#300: Our Endangered Priests

EXCERPT:
I have worked with priests most of my life, from altar boy to student in Jesuit schools to parish work. And since beginning my consulting work, I have had several hundred priests as clients. In just the last few months, there has been a storm of stories about the priests I know, their lives, and there work -- stories that seemed to bear a message for us lay folk...

First, morale has never been lower. Many priests feel battered, distrusted, disrespected, abandoned, even ridiculed. They feel scapegoated by both laity and bishops, tainted with guilt by association, and without support for protection against even groundless accusations. The vocation they once embraced for its esteemed role in helping others now seems despoiled beyond repair.

Second, many are suffering mental and emotional overload. Many others are suffering stress-related ailments. Some are succumbing to premature retirement or even premature decline and death. Among the rest, overwork and moral exhaustion are commonplace.

Third, there is a growing generation gap among priests themselves. As the larger pool of older priests ages, retires, and dies, the smaller pool of younger priests are becoming pastors in their own right. But this younger pool is not only smaller, it is also less diverse. It is dominated by conservatives who arrive with an attitude. The outlook is complex, but can comprise one or more of three elements: (1) they feel called to save faithful souls, and have little interest in church renewal, or evangelizing the alienated, or engaging contemporary culture; (2) they are deeply nostalgic for the "golden age" of Catholicism before Vatican II -- and age they never knew and thus tend to romanticize; (3) they may be convinced that Catholicism's current struggles were caused by older priests, and see their own mission to be "cleaning up their mess."

Fourth, there is a significant percentage of priests who, simply because they are gay, feel targeted. They see many people scapegoating homosexuals as the cause of the sex scandal, they know many Catholics believe keeping gays from ordination is the solution to the problem, and they know official policies now embody this belief that gays are not suitable for ordination. The celibate priesthood, once Catholicism's custom-designed (though not by design!) closet for Catholic gay men, has suddenly become a stage spotlit by scrutiny and suspicion.

Fifth, the priest shortage means each priest has more work, while the other declining numbers (in lay ministers, Mass attendance, and collection monies) mean he has less help for that work. In some dioceses, financial pressure on their parishes is increasing even as their personal financial security is weakening.

Finally, there is the long-standing structural problem facing diocesan clergy, who (unlike laity) give up family but (unlike members of religious orders) don't get the community to compensate for that loss. Given today's shortages and struggles, that leaves many rectories (already the loneliest places in the Church) empty, and most pastors isolated.

...Here is the message for the rest of us: today's priesthood is now an endangered species. Its future survival cannot be assured without our help. By “endangered” I mean more than numbers...The priesthood can survive with fewer members -- but not if those members are burnt-out cases, overworked and under-supported, lonely and leery of public opinion, confused about their future and conflicted among themselves.

Once we acknowledge the facts of the current situation, their “endangered” status is simple common sense -- but its implications are not. The only real solution to an endangered priesthood is a priesthood supported, cared for, and ministered to by the "laity" (the Greek word means "the people”) of the Church.

See the Catch-22 here? The very idea of laity ministering to clergy amounts to a radical reversal of roles—roles in place for more than 1500 years, and never more entrenched than among the immigrant families of American Catholics.

Those families produced the vast numbers of priests who led the American Church through the 20th century, but in most places (especially the large urban dioceses) those priests monopolized all ministry. Saint Paul may say we're all called and gifted for service by our Baptism, but for generations of Catholics the only sacrament of vocation was Holy Orders.

So the challenge we face is profound. In a church where laity have long been children to the priest-parents, we now see the "children" called on to care for their failing "parents."

There is no manual for this, so we laity will need to create this new role of caretaker to the clergy by ourselves. But then, life -- even life in the church -- does not come with a complete set of instructions.