Questions About Authority and Parish Priests
Created | Updated Mar 3, 2003
How my Great-Grandmother Went to Heaven and My Grandmother Went to Bradford - leaving me withQuestions About Authority
by Michael O'SheaMargaret Ann Magee, the only one of my great-grandmothers I know anything about, died on June 21st 1882.
She left behind, in the family home - a small bar and hotel in the village of Ardglass, Co. Down - her husband John and two daughters: Margaret Theresa (20) and 12-year old Agnes (my Grandmother). Three older daughters had married and left home, one to live locally.
A week after Margaret Ann's death the Parish Priest came into the house and told John that he had thought the matter over. He had come to the conclusion that it was not right for a young girl to be brought up above a bar. He had arranged for Agnes to be taken into a convent in Bradford.
A week later Agnes was shipped off.
So, within a fortnight of her mother's death a grieving twelve year old was removed from her father, her sisters and cousins, her friends and neighbours, her home and her country - all on the decision of the Parish priest.
I recently related this small item of family history to our present parish priest.
His reaction was similar to mine. "It would never happen today!"
"You're dead right it wouldn't! " I agreed. "If you attempted to do that today you would be told what to do with yourself!"
Now I must record that - 120 years or so after one of his predecessors banished my Grandmother to Bradford (no doubt with the high aim of saving her from the influences and attentions of the disreputable and drunken Catholic Irishmen, and a few non-sectarian Prods, who hung out at the Old Commercial Hotel in those days) - the Dunsford and Ardglass parish priest of today has been most helpful to me, as have numbers of his priestly colleagues during the forty-odd years that have passed since I stumbled back into the Church - a returned prodigal picking pig meal out of my teeth and hungry for real food.
I have a great respect for such priests. Each one is an outpost for all those who seek contact with the unseen God, dedicating themselves to a sometimes lonely and much criticised way of life. Among them, in both England and Ireland, I have met with much heart-warming kindness and, on occasion, a great and wonderful holiness, enabling God's grandeur to shine through.
Despite this there is little doubt in my mind that today, as in 1882 and throughout time, there are priests who are unclear about the actual authority they possess, diluting and contaminating it with notions of earthly authority imbibed from the social norms of each age.
Consider the actual powers of a priest. On a day-to-day basis he is the practical mediator between the sinner and God. When he baptises he imparts a sharing in God's inner life. Equally he forgives sins with the authority of Christ. Through his words and intentions bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. He holds in his hands the living bread of eternal life, Christ himself: body, blood, soul and divinity, without whom there is no salvation. The words of Christ make it clear, "Unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood you will not have life within you." The priest is therefore the local embodiment of that authority given by Christ to Peter and the disciples, to provide the means of achieving eternal life: ultimately a sharing in Christ's resurrection.
Who would not be in awe of such powers? Who, among believers, would dare to challenge or dispute such authority, even if, at times, those who wield it can quite obviously be as sinful and erratic as the rest of us?
Because of social attitudes in Ireland, even today, it is a brave man or woman - among school governors, for example - who will challenge the decision, or even the firmly expressed opinion, of a Parish Priest; mostly out of courtesy but also with a hint of atavistic fear, reasonable in the light of distorted notions regarding the power structure of the Church, but entirely unreasonable and at odds with the love of Christ, which is supposed to cast out fear. In this typical case it is usually the parish priest's viewpoint, in his automatically held position of Chairman of the Board of Governors, which decides the issue - a modern situation in which the Authoritative nature of the Church overflows into areas where genuine consensus would almost certainly produce more realistic and beneficial management decisions - and don't tell me that consensus is the norm! The priest's word is mighty weighty, listened to with great deference, and quite often forms the basis of decisions in areas where he has no special knowledge.
This is only one small example of the residual traces of the exaggerated authoritarianism and unreal reverence that exists in the church, and has existed through the centuries, attitudes based upon an oversimplified and ultimately false view that full church authority is vested solely and exclusively in the persons of bishops, and then delegated by them to priests. Such a view infers an unspoken concept that, when it comes right down to it, the opinions and attitudes of the general mass of the people are of little account. The faithful are there to be fed the truth: not to discover it, not to contribute to it, for they do not share in the Authority of the Church.
Such attitudes have been labelled erroneous by the Bishops of the Second Vatican Council, which acknowledged that God's guiding Spirit resides in and operates throughout the whole church, the complete body of people.I quote from Vatican II:
The laity's "powers of knowledge, competence, position, give them the means, or rather, the duty at times of making known their opinions on matters which envisage the good of the church..... With the help of the laity's experience, pastors are able to make clearer and more appropriate judgements in spiritual and temporal matters alike...."DOGMATIC CONSTITUTION ON THE CHURCH (De Ecclesia) 21 November 1964
and again"Lay people, because they share the priestly, prophetic and royal work of Christ, have active parts of their own to play in the Church's life and action. Their activity within the communities of the Church is so essential that failing it even the Apostolic work of the Pastors will often lack its full effect..." DECREE ON THE APOSTOLATE OF THE LAITY (De Apostolatu Laicorum) 18 November 1965
Despite this there still appears to be an assumption that a great gulf of responsibility, knowledge and authority exists between priests and "ordinary" Christians. Traditional seminary education has tended to produce priests who have, perhaps unconsciously, been conditioned to view themselves as an elite, better educated type of Christian (which may or may not be so), an upper strata whose job it is to sit in judgement on the rest, moral policemen with the power to guide the less informed and habitually sinful. This perception is almost certainly reinforced by wearisome experience of people's sinfulness and apparent stupidity - deepening and hardening the realisation that people are naturally recidivist - while the priestly self-image, certainly in Ireland, is reinforced by the ultra-respectful attitudes of the faithful, amounting at times to uncritical adulation, increasing the ever present danger of priestly hubris and sabotaging at root the vital and joyful awareness of shared and equal brotherhood in Christ.
God has no favourites. He loves all with equal intensity. The same cannot be said of men and women, and in the case of some men who are priests (and may have forgotten that they are primarily men) their contribution to the building-up of faith among their brothers and sisters has sometimes been to put such faith to the test - mostly, in my youth, by calling upon congregations to endure burbling 45-minute sermons each Sunday, often interlarded with strict admonitions about the duty to support one's Pastors more generously.
My faith, and the faith of various congregations I have belonged to, has also withstood the knowledge that a venerable and much loved Canon's passing addiction to whiskey is - was - a slight and foolish fault, and that a curate's well-documented romance with a female parishioner (wife of another parishioner) was understandable, in the light of loneliness for love.
I take no pleasure in recalling the fact that in one London parish where I lived, over thirty years ago, I was even able to absorb, without detriment to my faith, some of the crazed hurt caused by a local priest's paedophilic attentions to a mother's altar-boy son - a lad who died mysteriously at the age of fifteen, leaving his mother demented and understandably bitter about priests, despite her obvious goodness and love for those around her.
Gluttony, alcoholic abuse, excessive love of money and power, lack of chastity - common among the sin-inclined people of God, lay or priestly, are not new in the church.
A compounding sin, born out of the desire to set high standards among the faithful, has been the willing acceptance of the notion that priests not only have to be perfect but are perfect, because they are priests; a public attitude promoted also by automobile manufacturers with respect to the latest glossy car, and accepted by both sets of consumer in that spirit of hope that flies in the face of reality. Cars and priests may be mostly serviceable, though requiring regular maintenance, especially after a few years on the road. But both can suffer breakdown, and the easy and thoughtless acceptance that they are perfect is a lie: in the case of priests an attitude not worthy of a Church devoted to the truth. St. Paul's attitude of profound and hopefilled confidence in Christ, and lack of trust in his own human powers, is the only possible attitude. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Sanctity by appointment is a delusion, and the result of easy acceptance of such an illusion is that when grievous fault becomes apparent among the clergy equally unreal and unnecessary pain, anger, shame and disappointment is felt.
What to do about it? Perfectly clear in the case of a gleamingly unsatisfactory car. Return it to the maker. Much more difficult in the case of an erring priest, who needs help rather than total condemnation, no matter how heinous his crime. Who would be a bishop or religious superior in such cases, torn between compassion for the sinner and duty to the faithful? The traditional solution would appear to have been monastic seclusion for a period, followed by transfer to other duties or other parishes - always open to the accusation that the priest who sins is protected from the full consequences of his actions. More recently psychological treatment has been used in the quest for rehabilitation, and where actions have offended against just laws of the land imprisonment has resulted.
As church leaders have recently stated, there can be no hiding place in the church for priests who have grievously offended against society. It would be entirely wrong for priests to be excluded from the consequences of abominable actions simply on account of their vocation and position. Clearly such an attitude would bring the entire Church into disrepute. I would hope that this attitude would be privately extended by the Church to include priests who have offended against chastity and, say, fathered a child. Men such as these should be given personal responsibility for contributing to an offspring's welfare, in every way possible, according to the reality that they face. Certainly offenders should not be palmed off upon another unsuspecting local church as perfect examples of Christian living. If I generate a child out of wedlock I am responsible for it, whether I have taken a vow of chastity or not. I cannot expect a Bishop to shoulder my responsibility - treat me gently and privately of course, but not hide me away and prevent me from shouldering my responsibilities like a man. I am a man first and a priest second - if I have the privilege of that great vocation - and if I cannot be a good man I certainly cannot be a good priest. In addition, the Old Testament designation "you are a priest forever according to the law of Melchisidech" cannot mean that there is never a case for depriving a man of the priestly office. The priest undertakes to do a job, for Christ, for his neighbour. If he cannot do his job properly he should be sacked, as with any job - made redundant, compulsorily retired, excluded from the brotherhood of the clergy: if unrepentant regretfully regarded as a pagan and a heretic. If authority means anything in the Church this is one disciplinary power which a bishop certainly does possess (with due safeguards regarding right of appeal). And if the collective authority of bishops means anything they should similarly be able to dispose of one of their own number - if he has not the grace to resign, as in the case of one former Bishop of Kerry.
Am I being too hard? Not at all, I think. It's a matter of reason and common sense and truth. It is self-evident that a man must be confronted about the truth of himself and the consequences of his actions if he is to be given the chance to repent and be saved. This is the ultimate kindness: not to be confused with the ruthless logic of those medieval prelates who 'kindly' burnt heretics at the stake with the same objective. There is a considerable difference between torturing a man in order to change his mind (and burning him alive if he will not do so), and putting the same man on the job market because he has proved to be unsuitable and unreliable.
All have the responsibility of doing their job as effectively as possible, and the priest has the daunting task of leading people into holiness, introducing them to Christ, helping them to develop in faith and love. He can only do so if he personally is imbued with these qualities: totally committed in faith. Sometimes such faith and love and hopeful trust, in God and neighbour, seems to be lacking, or at least lukewarm. On occasion our priests seem to lack the power and conviction that can only come from personal knowledge of our Creator and his beloved son. Some can, at times, I regret to say, give the impression of obedient rote men - obedient to Church rules and regulations, afraid to show warmth and passion, fearful of allowing personal faith and love for the living Lord take hold of them, to inspire their lives and the minds and hearts of their congregations. Cerebral, distilled notions appear to take the place of wholesome, heartfelt love.
I put this proposition with some diffidence. I am very much aware of the many devoted priests whose lives are given in constant service to their brothers and sisters. But I would not be expressing an honest impression if I failed to state that at times the public face of religion can be boring! Boring! The life, death and resurrection of Christ reduced to boring, repetitive formula and a restatement of abstract moral rules combined with Church organisational procedures! What an indictment of our church! What a scandal! That my sons, and many young people - as well as those not so young - can find public expression of faith in Christ flat, colourless and unconvincing!
Such perceptions cannot be dismissed as the fault of a sinful and unenlightened people. This is too easy an escape. The plain fact is that much that is presented as religion is boring, because of the attitudes and abilities of those who conduct our services. Even the magnificent re-presentation of the sacrifice of the Eucharist can sometimes appear hurried and lacklustre. This is a real and abiding scandal, where it occurs. The people of God gather to hear the word of God in preparation for the Eucharistic Celebration and they hear words without compelling explanation or enlightenment - or so it can appear, because the nice, angry, weary, irritated or bored man who conducts the service may not have prepared himself in his heart, his mind and his soul.
I merely point out that because Christ operates through people the perceived quality of the eucharistic offering can vary according to the qualities of the man making the offering. A truly holy priest, utterly devoted to loving God and his neighbour, brings a physical and spiritual quality to the offering which appears absent when the same sacrifice is offered, or perhaps just recited, by a disillusioned priest who views the Mass as just another one of his daily chores. The essence remains the same, of course, but whereas one man enables Christ to shine through, the other tends to stifle the loving utterance of the Spirit.
Am I making too much of this? Different men, different priests, arrive at differing stages of holiness and fullness of belief and love at different times. I cannot, am not, would never wish to be, judge of when this should be. My concern is that all priests should be striving for holiness, and it is quite evident from recent events that all are not doing so. Recent examples of scandalous behaviour among priests have horrified and saddened all decent believers. It is reasonable to suppose, with great regret, that more such horrors remain hidden from the sight of men. How are we to know who have fallen and who have not? The answer is, of course, that we cannot. We can only hope that it is not many. But what we can be certain about is that "all (without exception) have sinned and fallen short of perfection", that all of our priests, in common with every other human being, cannot avoid the daily struggle for virtue: against one or more of the potential sins of pride, envy, lust, sloth or lack of faith and love. Anyone who thinks he is without sin is deluded - or in St. Paul's more forceful language, " is a liar". We may just hope and pray that the level of sinfulness is not great - that it will be gradually replaced by goodness and holiness, in all of us.
For the good of the Church we should be more realistic in our perceptions and expectations. We should not enclose our priests in a straitjacket of false presumptions about perfection, and they should not allow such false assumptions to be made. We are all sinners, all tempted in various ways, all merely imperfect men, and if this truth is finally and fully accepted and acted upon the church in our diocese, in our country, will have taken a massive step towards health. Perhaps, under the gentle, guiding hand of God, this is the real message of recent disturbing disclosures:"Live in the world of reality. Scandals will come, because you are a defective people, but you are still My people. Confess your sins to one another, and to Me, and live in hope and genuine brotherly love. Serve one another in truth and humility. I am with you all days, even to the end of the world."
It does not take much creative thought to imagine Our Lord slightly rephrasing His original words.
As part of an attempt to achieve a realistic, truthful awareness of the Church in all its aspects must come a revision of our concept of authority within the church. What type of authority? Where does it begin? Where does it end? How is it to be wielded?
Bishops and priests do not posses their apostolic authority in a vacuum. The entire people of God participate in Christ's mission of salvation, and we need to obliterate any notion that priests and people are separate entities. A divisive "them and us" attitude prevents God's people from working together as brothers and sisters, equal in the eyes of the Lord, equal in His community, equally responsible for doing the different jobs that we do, uninfluenced by false notions of Church Authority.
What the church's authority is not has been clearly laid out by our Lord.
Church rulers are not to rule like those who have authority in this world.
They are to be servants, as Christ was and is a servant to us; seeking only to heal and make whole, to cure ills of soul and body by prayer, kindness, compassion and practical love. Jesus does indeed have all power in heaven and earth, but He has not handed on all His powers to mankind. Power to teach the truth, yes; to convey a sharing of His inner life through baptism and the forgiveness of sin, yes; to feed the people with His Body and Blood, yes. These are all powers he has handed on. Equally, while Peter and his successors have direct authority to "bind and to loose", i.e. to make rules and regulations, such rules must be primarily to lift non-essential burdens from humanity (as in the case of Peter alone and Peter in conjunction with the apostles lifting the Jewish requirements regarding 'unclean' food and circumcision). Christ is concerned that burdens be lifted from the faithful, not imposed upon them.
It is quite evident that Christ did not give the Church authority to attempt to root out heretics and torture them into submission, as priests and bishops attempted to do in the 12th century. Equally He did not give authority to a 19th century parish priest in Dunsford and Ardglass to remove my grandmother to Bradford. Such notions of church authority are patently absurd at best and at worst directly and cruelly in opposition to Christ's mandate.
It is an escape from reality to classify such aberrations as things of the past. The dangers are ever present.
Christ is present in each of our parishes, in the minds and hearts of his faithful, and he expects his kind and forgiving friendship to be continued: towards the sexually vagrant, the poor and the dirty, the diseased, the money-makers: the lowest in society - as well as those afflicted by physical and mental illness. It is through us that he now seeks to let each person know how deeply we are loved and valued, with a love that goes beyond the confined, common sense, measured out, watered down version that we often present - and it is the job of the priest (above all): to become one Person with Christ, to make His kindness and love truly present. If he is not doing this he is not doing the job he has undertaken.
Fortunately most priests do quietly proceed with this difficult but not impossible task, one of the greatest difficulties being to escape from the role-playing expected by society, to avoid becoming depersonalised icons of religion. Whether by nature or by traditional seminary education, or by fitting into public expectations, many seem uneasy about allowing their real human personality to be known, as if afraid that public acknowledgement of the faulty, sinful nature we have in common would cause offence.
In my experience the more a man admits the truth about himself the more likeable he becomes; the more he admits his insecurities the more people are able to identify with him. Quite a few priests (and others) seem to think that they must present themselves in public as superhuman, faultless - in order to give good example. By failing to face and present the truth about themselves, accepting their total dependence upon God for such goodness as they possess, they increase the danger of clogging up the wellsprings of humanity, and make it difficult for Christ to communicate the reality of His love through them.
As with all other Christians I have only one guide and one hope: the man Christ Jesus, who is Lord and Saviour, and it is only through meeting him, sacramentally and in the person of other people, and, more particularly, through the writings of the evangelists, that I can begin to appreciate the type of man he is now and was in history.
He is the measure of the man whom I must become. Note well: the man I must become. If I cannot become a good man, a kindly human being, reflecting the humanity of Christ, what hope have I of reflecting His divinity? And if this applies to me, without any office in the Church, how much more does it apply to those who share more explicitly and fully in Christ's redemptive priesthood?
Only if we acknowledge the humanity we share with Christ can we be made perfect - perfectly human that is - to the point where we are ready to share fully in His divinity - but perfectly human first.
The time to be truthfully and truly human is surely with us?
"Better late than never!" I can hear my Grandmother say.
Questions About Authority
and Parish Priests
by Michael O'SheaMargaret Ann Magee, the only one of my great-grandmothers I know anything about, died on June 21st 1882.She left behind, in the family home - a small bar and hotel in the village of Ardglass, Co. Down - her husband John and two daughters: Margaret Theresa (20) and 12-year old Agnes (my Grandmother). Three older daughters had married and left home, one to live locally.
A week after Margaret Ann's death the Parish Priest came into the house and told John that he had thought the matter over. He had come to the conclusion that it was not right for a young girl to be brought up above a bar. He had arranged for Agnes to be taken into a convent in Bradford.
A week later Agnes was shipped off.
So, within a fortnight of her mother's death a grieving twelve year old was removed from her father, her sisters and cousins, her friends and neighbours, her home and her country - all on the decision of the Parish priest.
NOT TODAY
I recently related this small item of family history to our present parish priest.
His reaction was similar to mine. "It would never happen today!"
"You're dead right it wouldn't! " I agreed. "If you attempted to do that today you would be told what to do with yourself!"
Now I must record that - 120 years or so after one of his predecessors banished my Grandmother to Bradford (no doubt with the high aim of saving her from the influences and attentions of the disreputable and drunken Catholic Irishmen, and a few non-sectarian Prods, who hung out at the Old Commercial Hotel in those days) - the Dunsford and Ardglass parish priest of today has been most helpful to me, as have numbers of his priestly colleagues during the forty-odd years that have passed since I stumbled back into the Church - a returned prodigal picking pig meal out of my teeth and hungry for real food.
I have a great respect for such priests. Each one is an outpost for all those who seek contact with the unseen God, dedicating themselves to a sometimes lonely and much criticised way of life. Among them, in both England and Ireland, I have met with much heart-warming kindness and, on occasion, a great and wonderful holiness, enabling God's grandeur to shine through.
Despite this there is little doubt in my mind that today, as in 1882 and throughout time, there are priests who are unclear about the actual authority they possess, diluting and contaminating it with notions of earthly authority imbibed from the social norms of each age.
REAL POWERS
Consider the actual powers of a priest. On a day-to-day basis he is the practical mediator between the sinner and God. When he baptises he imparts a sharing in God's inner life. Equally he forgives sins with the authority of Christ. Through his words and intentions bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. He holds in his hands the living bread of eternal life, Christ himself: body, blood, soul and divinity, without whom there is no salvation. The words of Christ make it clear, "Unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood you will not have life within you." The priest is therefore the local embodiment of that authority given by Christ to Peter and the disciples, to provide the means of achieving eternal life: ultimately a sharing in Christ's resurrection.
Who would not be in awe of such powers? Who, among believers, would dare to challenge or dispute such authority, even if, at times, those who wield it can quite obviously be as sinful and erratic as the rest of us?
EXAGGERATED AUTHORITARIANISM
Because of social attitudes in Ireland, even today, it is a brave man or woman - among school governors, for example - who will challenge the decision, or even the firmly expressed opinion, of a Parish Priest; mostly out of courtesy but also with a hint of atavistic fear, reasonable in the light of distorted notions regarding the power structure of the Church, but entirely unreasonable and at odds with the love of Christ, which is supposed to cast out fear. In this typical case it is usually the parish priest's viewpoint, in his automatically held position of Chairman of the Board of Governors, which decides the issue - a modern situation in which the Authoritative nature of the Church overflows into areas where genuine consensus would almost certainly produce more realistic and beneficial management decisions - and don't tell me that consensus is the norm! The priest's word is mighty weighty, listened to with great deference, and quite often forms the basis of decisions in areas where he has no special knowledge.
This is only one small example of the residual traces of the exaggerated authoritarianism and unreal reverence that exists in the church, and has existed through the centuries, attitudes based upon an oversimplified and ultimately false view that full church authority is vested solely and exclusively in the persons of bishops, and then delegated by them to priests. Such a view infers an unspoken concept that, when it comes right down to it, the opinions and attitudes of the general mass of the people are of little account. The faithful are there to be fed the truth: not to discover it, not to contribute to it, for they do not share in the Authority of the Church.
WRONG
Such attitudes have been labelled erroneous by the Bishops of the Second Vatican Council, which acknowledged that God's guiding Spirit resides in and operates throughout the whole church, the complete body of people.I quote from Vatican II:
The laity's "powers of knowledge, competence, position, give them the means, or rather, the duty at times of making known their opinions on matters which envisage the good of the church..... With the help of the laity's experience, pastors are able to make clearer and more appropriate judgements in spiritual and temporal matters alike...."DOGMATIC CONSTITUTION ON THE CHURCH (De Ecclesia) 21 November 1964
and again"Lay people, because they share the priestly, prophetic and royal work of Christ, have active parts of their own to play in the Church's life and action. Their activity within the communities of the Church is so essential that failing it even the Apostolic work of the Pastors will often lack its full effect..." DECREE ON THE APOSTOLATE OF THE LAITY (De Apostolatu Laicorum) 18 November 1965
Despite this there still appears to be an assumption that a great gulf of responsibility, knowledge and authority exists between priests and "ordinary" Christians. Traditional seminary education has tended to produce priests who have, perhaps unconsciously, been conditioned to view themselves as an elite, better educated type of Christian (which may or may not be so), an upper strata whose job it is to sit in judgement on the rest, moral policemen with the power to guide the less informed and habitually sinful. This perception is almost certainly reinforced by wearisome experience of people's sinfulness and apparent stupidity - deepening and hardening the realisation that people are naturally recidivist - while the priestly self-image, certainly in Ireland, is reinforced by the ultra-respectful attitudes of the faithful, amounting at times to uncritical adulation, increasing the ever present danger of priestly hubris and sabotaging at root the vital and joyful awareness of shared and equal brotherhood in Christ.
A BROTHERHOOD OF SINNERS
God has no favourites. He loves all with equal intensity. The same cannot be said of men and women, and in the case of some men who are priests (and may have forgotten that they are primarily men) their contribution to the building-up of faith among their brothers and sisters has sometimes been to put such faith to the test - mostly, in my youth, by calling upon congregations to endure burbling 45-minute sermons each Sunday, often interlarded with strict admonitions about the duty to support one's Pastors more generously.
My faith, and the faith of various congregations I have belonged to, has also withstood the knowledge that a venerable and much loved Canon's passing addiction to whiskey is - was - a slight and foolish fault, and that a curate's well-documented romance with a female parishioner (wife of another parishioner) was understandable, in the light of loneliness for love.
I take no pleasure in recalling the fact that in one London parish where I lived, over thirty years ago, I was even able to absorb, without detriment to my faith, some of the crazed hurt caused by a local priest's paedophilic attentions to a mother's altar-boy son - a lad who died mysteriously at the age of fifteen, leaving his mother demented and understandably bitter about priests, despite her obvious goodness and love for those around her.
Gluttony, alcoholic abuse, excessive love of money and power, lack of chastity - common among the sin-inclined people of God, lay or priestly, are not new in the church.
A compounding sin, born out of the desire to set high standards among the faithful, has been the willing acceptance of the notion that priests not only have to be perfect but are perfect, because they are priests; a public attitude promoted also by automobile manufacturers with respect to the latest glossy car, and accepted by both sets of consumer in that spirit of hope that flies in the face of reality. Cars and priests may be mostly serviceable, though requiring regular maintenance, especially after a few years on the road. But both can suffer breakdown, and the easy and thoughtless acceptance that they are perfect is a lie: in the case of priests an attitude not worthy of a Church devoted to the truth. St. Paul's attitude of profound and hopefilled confidence in Christ, and lack of trust in his own human powers, is the only possible attitude. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Sanctity by appointment is a delusion, and the result of easy acceptance of such an illusion is that when grievous fault becomes apparent among the clergy equally unreal and unnecessary pain, anger, shame and disappointment is felt.
What to do about it? Perfectly clear in the case of a gleamingly unsatisfactory car. Return it to the maker. Much more difficult in the case of an erring priest, who needs help rather than total condemnation, no matter how heinous his crime. Who would be a bishop or religious superior in such cases, torn between compassion for the sinner and duty to the faithful? The traditional solution would appear to have been monastic seclusion for a period, followed by transfer to other duties or other parishes - always open to the accusation that the priest who sins is protected from the full consequences of his actions. More recently psychological treatment has been used in the quest for rehabilitation, and where actions have offended against just laws of the land imprisonment has resulted.
As church leaders have recently stated, there can be no hiding place in the church for priests who have grievously offended against society. It would be entirely wrong for priests to be excluded from the consequences of abominable actions simply on account of their vocation and position. Clearly such an attitude would bring the entire Church into disrepute. I would hope that this attitude would be privately extended by the Church to include priests who have offended against chastity and, say, fathered a child. Men such as these should be given personal responsibility for contributing to an offspring's welfare, in every way possible, according to the reality that they face. Certainly offenders should not be palmed off upon another unsuspecting local church as perfect examples of Christian living. If I generate a child out of wedlock I am responsible for it, whether I have taken a vow of chastity or not. I cannot expect a Bishop to shoulder my responsibility - treat me gently and privately of course, but not hide me away and prevent me from shouldering my responsibilities like a man. I am a man first and a priest second - if I have the privilege of that great vocation - and if I cannot be a good man I certainly cannot be a good priest. In addition, the Old Testament designation "you are a priest forever according to the law of Melchisidech" cannot mean that there is never a case for depriving a man of the priestly office. The priest undertakes to do a job, for Christ, for his neighbour. If he cannot do his job properly he should be sacked, as with any job - made redundant, compulsorily retired, excluded from the brotherhood of the clergy: if unrepentant regretfully regarded as a pagan and a heretic. If authority means anything in the Church this is one disciplinary power which a bishop certainly does possess (with due safeguards regarding right of appeal). And if the collective authority of bishops means anything they should similarly be able to dispose of one of their own number - if he has not the grace to resign, as in the case of one former Bishop of Kerry.
Am I being too hard? Not at all, I think. It's a matter of reason and common sense and truth. It is self-evident that a man must be confronted about the truth of himself and the consequences of his actions if he is to be given the chance to repent and be saved. This is the ultimate kindness: not to be confused with the ruthless logic of those medieval prelates who 'kindly' burnt heretics at the stake with the same objective. There is a considerable difference between torturing a man in order to change his mind (and burning him alive if he will not do so), and putting the same man on the job market because he has proved to be unsuitable and unreliable.
RESPONSIBILITY
All have the responsibility of doing their job as effectively as possible, and the priest has the daunting task of leading people into holiness, introducing them to Christ, helping them to develop in faith and love. He can only do so if he personally is imbued with these qualities: totally committed in faith. Sometimes such faith and love and hopeful trust, in God and neighbour, seems to be lacking, or at least lukewarm. On occasion our priests seem to lack the power and conviction that can only come from personal knowledge of our Creator and his beloved son. Some can, at times, I regret to say, give the impression of obedient rote men - obedient to Church rules and regulations, afraid to show warmth and passion, fearful of allowing personal faith and love for the living Lord take hold of them, to inspire their lives and the minds and hearts of their congregations. Cerebral, distilled notions appear to take the place of wholesome, heartfelt love.
I put this proposition with some diffidence. I am very much aware of the many devoted priests whose lives are given in constant service to their brothers and sisters. But I would not be expressing an honest impression if I failed to state that at times the public face of religion can be boring! Boring! The life, death and resurrection of Christ reduced to boring, repetitive formula and a restatement of abstract moral rules combined with Church organisational procedures! What an indictment of our church! What a scandal! That my sons, and many young people - as well as those not so young - can find public expression of faith in Christ flat, colourless and unconvincing!
Such perceptions cannot be dismissed as the fault of a sinful and unenlightened people. This is too easy an escape. The plain fact is that much that is presented as religion is boring, because of the attitudes and abilities of those who conduct our services. Even the magnificent re-presentation of the sacrifice of the Eucharist can sometimes appear hurried and lacklustre. This is a real and abiding scandal, where it occurs. The people of God gather to hear the word of God in preparation for the Eucharistic Celebration and they hear words without compelling explanation or enlightenment - or so it can appear, because the nice, angry, weary, irritated or bored man who conducts the service may not have prepared himself in his heart, his mind and his soul.
I merely point out that because Christ operates through people the perceived quality of the eucharistic offering can vary according to the qualities of the man making the offering. A truly holy priest, utterly devoted to loving God and his neighbour, brings a physical and spiritual quality to the offering which appears absent when the same sacrifice is offered, or perhaps just recited, by a disillusioned priest who views the Mass as just another one of his daily chores. The essence remains the same, of course, but whereas one man enables Christ to shine through, the other tends to stifle the loving utterance of the Spirit.
Am I making too much of this? Different men, different priests, arrive at differing stages of holiness and fullness of belief and love at different times. I cannot, am not, would never wish to be, judge of when this should be. My concern is that all priests should be striving for holiness, and it is quite evident from recent events that all are not doing so. Recent examples of scandalous behaviour among priests have horrified and saddened all decent believers. It is reasonable to suppose, with great regret, that more such horrors remain hidden from the sight of men. How are we to know who have fallen and who have not? The answer is, of course, that we cannot. We can only hope that it is not many. But what we can be certain about is that "all (without exception) have sinned and fallen short of perfection", that all of our priests, in common with every other human being, cannot avoid the daily struggle for virtue: against one or more of the potential sins of pride, envy, lust, sloth or lack of faith and love. Anyone who thinks he is without sin is deluded - or in St. Paul's more forceful language, " is a liar". We may just hope and pray that the level of sinfulness is not great - that it will be gradually replaced by goodness and holiness, in all of us.
THE NEED TO BE REALISTIC
For the good of the Church we should be more realistic in our perceptions and expectations. We should not enclose our priests in a straitjacket of false presumptions about perfection, and they should not allow such false assumptions to be made. We are all sinners, all tempted in various ways, all merely imperfect men, and if this truth is finally and fully accepted and acted upon the church in our diocese, in our country, will have taken a massive step towards health. Perhaps, under the gentle, guiding hand of God, this is the real message of recent disturbing disclosures:"Live in the world of reality. Scandals will come, because you are a defective people, but you are still My people. Confess your sins to one another, and to Me, and live in hope and genuine brotherly love. Serve one another in truth and humility. I am with you all days, even to the end of the world."
It does not take much creative thought to imagine Our Lord slightly rephrasing His original words.
REAL AUTHORITY
As part of an attempt to achieve a realistic, truthful awareness of the Church in all its aspects must come a revision of our concept of authority within the church. What type of authority? Where does it begin? Where does it end? How is it to be wielded?
Bishops and priests do not posses their apostolic authority in a vacuum. The entire people of God participate in Christ's mission of salvation, and we need to obliterate any notion that priests and people are separate entities. A divisive "them and us" attitude prevents God's people from working together as brothers and sisters, equal in the eyes of the Lord, equal in His community, equally responsible for doing the different jobs that we do, uninfluenced by false notions of Church Authority.
What the church's authority is not has been clearly laid out by our Lord.
Church rulers are not to rule like those who have authority in this world.
They are to be servants, as Christ was and is a servant to us; seeking only to heal and make whole, to cure ills of soul and body by prayer, kindness, compassion and practical love. Jesus does indeed have all power in heaven and earth, but He has not handed on all His powers to mankind. Power to teach the truth, yes; to convey a sharing of His inner life through baptism and the forgiveness of sin, yes; to feed the people with His Body and Blood, yes. These are all powers he has handed on. Equally, while Peter and his successors have direct authority to "bind and to loose", i.e. to make rules and regulations, such rules must be primarily to lift non-essential burdens from humanity (as in the case of Peter alone and Peter in conjunction with the apostles lifting the Jewish requirements regarding 'unclean' food and circumcision). Christ is concerned that burdens be lifted from the faithful, not imposed upon them.
It is quite evident that Christ did not give the Church authority to attempt to root out heretics and torture them into submission, as priests and bishops attempted to do in the 12th century. Equally He did not give authority to a 19th century parish priest in Dunsford and Ardglass to remove my grandmother to Bradford. Such notions of church authority are patently absurd at best and at worst directly and cruelly in opposition to Christ's mandate.
It is an escape from reality to classify such aberrations as things of the past. The dangers are ever present.
Christ is present in each of our parishes, in the minds and hearts of his faithful, and he expects his kind and forgiving friendship to be continued: towards the sexually vagrant, the poor and the dirty, the diseased, the money-makers: the lowest in society - as well as those afflicted by physical and mental illness. It is through us that he now seeks to let each person know how deeply we are loved and valued, with a love that goes beyond the confined, common sense, measured out, watered down version that we often present - and it is the job of the priest (above all): to become one Person with Christ, to make His kindness and love truly present. If he is not doing this he is not doing the job he has undertaken.
Fortunately most priests do quietly proceed with this difficult but not impossible task, one of the greatest difficulties being to escape from the role-playing expected by society, to avoid becoming depersonalised icons of religion. Whether by nature or by traditional seminary education, or by fitting into public expectations, many seem uneasy about allowing their real human personality to be known, as if afraid that public acknowledgement of the faulty, sinful nature we have in common would cause offence.
In my experience the more a man admits the truth about himself the more likeable he becomes; the more he admits his insecurities the more people are able to identify with him. Quite a few priests (and others) seem to think that they must present themselves in public as superhuman, faultless - in order to give good example. By failing to face and present the truth about themselves, accepting their total dependence upon God for such goodness as they possess, they increase the danger of clogging up the wellsprings of humanity, and make it difficult for Christ to communicate the reality of His love through them.
ONE GUIDE and HOPE
As with all other Christians I have only one guide and one hope: the man Christ Jesus, who is Lord and Saviour, and it is only through meeting him, sacramentally and in the person of other people, and, more particularly, through the writings of the evangelists, that I can begin to appreciate the type of man he is now and was in history.
He is the measure of the man whom I must become. Note well: the man I must become. If I cannot become a good man, a kindly human being, reflecting the humanity of Christ, what hope have I of reflecting His divinity? And if this applies to me, without any office in the Church, how much more does it apply to those who share more explicitly and fully in Christ's redemptive priesthood?
Only if we acknowledge the humanity we share with Christ can we be made perfect - perfectly human that is - to the point where we are ready to share fully in His divinity - but perfectly human first.
The time to be truthfully and truly human is surely with us?
"Better late than never!" I can hear my Grandmother say.
