the subject of the third article in this series.)

It is the responsibility of the priests themselves to develop new models for fellowship and support. They noted that this seems to be happening more in urban dioceses through the establishment of priest support groups. In general, these groups have had high degrees of success. The problem in more rural areas is that distances make it more difficult to gather together regularly. However, even in these rural areas, new, creative approaches are being attempted. One archbishop mentioned one model that has proved popular in a number of dioceses: a weekly meal, prepared by one of the priests, for which all the priests of the area gather to socialize, pray, and support each other.

In reflecting on fraternity the archbishop identified one additional area in need of attention, the fraternity between the priests and their bishops. This relationship has recently become strained in some dioceses. In some cases it has been attributed to the way in which some bishops have dealt with the sexual abuse issue. Some priests have felt not only a lack of support by the bishop, but even a sense of betrayal. In seeking ways to move beyond this tension, it was suggested that there is a need to develop a climate of forgiveness.

There are many ways to improve morale and fraternity. The archbishops realize that there is a need to find new, creative ways to address this situation. They acknowledge that they have some ideas but know that there are many possibilities that are beyond their expertise.

Celibacy

The archbishops had some opinions on the topic of celibacy. They believe that every topic should be open for discussion in the church, including the topic of celibacy. We will provide two rather lengthy responses that we heard during the interview. While mandatory celibacy for priests should be discussed, the archbishops cautioned that the discussion should be based on “sound theology.”

We’ve got to get more priests. We have to talk about that. The crux of the question for a lot of people is celibacy but we’re not permitted to talk about it. If you bring it up, you’re slapped down…I’m hoping to God that Benedict XVI will do something about it. I’m really delighted with the things I’ve been reading, such as Salt of the Earth. It is an account of an interview given to a journalist by Cardinal Ratzinger. This man is brilliant. He knows what’s going on. I hope he’ll open up a little…Let’s talk about this…Celibacy has served the church very well but it seems to me that celibacy shouldn’t get in the way of the evangelization of people. Theologically, I have a great problem seeing so many parishes lacking priests and seeing the tremendous problems facing people in the parishes. Even if we get the people involved, we’ve got to have priests. I’d like to have an open discussion about, “Is celibacy getting in the way?” I’m not saying it is. I’m just saying let’s talk about it…We’ve got to respond to the needs of the people. It’s all very lovely to say we’ve got to pray. The Lord himself told us to pray for workers in the vineyard. He didn’t say they all had to be celibate, though. Now, I’m not saying that that the solution is to eliminate obligatory celibacy for the priesthood. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying, let’s talk about it. You can’t discuss these things unless you’re talking of facts and good theology. There are a lot of factors that have to be brought into that discussion and they can’t just be off the tops of our heads. We have to know what we’re talking about and we’ve just got to be really willing to face up to facts. That’s all I’m saying.

Still another archbishop said:

Priestly celibacy is another example of the need for engagement. I support mandatory celibacy. But I do think we should publicly discuss it because the adversarial is the only side we hear now. If it were a public discussion, I’d be out there saying why I’m convinced that celibacy is a good decision, while always admitting it could be changed. I don’t fear the media turmoil that would surround such a discussion. It would be better to go through all that. I don’t think we would lose one thing. It’s a good issue to discuss because it is strictly a disciplinary law.

Summary

The archbishops have freely shared their wisdom on the issues of the clergy:

• Priests must primarily be men of prayer.
• They must be involved in a constant process of conversion to Christ and to the Eucharist.
• Their prayer life and the Eucharist must lead to loving, compassionate service.
• The centrality of the Eucharist must force us as church to consider ways to assure that all Catholics have the opportunity for regular Eucharist.
• One priority of the church should be to maintain a compassionate concern for the spiritual, emotional, and physical well being of the priest.
• While the issues of priestly fraternity and morale are extremely important, the priests themselves must take the primary responsibility to improve these.
• Continue to talk openly and honestly about the role of celibacy in the priesthood.
• Ultimately, priests must see animating the gifts of the laity as one of their primary roles.
• Clarify the role of priests. The emergence of lay leadership does not detract from nor deny the need for priests. The priests have a definite, important role in the church. Emphasizing the role of the priests will help to erode some of the fear in some priests that may interfere with the full development of lay leadership.

If you are interested in listening to actual transcripts of the interviews and meeting at Notre Dame or reading the transcripts and summaries, we refer you to the STEP Web site at Notre Dame.

Sister Carroll Juliano, SHCJ, and Brother Loughlan Sofield, ST, are co-authors of a number of award-winning books, including “Collaboration: Uniting Our Gifts in Ministry” (Ave Maria Press, 2000).