Editorial: Why do priests matter so much? Why has so much time and energy been spent in the last 25 years trying to reinvigorate an institution that is viewed in some circles, with great suspicion? Record editor, Peter Rosengren gives his thoughts.
By Peter Rosengren
As many will – or should – know, the 12 months from July this year have been declared by Pope Benedict as the Year for Priests. One of the reasons this year is in every sense providential is that it will hopefully go a long way towards re-acquainting all those who make up the Church with an authentic concept of the priesthood that appears to have been in many ways diluted in the modern era.
It is entirely true to say that not least among those who need to re-encounter the astonishing thing we call the priesthood are many priests themselves.
It is one of the little-known aspects of the Church of the last quarter of a century or so that, in many quiet and unseen ways, enormous labour has gone into reforming the priesthood on the part of Church leaders such as John Paul the Great and, now, Benedict XVI. One of the clear but little-noticed priorities of both pontificates has been the renovation of the priesthood after the cultural devastation of the affluent cultures of the world from the 1960s or thereabouts onwards wreaked its own havoc on an essential part of the Church.
The havoc was experienced in seminary life and formation – or rather the lack of adequate formation in many countries but especially those which can broadly be described as the affluent westernised nations of the world. Australia can be included on the list. Whatever the precise cultural, theological and philosophical reasons for the decline in the standards of formation and selection experienced in seminary life over the last several decades are not for this paper to lecture everyone else about. What is important and what is heartening is that there has been a clear, consistent and concerted effort from the highest office in the Church and many bishops and leaders of religious clerical congregations, new ecclesial realities, ways, movements and one prelature around the world to reclaim the priesthood for the Baptised, the Church and the world.
But why do priests matter so much? To our society priests often seem like the most uninteresting of all individuals. Actually, priests often seem to our contemporary society as almost the worst kinds of individuals – mild, inoffensive, never to be found disagreeing with anyone, bland, anodyne and without an ounce of courage or character to be found from top to toe. Worse, they don’t know how to be human or to have fun. They walk around saying ‘nice’ things to everyone and concentrating on being ‘nice’ because all Christians are meant to do and be is to be ‘nice.’ They smile pleasantly at everyone during weddings.
If anyone recalls the moral relativist in a Roman collar who was portrayed as the Catholic chaplain, Fr Francis Mulcahy, in the 1960s and 70s TV hit series MASH, they will recognise the characterisation set out above. One problem with the TV model of priesthood is that it is, of course, utterly wrong. Fr Mulchay was enough to make one run screaming from the loungeroom whenever he appeared. But it is one of the popular myths of the Priest that has come to possess the minds of many.
However, to put it plainly, a priest is not meant to be an inoffensive nerd. Priests came in all personality types but a man who is meant, if necessary, to die for his faith, to regularly accompany the dying to their eternal destiny, to hear the worst things in the confessional and to bring the hardened sinner back to love of God, who is meant to shout the Good News of the Death and Resurrection of the Son of God from the rooftops and who delivers Jesus to people in the Sacrament of the Eucharist may be many things, but he can hardly be called by a polite nerd.
So why are priests so important? It is an interesting exercise to reflect on whether Jesus needed to establish the priesthood. Presumably, Christ could have risen from the dead on the third day, appeared to his followers and assured them that his rising from the death proved he was who he had claimed to be. Christ could simply have left it all at that. “Follow me, live according to my law of love and, if you fall, tell your Father in Heaven you are sorry,” is how he could have left the Church – could have, but didn’t. Instead, he established the priesthood with the Great Commission to go out into all the world and make disciples of all the nations.
We can all understand the priesthood better and see its importance by thinking of it as a gift. When one gives a gift, one does so for the good and happiness of the other. One ideally gives a gift because one truly loves the other.
The truth is that Jesus gave human beings – some of us – an actual share in his salvific and redemptive role as the eternal High Priest of God. This tells us something important about the true dignity of human beings. In a certain sense, Christ is telling the human race that the dignity of being made in the image and likeness of God comes with the duty to carry out some aspects of God’s own work in history – the work of salvation of the human race. The unique and particular sacramental vocation is not for all Christians but for those Christ calls to be his sacramental ministers and ministers of the Word, his apostles. All of this is, of course, a mystery, as so much of our faith is a mystery. But it is also true. “We are called – and we don’t know why” is how one priest described part of the mystery of the priesthood to seminarians during an occasional lecture at St Charles Seminary in Guildford some years ago. Although his personality may at times obscure it, your local labourer of the vineyard represents no less a mystery than God who became one of us. His life is often tough and isolated, but like the One who called him his life is for us. For you. You could do much worse than pray for him.