Tag: priesthood

A Bit of Hope from Rome

I recently got back from two months in Europe, where I visited a dozen countries and the remains of countless Saints. I spoke to American, Maltese, Dutch, and British crowds, with assorted other nationalities mixed in throughout. I boarded a thousand planes, trains, and buses, it seems, and logged many, many miles on the one pair of shoes I took.

Do not recommend dragging a suitcase through the snow over cobblestones.

As always, God did incredible things. I had powerful conversations and beautiful encounters with him and his people, living and deceased. And I gave quite a few talks where he really, really showed up.

But with all the sights (and tastes) of Europe, all the beautiful and wearying moments, all the times that I saw him working when I had the good sense to get out of the way, there’s one series of events that stands out.

Last fall, when I made plans to be in Europe for January and February, it became clear to me that God was asking me to be in Rome for the abuse summit.1 At first, I assumed that I ought to sit in St. Peter’s Square holding up a sign. “Dear Bishops, do your job or burn in hell” was my best plan—that being not a threat but a statement of fact about what’s expected of the successors of the Apostles—but it occurred to me that the caption on the picture of that spectacle would likely be something to the effect of “Disgruntled Catholics demand change” and not “Disgruntled daily communicants urge bishops to grow in holiness,” so I scrapped it.

Next I thought that perhaps I ought to be trying to meet with different bishops while I was in town. This was complicated by the fact that I didn’t know anybody who could arrange such a thing. Given that I can’t get the bishops even to send form letters in response to my anguished cries for action, it didn’t seem likely that I’d manage any meetings.

Besides, what could I say? I talk a big game, but I’m no Catherine of Siena, nor do I want to be. How could I know which bishops needed to be encouraged and which needed to be convicted? My only thought was to ask them how their prayer life is, which I’m sure would come across as tremendously presumptuous (though, to my mind, a fair question to pose to a man who has been made a shepherd of God’s people). I must say, I was quite relieved when it turned out that I couldn’t arrange any meetings with bishops—no need, then, to figure out what to say.

All I could think to do was to walk the perimeter of Vatican City praying the rosary, so I did. And it felt good to do something, perhaps even better to assure people back home that somebody was, indeed, doing something. And if that’s all that had happened, I would have trusted that God was working in that, in the prayer or in the social media witness.

Rosary held up in front of St. Peter's Basilica, Rome.

But while I was going to be in town anyway, I figured I’d ask if anyone wanted me to speak. So a friend who’s a Dominican friar put out some feelers and found me a few events. One was speaking to college students, which is something I’m quite used to. The other three were to priests and seminarians.

I’ve written before about how deeply I love the priesthood, how much I love priests and seminarians. But in the last six and a half years as a hobo, I’ve only once been asked to address them.2 You can actually listen to the talk I gave here—it’s the most I’ve ever felt like Catherine of Siena, to the point that I was still shaking twelve hours later at having spoken that way to priests of Jesus Christ. Given that I took as my text “The road to hell is paved with the skulls of mediocre priests,” that reaction may have been warranted.

This time, though, I wasn’t given such a commission. The first talk I gave was to a group of young English priests and a few seminarians. I was asked to speak on evangelization and twenty men gave up their free evening to listen. They came with hearts eager to hear how they might better draw souls to Christ and responded with beautiful questions about how to speak truth to those who hear the Gospel only as a condemnation of their choices, how to speak about the scandals, how to love their people well. My heart swelled with joy to see these men who weren’t put off by the fact that I was a woman or an American or a layperson. They saw in me someone who knows Jesus Christ and proclaims his name and those were all the qualifications they needed.

The next day, I had the audacity to give a talk on preaching to Dominican friars. I sat before the Order of Preachers and told them how to preach. And again, they came. They listened. They wanted to hear how they might better speak the love of Jesus from the pulpit, and I think they took what I said to heart. I sat before the Lord afterward wondering how on earth I had convinced myself that I had any right to tell the Order of Preachers how to preach, but somehow there was peace. God had given me a word, I had spoken it, and nobody had held up his years in the pulpit or degrees in Scripture to demand that I sit down. They were willing to learn from me.

Finally, I spoke to another group of seminarians (several of whom were already deacons or priests). I spoke on preaching and storytelling, but I began with an exhortation to remember that in being ordained they’re being conformed to Christ the victim and the great high priest. We spoke about being falsely accused and I begged them to unite themselves to the victim heart of Christ that their suffering might be for the glory of God and the salvation of souls, even (God forbid) should they be wrongfully imprisoned.

And again, they listened. They asked beautiful questions about how to build community with lay people, how their priestly fraternity might strengthen their service of their people. One even asked how priests could better respect and listen to lay female theologians, an earnest question that really moved me. They wanted to know how to make their preaching both educated and accessible, how to respond when people make accusations against men they respect. These men gave up their Friday evening to listen to a woman they didn’t know from Adam tell them how to suffer as priests and how to preach.

My friends it gave me so much hope. After months of wondering who the men who lead our Church are listening to, I had become awfully discouraged. My letters went unanswered. Our Holy Father has said nothing. The bishops are wringing their hands but generally not acting. And while I love the Church desperately, I was becoming weary. I’m not going anywhere, but it’s been rough.

And then God put before me dozens of men who have laid down their lives for this Church, men who long for holiness, men who are willing–even eager–to seek wisdom from laywomen. And not only did I remember how much good there is in our priests, and even in our bishops, I began to see how much more good there is in our future. The Holy Spirit is at work for the renewal of his Church. In the midst of ugliness, he is raising up Saints. He’s opening hearts to see the gifts that women have to offer, the gifts that lay people have to offer. He’s speaking to the faithful the truth that the only way the Church is healed is through their becoming holy–each individual, ordinary man and woman.

It’s going to take some time. It’s going to take a lot of work, on each of our parts. But praise God, it’s going to be beautiful.

  1. Great summary at that link if you want to read all about it. [↩]
  2. Perhaps that’s purely a matter of circumstance. Perhaps there’s something about being a lay woman that makes people think you might not have anything to say to clerics and young men in formation. My suspicion, unfortunately, is that it’s often the latter, which is deeply concerning. [↩]

A Letter to My Bishop

Friends, I’ve been praying and thinking quite a lot about what I actually want our bishops to do. I thought I’d share my thoughts with you. I’ll be mailing them to my bishop (and, in some form, to several other bishops). Feel free to adapt my words and use them in your own letter-writing, or to find excellent templates at The Siena Project. Your bishop’s address can be found here.

Your Excellency,

 

You know why I’m writing. It’s the same reason everybody’s been writing. Priests abused children and adults, bishops coerced seminarians into unspeakable acts, and everybody seemed to know. And nobody seemed to care.

I don’t know what you knew. Perhaps your conscience is entirely clear. Perhaps you removed every abusive priest from ministry, chastised and reported abusive and negligent bishops, and wrote the Holy Father when you heard rumors. Perhaps you have been an exemplary priest and a saintly bishop. If so, I thank you. With fierce, desperate gratitude, I thank you.

But perhaps not. If you have been a part of this vile infection plaguing our church, even just through looking the other way, I beg you to confess your sins–not only sacramentally but publicly. You may be judged harshly by those you failed to shepherd; you will be judged more harshly by the Shepherd who appointed you if you continue to abandon your flock.

I can’t know which is the case, but I choose to believe you are who you say you are: a lover of God and servant of his people. And I’m sure that you feel lost and confused and exhausted right now. Believe me, I’m praying for you. Your PR department recommends polished statements and your people demand that heads roll, regardless of whether or not the possessors of those heads have been proven guilty. I can’t imagine how hard it is to be a bishop right now. And perhaps more demands from your people just add to that weight. But in the hope that you are genuinely seeking to bring healing to this broken Church, I’d like to offer some suggestions of practical things to do right now–this week. Come November, I’ll have more thoughts about what the USCCB as a whole ought to do. But today, I offer these thoughts for your prayerful consideration:

  1. Begin by inviting a full investigation by the state’s attorney general and encourage all other bishops to do the same. Open all the files, whatever they contain. All of this will come out in the next ten years–if we deal with it all at once, the Church in America may survive. If we drag it out, we continue to torment survivors, endanger children, and abdicate any moral authority we still retain. The condemnation of wicked men could never cause such scandal as our secrecy has.
  2. Work to extend statutes of limitations such that justice can be wrought in this world as well as the next.
  3. Meet personally with survivors and their families. Meet on their terms: where they want, when they want, with whom they want. Allow media if they prefer, but do not make this a photo opp.
  4. Host town hall meetings throughout the diocese. Listen. Apologize. Don’t defend.
  5. Publicly ask the Holy Father to invite an investigation of what Vatican officials (including the Holy Father) knew about McCarrick and when. We have had enough of silence. Now is a time for fathers to answer their confused and frightened children, not to stand by impassively as the family self-destructs. I do not want Pope Francis to resign. I want him to lead the way in transparency and (if necessary) repentance.
  6. Establish a policy of surveying seminarians semi-annually about their experience of and concerns about seminary life. Visiting the seminaries you send your men to is essential, though it alone is not enough. Make it clear that those reporting sexual misconduct or the abuse of authority will always be granted a meeting directly with you. Their concerns will not go unheard.
  7. Commit yourself personally to public acts of penance and reparation. Bishop Reed in Boston has taken the lead on this, engaging in an act of prayer and fasting that has stunned the Catholic world. Ask the Lord how you can take a stand, showing survivors and all the wounded faithful that you will fight for us, that you will sacrifice yourself for love of Christ and for love of us.
  8. Call on the clergy of your diocese to return to the practice of Friday abstinence. Encourage them to undertake other acts of penance and reparation on behalf of their fallen brother priests and for the healing of the Church. Remind them that they became priests for the salvation of souls and that no good thing comes without effort. The demons attacking our church will be cast out only through prayer and fasting.
  9. Exhort all priests of the diocese to offer a Mass of Reparation every Friday between now and Christmas. (The Solemnity of the Exaltation of the Cross and the Feast of All Souls are, of course, universal feasts that cannot be replaced by votive Masses, though both are particularly connected to this cause as well. It is, I believe, in your power to remove all obstacles to celebrating a Mass of Reparation for every other Friday between now and Christmas.)
  10. Ask every parish to recite the St. Michael prayer following each Mass (before the closing hymn on Sundays) for the purification of the Church and her protection from all evil influences.
  11. Continue preaching on this and asking your clergy to do the same. Not every homily needs to be an apology on behalf of the clergy, but too many Catholics have heard nothing at all and feel abandoned. Just mention that this is a hard time in the Church, that you’re sorry for those who have suffered, and that Jesus loves us in our pain–we just need to know that you aren’t pretending that this is business as usual.
  12. Finally, Your Excellency, if there is anything at all in your past that, if exposed, would force you to resign, skip the drama. Resign now. Tell us everything and retire to a life of penance. Owning up to your sins, begging forgiveness, and doing public penance may just get you canonized one day. Diverting blame and keeping your head down may earn you a place in hell. Catholics are in the habit of forgiving repentant sinners. This isn’t a hard choice.

You will, I hope, forgive my forwardness. But my Church is under attack and you, Excellency, have been clothed in armor and given a sword to defend her. I may pray and fast (and I do), I may call for reform, I may stand before thousands and point them back to Christ in the midst of this chaos they long to run from, but only you can be our shepherd.

Thank you for the gift of your priesthood and for the courage and wisdom with which you lead our local Church. I pledge to pray for you daily by name as you seek to be faithful in carrying out the work of the Spirit.

Yours in Christ through Mary,

Meg Hunter-Kilmer

A Fly on the Wall

I got to spend a few weeks in June around my sister‘s awesome kids. I thought y’all might enjoy some of the theological conversations we had. And before you ask why they’re so awesome, here’s the best I can tell: the adults they know talk frequently and very enthusiastically about holy things–to them and to each other–and they’ve picked up on it.

Playing the Annunciation. Because what else would you do?
Playing the Annunciation. Because what else would you do?

Cecilia (3 1/2): How can you be a saint and a nun?
Me: Oh, lots of Saints were nuns. St. Therese, St. Teresa, St. Catherine Laboure, St. Claire…. To be a saint, you just have to love God and try your best to do what he wants you to do.
John Paul (almost 5): And I like St. Cecilia.
Cecilia: Saint Cecilia? Am I a saint already?!?
Me: Not yet, honey.
Cecilia: Why not?
Me: Well, because you’re not dead yet.
Cecilia: And why not?
Me: I guess because God has work he still wants you to do.
Cecilia: And if I die when I’m a child, I can still be a saint.
John Paul: Like Blessed Imelda!

How to get your kids excited about Saints: read them lots of Saint books, get them Saint costumes to play dress-up in, and suggest with wild excitement that we pretend to be Saints. You should see how excited they are when I ask if they want to play the martyrdom of St. Ignatius of Antioch.

Cecilia (rather upset that Jesus has ascended): Why doesn’t Jesus come back down from heaven?
Me: I don’t know, Cecilia. Do you wish he would?
Cecilia: YES!
Me: Well there’s a great prayer for that. Maranatha. It means, “Come, Lord Jesus!”
Cecilia and John Paul: MARANATHA!!

I’m with them. Come back, dear Jesus, and heal our broken world!

All dressed up for the ordination.
All dressed up for the ordination.

John Paul, an hour in to a 3 hour ordination: It’s the prayer of ordination! (a few minutes later) AND NOW THEY ARE PRIESTS!! My turn!
(tries to push past me toward the aisle)
Me: No, buddy, you can’t be a priest yet.
John Paul, beginning to cry: Why not?
Me: Because you’re not old enough.
John Paul: I AM old enough!
Me: How about when we get home I’ll show you in the Code of Canon Law? Would that make you feel better? In Latin and English?
John Paul, sniffling: Yeah.

It runs in the family. I was once so upset after a football game that the only thing that could cheer me up was stopping at the library to read through a commentary on the Code.

Look at the awe in his face!
Look at how excited he is for his blessing!

Me, during the same ordination: John Paul, the bishop is getting Fr. Chris’s blessing. And after Mass, you will be able to get Fr. Chris’s blessing! And then you will hold out your hands and he will put his hands in them and you will kiss them.
John Paul: Why?
Me: Because they aren’t his hands anymore. They’re Jesus’ hands.
John Paul: Jesus’ hands!! Why are they Jesus’ hands?
Me: Because they were consecrated to celebrate the Sacraments. To say Mass and give absolution and anoint people.
John Paul: And to consecrate the Eucharist.
(later, holding Fr. Chris’ hands) *Gasp* These are Jesus’ hands! (Kisses them reverently)

Many new priests don’t expect you to kiss their hands, but I think it’s one of the most beautiful traditions in our Church. In any other circumstances, it would be wildly inappropriate for me to kiss a priest, but here I’m humbling myself in reverence to the God who works through his priests.

John Paul (reading the back of my shirt): I’m a Catholic. Ask me a question!
Me (playing along and asking him one of the most common): Okay, why do you have to go to Mass every Sunday?
John Paul (clearly distraught): Oh! Because I love Jesus!

It really is that simple. Maybe I should stop with commandments and canon law and go with this: we go to Mass because we love him and we’re trying to love him better.

Lady Victory standing on a corpse saying: Thus always to tyrants! Virginia is so BA.
Lady Victory standing on a corpse saying: “Thus always to tyrants!” Virginia is so BA.

Me, explaining the intense Virginia flag and, thus, what a tyrant is: A tyrant is someone who takes away your freedom. And the greatest tyrant is Satan because he tricks you into becoming a slave to sin.
Cecilia (disdainfully): Um, Satan has no power now.
Me: Why not?
Cecilia (a little condescendingly): Because Jesus died to save us from our sins!

I had to think about this one. I think she’s wrong that he has no power, but the nature of the power he has is different. Before the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ, he had power by the very nature of things. Now he only has the power that we give him by our sin. I think. Is it ridiculous that her theological conclusions have given me so much to think about?

Hope for the Church

One question I often hear as I travel about the country is generally posed by a member of the older crowd, often prefaced by disparaging remarks about my generation.

“Do you see any hope for the Church?” they ask disconsolately.

Hope for the Church? Hope for the Church?? By definition there is hope for the Church. Jesus told us when he founded it that the gates of hell would not prevail against it. There is always hope for the Church because the hope of the Church is Christ, victor over death.

Still, I know what they mean, these faithful grandparents who feel as though they haven’t seen a twenty-something at Mass in twenty years. They see babies having babies and pews standing empty. They watch divorce rates rise even as sacramental marriage rates plummet. There sometimes seems little hope in a Church that’s accused of being irrelevant.

4 million followers. NBD.
4 million followers isn’t that much, apparently, but if you add together all the languages he tweets in he’s in the top 50 in the world.

But ah, there is hope. There is hope in youth programs filled with kids who love Christ. There is hope in the flourishing campus ministry centers, hope in the young families with four and five and six kids and enough John Pauls and Thereses to stock a Catholic gift shop. There is hope in long confession lines and in the wild popularity of @Pontifex.

There is hope in every tabernacle and every Sunday School classroom, but nowhere have I seen more hope than in the home where I ate dinner last night.

Gathered around kitchen table and dining table and card tables were a dozen deacons, all of whom will be ordained in the next few weeks, a handful of seminarians, a bishop, half a dozen priests, and assorted non-clerical types. I’d accidentally shared a holy hour with five of the deacons earlier in the day, startled from my silent distraction by the sight of these strong young men dropping to their knees before a God made weak. Over a marvelous dinner, I saw the fruit of many such holy hours in the kind eyes and passionate conversation of these godly men, each one eager not for the honor due to a priest but for the sacrifice required of a victim.

This morning, a dear friend, Father Joe Kirkconnell, was ordained down here on Grand Cayman and his seminary classmates are here to celebrate with him. Father Joe is a quietly holy man, a man more humbled and overjoyed and astonished at the grace of ordination than any I’ve seen. He is intelligent and pious and kind and somehow he is shocked that God would give him this gift. After the election of the candidate (when the bishop declared that he would be ordained), he let out a joyful sigh of relief, as if even during his ordination Mass he had been afraid they might change their minds. It’s enough to make a person weep,1 seeing how grateful he is for what so many would consider a cross.

victimhoodBut this is priesthood. These men don’t feel they’re doing the Church a favor. They’re awestruck by the magnitude of what is being given them. “These hands,” one said to me. “These hands with their long fingers and their odd wrinkles–these hand will consecrate, will bring God to earth.” They are longing to serve, longing to sacrifice, longing to lay down their lives for their sheep.

Now, I’m notorious for going all catholic fangirl on seminarians, but this time you would have done the same. Watching these men, these brothers in Christ and soon to be brother priests, tease each other over their reactions to stingrays, spend an evening filling glasses and taking plates in service to the others in attendance, and roar with laughter at stories that ended with the punchline, “I never should have asked a liturgist,”2 I was overwhelmed by their joy, their goodness, their servants’ hearts and love for truth.

congratulations Fr. JoeThe first time I asked Fr. Joe if he thought he might become a priest, years ago after we prayed our usual rosary in his dorm chapel, he looked wistfully at me and said, “I hope so.” There was no pride, no indecision, just a longing to belong to Christ and serve his Church. Today, he lay on his face on the floor of the church and offered his life irrevocably to you, whoever you are. Others did the same all over the world. And next week there will be more, and the week after. On and on throughout the summer and beyond.

This year and next year and every year until the end of time, there will be men who throw away perfectly good lives to live for the people of God. And these young men who taunt each other and encourage each other and challenge each other and pray for each other give me hope. Oh, there are bad priests out there. But there are so very many men who are laying down their lives, holding nothing back, pouring themselves out for people who see nothing beyond the collar. Pray for them. Invite them to dinner. Thank them for their service. Go to Mass. Go to confession. (There’s no greater gift you can give a good priest than your sins.) These men who absolve and instruct and consecrate and suffer for you are, along with so many other God-lovers, hope for the Church. May God grant us holy priests.

My dear Fathers, thank you. Thank you for the gift of your life.

  1. Which I did. I probably cried 25 times today. Oh, how I love the priesthood and holy priests! [↩]
  2. Best dinner party of my life. [↩]

Advice to Priests

I was stunned the other day to have a good man, 25 years a priest, ask me for advice. Not with a specific situation either, just “Do you have any advice for me?” I didn’t know what to say to this priest of God, this man who speaks and the Word is made flesh, who grasps the hands of sinners to drag them back from the edge of that unscalable cliff, who leads people to Christ in a more real way than I ever will.

“Pray,” I said. “Love Christ and his Church and pray.”

But he wanted more. And I always have an opinion, even when I have no right to. So add this to the list of things I have no business giving advice on.1

Image courtesy of Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P.
Image courtesy of Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P.

If I could ask one thing of priests, it would be this: celebrate the Sacraments like you believe that they’re real. I imagine that most of you do believe that they’re real. And I’ve been privileged to know many priests whose love of the Lord is so powerfully evident in the way they lead their people in prayer. But that’s not always the case. Imagine if you celebrated Mass completely attentive to the fact that you were about to call God down to earth. Wouldn’t it be slower, more reverent, more intense? Wouldn’t you be awestruck, holding the host in your hand? Would you really make do with a quick bow if you honestly believed—or maybe remembered is the word—that Jesus Christ was truly there? More than just doing the red and saying the black (which is a great start), what if you treated the sacred mysteries like they are sacred and mysterious?

Via.
Via.

In a sacristy in Avila, the words surrounding the crucifix on the wall say, “Priest of Jesus Christ, celebrate this Holy Mass as if it were your first Mass, your last Mass, your only Mass.” If you can’t excite the emotions your first Mass stirred up, can you try to imagine how you would say Mass if you knew you were about to meet God face to face? You are, after all.

I don’t mean to imply that all you really need is emotions—or that if you try hard enough you can manufacture pious feelings. I just mean that your people don’t need good homilies. They don’t need good administrators. They don’t need friendly guys. Those things are all nice, but what they need are pastors who are showing them what holiness looks like. They need to see you and wonder at your love of the Lord. They need to believe that it’s possible to know Christ, and you can teach them that by coming to know him better yourself.

Via.
Image via.

I have some Facebook friends who are priests and will occasionally post with joy about how they love the confessional. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard a bored “Say three Hail Marys now make your act of contrition” after pouring my heart out in the confessional. And I know you’re overworked. But this is sacred: a lost soul crawling home to his Father. What if you heard confessions with the immensity of this work in mind? I know you’ve heard a thousand confessions, and I do hope mine always bores you, but pray. Oh, Father, pray for the grace to remember what it is you’re doing!

Because if you really believed that confession saved souls, that confession was a sinner kneeling at the foot of the Cross and surrendering his hammer into the pierced hands, wouldn’t you do anything to draw people there? Wouldn’t you preach on mercy? Wouldn’t you be in the confessional for hours each day? Or at least for minutes each day? Wouldn’t you offer confession more than half an hour a week? I know you have so much going on. I understand that you’re pastor and teacher and counselor and administrator, but if confession is real, nothing matters more. You have parishioners who’ve been away from the Sacrament for decades because nobody’s asked them to go. Don’t just ask: beg.

From an inspiring post on priests who have given everything for the faithful.
From an inspiring post on priests who have given everything for the faithful.

Baptize babies like it’s the most important day of their lives. Prepare couples for marriage like that’s how God is making them Saints. Anoint like it’s the lifeline holding people to Christ. Confirm like you’re sending soldiers into battle. Spend enough time in private prayer that your public prayer looks more like prayer and less like a formality. The more you love Christ, the more we’ll see that radiating from you. And the more we see it, the more we’ll line up to follow.

I don’t mean to criticize, just to challenge. I’m so grateful for you and for every priest. I have such respect for you and I understand the pressures and the difficulties of wearing a dozen hats and dealing with a thousand different personalities. I know that you’ve got duties that seem to keep you from the confessional and a timeline to stick to for Mass. I know that appearances aren’t everything and that the priest who seems most bored and inattentive might be in deepest contemplation. I know it’s hard to fake reverence when you’re doubting or sick or just doing it for the ten thousandth time. I know that many of you are saints in the making, offering your lives daily for those you serve. Thank you for all that you do and all that you are, for your love of the Lord that  shines through everything you do.

But I also know that sometimes when you make a living challenging others to grow in holiness, nobody challenges you. I don’t speak for everyone, but from one laborer in the vineyard to another: won’t you please show us that you believe what you say? Won’t you please fight for us and worship for us and lead us? Remember the priest you wanted to be 5, 20, 50 years ago and be that man. Be John Vianney or Padre Pio or Don Bosco or Ignatius or Francis Xavier or Ambrose. Be Christ. Be you. But always be his.

My advice to you is the same advice I keep giving myself as I stumble through, halfhearted and distracted: be a saint. Nothing else matters.

  1. Drafts waiting to be finalized include “How to Raise Kids Who Stay Catholic” and “How to Be Good in Bed.” Don’t get too excited—it’s about chastity. [↩]

I’d Make a Great Priest

I’d make a great priest–I really would!  I’m knowledgeable, I’m faithful, I’m an excellent listener, and, boy, can I preach.1  I’d touch hearts in the confessional and set parishes on fire.

It’s not that I wouldn’t be a good priest, it’s that I can’t be a priest.

Look at it this way: those little girls I told you about?  I spend more time with them than their dad ever has.  I flew to Indiana for Megan’s first communion earlier this year; I’d bet money that he doesn’t even know her middle name.  He hasn’t seen them in years; I’m there every summer.  I may be a much better father to them than he is, but I can’t be their father.

I might not be so great at giraffey things like walking on those spindly legs.

Or how about this: I’d be an incredible giraffe.–bear with me here.  I’d be the first singing giraffe ever.  I’d be able to read and write and spell prehensile when blogging about my awesome prehensile tongue.  But I can’t be a giraffe.  It’s not a matter of being good enough–I’m not capable.  I don’t have the giraffeness it takes to be a giraffe, the maleness it takes to be a father, or the essence it takes to be a priest.

What we have to get here is that nobody’s saying women aren’t good enough to be priests.  Nobody loved women more than Jesus.  When he rose from the dead, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene (happy feast day!), and yet he didn’t invite her to the Last Supper.  He honored her above all the apostles but he didn’t make her a priest.  Not because she wasn’t good enough but because it wasn’t possible.

And quit telling me that the Church hates women.  You can’t spend more than 15 minutes around real Catholics without wondering if they don’t maybe worship the Virgin Mary.  You can’t feel the way we do about the blessed Mother and hate women.  So this has to be a matter not of talent but of capability–not of intelligence and piety and compassion but of something innate to men that women don’t possess.

Intrinsic to this whole question is the idea that men and women are essentially different in more than just chromosomes and their biological expression.  That’s what the church is assuming when she says (infallibly, btw) that women can’t be in persona Christi because they aren’t male.2

For a long time, I thought this was stupid.  Do priests then have to be Semitic and have beards and wear sandals?  Don’t be ridiculous.

But those things are all accidents (remember when we talked about substance and accidents?)–they’re characteristics that don’t define a person.  Jesus’ gender, on the other hand, is substance.  It’s essential to who he is.

Think about it this way: if John and Mary pull a Freaky Friday and switch bodies, John doesn’t become a woman.  His maleness is not a mere function of his body–it’s who he is.  We’d say that he was a man trapped in a woman’s body, not that he had become a woman.  He may have long hair, pink fingernails, and great legs, but he’s still a man.

We have to keep this in mind when we’re discussing women’s ordination: the Church has never said that women weren’t good enough to be priests but that they weren’t capable.  Just like my dad would have made a great mom but he can’t be a mom.  He doesn’t have the femaleness required.

So if you’re a Catholic, you accept this because of Scripture (Jesus didn’t ordain women) and Tradition (the Church has never ordained women and has said infallibly that women can’t be ordained).  You can argue all you like that Jesus was restricted by his culture, but then you’re a) ignoring the fact that everything he did flew in the face of cultural norms–prostitutes and tax collectors, anyone? and b) denying the divinity of Christ who would certainly have rejected those customs if he though it necessary, for that time or ours.

But why is this true??  I always got that I had to accept this, but it took a near miracle for me to see why God had designed things this way.  I had to know what there is about “maleness” that is intrinsic to priesthood.  C.S. Lewis (himself an Anglican) explains this brilliantly.  If you’re short on time, definitely read him instead of me.

Lewis doesn’t say much, though, about the argument that really makes sense of all this for me.  He understands that women can’t represent God to men the way that men can, not because they’re not kind or loving or wise enough but because God is masculine in relationship to his people.  God is the initiator, the one who gives to his Bride who receives.  (Forget your personal relationships for a minute and just recognize the significance of the act of sex in terms of what it means to be masculine or feminine.)  So when priests act in persona Christi, they can only do that by fully imaging Christ the Bridegroom.

When he stretched out his arms on the cross, Jesus consummated his marriage with his Bride the Church.  At each Mass, we step outside of time to that one sacrifice.  When the priest takes the host in his hands, he speaks the words of Christ once again, “This is my body, which will be given up for you.”  This moment in the Mass is the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, and the marital act of Bridegroom and Bride.  It is offered by Christ through the person of the priest.

That’s why the gender of the priest is essential.  The Mass is a marital act, an act of complete self-giving by Christ to his Church.  If a woman were the priest, each Mass would be the image of a homosexual union.  Think what you want about gay marriage in America, it’s pretty clear where the Church has to stand on the issue of the morality of homosexual actions (Rom 1:26-27, 1 Tim 1:10, 1 Cor 6:9).  And the Church’s central act of worship has to be in line with God’s plan for men and women as much as everything else the Church does.

If priesthood were a matter of talent, I’d make a great priest.  If Christianity were entirely reasonable (as Lewis says), it would be appalling to deny holy orders to women.  But when we enter the realm of the divine, we have to accept that there may be some truths that counter contemporary human wisdom.

Second wave feminism taught us that equality meant sameness, that if men and women were equal it meant that they were interchangeable.  What makes humanity so beautiful, though, is the difference between and complementarity of the sexes.  And I think the great downfall of second wave feminism, even from a secular perspective, is that it tries so hard to champion the value of women while telling women they have to be men.

Gloria Steinem didn’t argue in favor of respect for the feminine genius, as did John Paul II; she declared that women, being as good as men, were just like men.  So instead of earning the dignity we always deserved while embracing our femininity, we were told to want sex as much as men (and as indiscriminately as boys who are unworthy of the name “men”), to be as unemotional as men (without being bitches), and to work harder than men (since deep down we all know that women aren’t really as smart as men), all while looking hot.

Believe, me, I’m a feminist.  You are, too.  But I understand that to be a good woman, I don’t have to be a man.  I can be as athletic or emotional or nurturing or intelligent as is natural to me without comparing myself to anyone else’s ideal.  I can wear spike heels or Converse, work 10 hour days at the office or 16 hour days at home or never work a day in my life.  I can be girly or tough or quiet or nerdy or all of the above.  I’ve never let my culture define who I am because my self worth doesn’t lie in what I do but in who I am: I am His.

I’ve had people ask me in the past if it’s hard to be a woman in the Catholic Church.  My Episcopalian grandmother tells me every time I see her that it’s a shame I can’t be a priest.  But, having been blessed to accept this teaching, I’ve found that I love the Church all the more because of it.  I would never want to be a member of a church whose doctrine is swayed by the sensibilities of the world.  I feel so blessed to take refuge in a bastion of truth that stands firm in the face of onslaughts from every side.

I did feel a little sorry for myself for a while until I began to understand the beauty of being a woman in the Church.  Sure, men can be priests, but most aren’t.  Every woman, though, can be pursued by divine love in a way that speaks particularly to a woman’s heart.  Every woman can picture herself in the arms of Christ in a way that’s meaningless (or disturbing) to most men.  No, I can’t say Mass, and nothing will ever change that.  But I can read the Song of Songs as a love letter to me.  I can hear the voice of my lover crying out to me in the Eucharist, be lost in the romance of his embrace, and live as a princess in his kingdom.

And I wouldn’t trade that for a sham priesthood.  Not for anything.

  1. Please excuse the bragging here–I’m making a point. [↩]
  2. If you haven’t yet read my most recent post on priesthood, please do. This post won’t make much sense if you don’t have that background. [↩]

What Is the Priesthood?

I was trying to write about women’s ordination per my promise of this weekend, I really was.  But I kept having to parenthetically define my terms, so I figured I’ll sketch out a quick theology of the priesthood today so we’re all on the same page.  Expect the argument against women’s ordination soon.

First, can I just remind you how much I love the priesthood?

Good.

A priest in vestments about to be executed.

I think much of the rhetoric surrounding women’s ordination comes from a misunderstanding of the priesthood.  We tend to equate Catholic priests with Protestant ministers.  They often serve similar functions, but they’re not the same–not at all.  You see, Protestant ministers are ministers because of what they do: preach, pray, lead.  Catholic priests are priests because of who they are.  At ordination, they receive an indelible mark, a mark that can’t be removed.1  This mark makes them alter Christus, another Christ.  Their souls are changed.  Even if they never preach, pray, or lead a day in their lives, they’re still “priests forever according to the order of Melchizedek” (Ps 110:4, Heb 7:17).

Because of this special character imprinted on their souls, priests act in persona Christi, in the person of Christ, when they function as priests.  It’s Christ who blesses you through the priest, Christ who consecrates, Christ who absolves.  In Mt 10:1 (and parallels), Jesus commissions his apostles (the first priests, although they’re not ordained until later) to heal and exorcise, exactly what he’s doing.  After the resurrection (Mt 28:20), he tells them to teach as well.  So Jesus himself sends the first priests out to fulfill his role in the world.

But they’re not just doing the same work as Jesus–they’re doing his work.  In Lk 10:16, he tells them that those who hear them hear him.  He’s giving them his authority and sending them into the world as he was sent.

Why don’t I ever get to confess in a field?

It’s most clear in Jn 20:21-23, a passage where Jesus gives the apostles the power to absolve sins.  He says to them, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  These men aren’t just reminders of Jesus, they’re his presence in the world.  And when he gives them the power to absolve (“Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them”), we can’t help but remember the line “Who but God alone can forgive sins?” (Lk 5:21)  Indeed, only God can forgive sins.  Which must mean that when priests absolve, they do it by Christ’s power, not their own.

Jesus instituted the Sacrament of Holy Orders on Holy Thursday at the Last Supper.  In John 17:17, he prays, “Consecrate them, Father, in the truth” and goes on to say “As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.”  As Christ is the Father’s presence in the world (not the same as the Father but acting on his behalf with his authority), so priests are Christ’s presence in the world (not the same as Christ but acting on his behalf with his authority).  At the moment of this prayer, the apostles became priests.

A Franciscan priest prays with a man about to be executed.

Throughout the early Church (Acts 6:6, 13:3, 14:23; 1 Tim 4:14), the office of priesthood is passed down through the laying on of hands.  In this way, the priests who follow the Apostles share in their priestly character just as Judas’ successor, St. Matthias, enjoyed the same apostolic privileges that Judas had thrown away (Acts 1:26).  This apostolic succession is a top priority in the early Church for one reason: it is absolutely necessary that the Church have priests, not merely ministers.  Preaching and praying and leading are wonderful, but anybody can do that.  To be a priest, one must be ordained by a successor of the apostles in order to be alter Christus.

So when priests function as priests, they have that priestly power not by their own merit but because they share in the one high priesthood of Christ.

I was at Mass with a 3-year-old one day.  Afterward, she saw the priest who had celebrated the Mass walking around in street clothes.  She tugged on my shirt.  “Meg, that man looks like God.”

“No, honey, that’s not God,” I said.  “That’s the priest.”

“I know,” she insisted, “but he looks like God.”

“No, sweetie, he looks like the priest because he is the priest.  He’s not God.”

“I know,” she said, exasperated that I would think she was so dumb as to imagine that we could see God outside of Mass.  “But he looks like that green God what was at the front of the church.” (It was Ordinary Time—green vestments.)  I realized that she, in her youthful credulity, understood in persona Christi better than I ever had.  In Mass, the priest is God.  Outside Mass, of course, he’s not God, he’s just some guy (well, still alter Christus, but functioning as a regular person).  Wow.

A missionary priest anoints a dying woman.

This doesn’t mean that individual priests are infallible or impeccable or even particularly nice.  It means that they act as Christ when they say Mass or hear confessions or anoint the sick or give blessings.  They might be jerks sometimes, but their character as another Christ remains.

Because they are in persona Christi, priests are married to the Church.  Ephesians 5 famously tells us that Christ is the Bridegroom and the Church is the Bride; all of Revelation echoes this.  The cross is Christ’s marriage bed where he gives himself completely to us forever.  This marital covenant with his bride the Church is renewed on the altar at each Mass, where Christ renewedly offers us his very self in the Eucharist.  This is what it means to be a priest: to stand in the place of Christ doing for the Bride what only her Groom can do.  This image of Christ’s marital love for his Church is inherent to the priesthood.

With this understanding of priests as being ordained in the upper room, consecrated to be in persona Christi, and the bridegrooms of the Church, we’ll finally be able to explore why women aren’t capable of Holy Orders.  Soon, I promise.

 

If you’re reading this before 8:15 am (Eastern) on Thursday, tune in to KWKY to hear me talk about discernment.  That’s 8 hours from now.  If you’re up and reading now, I sure hope you’re not up again then.

  1. I know you know a “former priest.”  He’s still a priest (can still absolve sins if the penitent is in danger of death), he’s just not permitted to function as a priest and is released from his obligation of celibacy.  For all intents and purposes, he’s a lay man.  But technically, still a priest. [↩]

With Gratitude to All Priests

I was blessed yesterday to attend the priestly ordination of a friend, a good man whose life is already a great gift to the Church.  I’m headed out soon to go to his first Mass (and I went to confession yesterday so I can get the indulgence–ftw).

Throughout the ordination Mass, watching countless young, smiling Arlington priests (and the three added to their number) and reflecting on the gift of the priesthood, I was overwhelmed by gratitude.

I love the priesthood. I love the collar and the service and the sacrifice and the Sacraments and all the blessings the priesthood provides.  I seriously get giggly when I meet seminarians–I’m just so excited for them!  This year, in an attempt to spread my giddy love of our Fathers, I made seminarian trading cards and handed them out to my students to get them praying for future priests.  I’m not kidding–I freaking love priests.

And so, to all priests, I want to say thank you.

Deacons lie prostrate in a sign of submission to God and his church during the ordination Mass (somewhere awesome with a million vocations--anyone know where?)

Thank you for laying down your lives for Christ and his Church, for giving up your lives to help us get through ours.  Thank you for your obedience, for showing us what it means to submit.  Thank you for the gift of your celibacy, for giving up wife and children for your Bride the Church and your many children.  Thank you for washing our feet, for loving us even when we abuse you.  Thank you for coming into the parishes that were “just fine before he came along” and bearing with us.

Thank you for being on call 24 hours a day.  Thank you for showing up in the hospital room 20 minutes after he called the parish for prayers.  Thank you for talking to her when you found her crying in the back pew instead of just asking her to leave so you could lock up.  Thanking you for being at the morgue, the jail, the courthouse, and everywhere we needed you and no other.  Thank you for your counsel.  Thank you for your silence.  Thank you for being there even if we hardly knew you.

Thank you for loving us even when we take you for granted.  Thank you for standing outside Mass every Sunday shaking hands with people who don’t bother to learn your name.  Thank you for remembering my name.  Thank you for caring who I am and what I do.  Thank you for smiling when babies scream in Mass.  Thank you for laughing and drinking beer and playing golf and just being a man instead of a plaster cast of a priest.

Thank you for loving our children.  Thank you for speaking to the first communicants even if you have no idea how to teach seven-year-olds.  Thank you for laughing at yourself when that was apparent.  Thank you for children’s homilies and skits at Bible school and altar server retreats.  Thank you for the example you set to our sons of what it means to follow Christ with abandon.  Thank you for making them love the priesthood.

Thank you for refusing to be overcome by the world’s hatred.  Thank you for putting your collar back on and standing as a target.  Thank you for continuing to love your people even when they began to hate you because of the evil actions of a few who turned their backs on their call.

Thank you for loving youth.  Thank you for wearing your roman collar under your tie-dyed youth group t-shirt.  Thank you for playing ultimate frisbee in your cassock.  Thank you for showing the girls that there are men who will fight to be chaste.  Thank you for showing the boys that that’s what it means to be a man.  Thank you for the example of a life lived for a purpose.

A Franciscan Friar of the Renewal (I'm pretty sure they all skateboard or rap or something)

Thank you for the Sacraments.  Oh, thank you, thank you for the Sacraments!

Thank you for confession.  Thank you for sitting in an empty confessional for hours hoping someone will walk in to be reunited to God.  Thank you for hearing my confession at 7 am because I couldn’t be bothered to make it to church during scheduled confessions.  Thank you for listening, for never judging.  Thank you for reassuring us that there’s nothing too big for God’s mercy.  Thank you for knowing when I was too broken even to say my own penance and for offering to say it for me.  Thank you for taking our shameful secrets to your grave.  Thank you for hurting with us and hurting for us and wanting us in heaven so badly.

Mass in a ruined church during WWII

Thank you for saying Mass every day–even when I’m the only one there, day in and day out, for 2 months.  Thank you for bringing the Eucharist to the sick.  Thank you for exposing the Blessed Sacrament for adoration, even when youth ministers ask you to come do it at midnight.  Thank you for the sacrifices you make to bring us the Holy Sacrifice.

Thank you for homilies that make me proud to be a Catholic.  Thank you for homilies that remind me that the Mass is about the Eucharist, not the works of man.  Thank you for consecrating the Eucharist so reverently that it moves me to tears.  Thank you for the intensity of your worship and the love in your eyes when you look at your people and when you look at your God.

Thank you for praying over us and praying with us and praying for us.  Thank you for your private faithfulness to prayer, to the Office and the Mass, to your own confessions and rosaries and fasting.  Thank you for fighting every day to be men worthy of the call.

Thank you for preaching Christ to us, for bringing Christ to us, for being Christ to us.  Thank you for putting out into the deep.  Thank you for following him, never knowing where he will lead you.  Thank you for teaching us to trust, for teaching us to love, for teaching us to live.

Dear Fathers, I pray for you every day.  I am so thankful for your sacrifice and your ministry and your love.  Please know that, whatever the world hurls at you, you are loved in return, by your flock and, most importantly, by your Shepherd.

What about you, friends?  Any gratitude to add?