LETTER FROM A YOUNGER MAN ABOUT TO BECOME A PRIEST

While talking on the phone with my sister,I looked over at my bookcase and noticed a piece of paper hanging down from a behind a shelf.  I pulled it out and found a letter written to myself while I was on retreat a month or two before ordination.  It was to be read on my 10^th anniversary which I did and when I moved here must have thrown it behind a set of books to be read when I moved next. 

It was re-read it last night.  So I thought I’d share with you passages from that letter from my 14 years younger self.

It was March of 1998 and according to the letter it was a remarkably warm and snowless winter save for the day the letter was penned, for the grounds of the Jesuit Retreat Center was under several inches of snow.  “I am confident that I am willing and quite content in offering myself for service to the Church,” I wrote to myself, “What a freedom that is.”

“Here is some advice from your junior,” the letter went on, “and if it is idealistic, I apologize.  Don’t be afraid to ask God for anything and always. . . Ask Mary to guard you in your steps and never let a sun pass without imploring her aid through the beads.”

“Be passionate!  At least be passionate about something!  The Church needs no dull persons in times like these.  Be someone people can follow.  You won’t please everyone but you did not become a priest to be liked.  So charge ahead!  Create a vision . . .”

“Remember the arts both for personal growth and for the betterment of the Body of Christ. . . We need the true, the good, AND the beautiful to be effective servants of the Lord.”

“Don’t slack off on your preaching.  Be dangerous.”  This was in reference to one of my favorite preachers in the seminary.  He walked close to the edge and so kept everybody’s attention.  “What is he going to say?” ran through everybody’s mind and so we paid attention and talked about it after.  But he always stayed squarely on the Catholic playing field.  “Be challenging!  Be interesting!  Be merciful! . . . This is one of the reasons you became a priest.  Don’t give in to the mediocre.”

There are a couple of pages that are probably best not made public which ends with this, “30 year olds do not need construction paper projects!  Give them meat to satisfy their longings.  True, one does not get to heaven by knowing more, but ignorance can make it easy to fall away unawares.”

After a bit more personal advice, some issues that were very important in the seminary were brought up and asked if they were still burning hot questions such as inclusive language, women priests, liturgy, and trends in vestments and architecture.

Finally there were some guesses as to where I would be in ten years from 1998.  “You should be finishing up your second five year assignment as a parochial vicar.”  In fact, my first assignment was seven years and my second three, so all in all, pretty close.  I guessed that because of the priest shortage that there was a good chance that I would become a pastor, which I did, but thought it would be in a small ethnic parish in the city, meaning Cleveland.  Instead I have the joy of being the pastor of what I believe to be the finest parish in the diocese in Akron – at least for my temperament.  Every day I thank God that I am at St. Sebastian.

In my letter I assumed my legs would always rest under the same dining room table for the rest of my life – or most of it – once I became a pastor since we had permanent pastorates.  Since then we have moved to term limits and exactly what that means remains to be seen since nobody has gone all six years yet.

“You’re probably completely bald by now.”  Close.

“You became an addict and then sworn off computers.”  Not quite.

“I’m sure you’ve been in and out of a couple tough scrapes, but all is well and you are, for the most part, blessed and happy.”

 

Truer words could not be written.

RANT - COUNTER RANT: THE SEARCH FOR TRUE ARGUMENTS

In this past Sunday’s Cleveland Plain Dealer there was a huge brouhaha over whether women should become priests. There are some points in this debate that might be worth discussing but unfortunately none of these were brought up. Unhelpful arguments arose but it gives us a chance to look at common assumptions and misleading arguments might be addressed by the thinking Catholic.

Mr. Craig Miller wrote in his letter what he believes is “the hallmark of an enlightened society” and then beat up the Church for not agreeing with him. “Diversity of opinion” is the pinnacle of enlightenment for him. I would disagree somewhat. Diversity is great and should be celebrated when appropriate. If Fr. Pfeiffer thinks that the common room should be blue instead of the wonderful green color that I (and all truly enlightened people) think it should be; so be it. Let Diversity reign! But when it comes to 2 + 2 diversity of opinion becomes foolish.  Diversity in and of itself is not necessarily a good.  Besides, if he completely agreed with his own argument, he might have not written at all.  He would have looked at the argument against women priests and said, "Well that's his opinion and must be true for him.  I hold his opinion as valuable as mine."

Now, according to Mr. Miller’s enlightened society we should put everything in the Church up for grabs for personal interpretation. That is simply not who we are. We believe that there is truth and we are all asked to give assent to it. Blessed John Paul brought the discussion of women priests to an end because we were spending so much time and resources on talking about something that Catholics will not change while other things that need LOTS of time and attention were left orphaned.

Mr. Miller further states that there were no Catholic priests during Christ’s lifetime and therefore no definitive statement by Christ was made. Not exactly true but an interesting argument. Actually it was sometime after Christ that the term “Catholic” was coined. But He did hand over the keys, gave directions for celebrating the sacraments, breathed on them (very important) and then sealed them with the Holy Spirit. Tradition holds this as the beginning of the priesthood. If you want to say otherwise, you have to come with a theory as to why Christ did all these things to the Apostles. Unfortunately you have the weight of Sacred Tradition with which to contend.

He also makes the startling statement that Jesus Himself was not a Catholic and that He was in fact Jewish. Interesting. But it is about as interesting as saying that St. Francis was not a Franciscan because they did not give his order that name until after his death. Jesus was CLEARLY moving somewhere and doing something new.

Mr. Miller also makes the claim that since his adversary opined that “since Jesus did not ordain women then we cannot” similar logic means since Jesus did not sire children neither should Catholics. Actually I like this bit of reasoning. It is an interesting point. But it falls short. Jesus (and, in fact God from the beginning) supported and taught about marriage and being fruitful even raising it to the level of a sacrament. We changed nothing. Because Jesus could not bear children in His own womb does not mean that women cannot do it. But part of the Church’s teaching is that Jesus could have easily and freely chosen to ordain otherwise and was in fact quite countercultural in such things but chose not to and did not teach otherwise.

Finally, and most sadly of all, he states that we should have more of an open mind on Catholic doctrine because, after all, ideas such as the Immaculate Conception and Transubstantiation have no foundation in Scripture. Here we have another case of someone stating as fact something that is in fact not true (and I wonder how many people eat it up without doing one lick of research.) Now it may be true that there are different legitimate ways of understanding something like transubstantiation but not the point it is trying to get across – namely that the bread and wine has ceased to exist and it its place is the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ. That is not open to opinion in Catholic circles. And this is in fact what we find in John 6.

I take what I said in the last paragraph back. Here is the finally: He makes the unreasonable comment so common even among intellectuals that there is something horrible about something simply because it comes to us from another century. “13th century dogma” he reports, is stagnant and repressive. Really? Why? If there is “truth” it is true in the 1st century, the 10th century, and the 21st century. As Chesterton puts it, saying that something is not worthy of attention because it comes from, say, the Middle Ages is like saying that it is not worthy of belief because that is what we believed on Tuesday and after all now it is Wednesday. If it is true, it is as true in April as it is in May. Time alone is no indication whatsoever that anything is good or bad.

FRIDAY FAIR - DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT JESUS WAS A BLUE EYED, BONDE HAIRED SCANDANAVIAN?

Someone wrote in recently (I lost the actual wire) that asked what the difference was between men and women being priests. You might find this an odd topic for Symbolic Friday but in actuality it is not. Part of the reason we have, in the Catholic Church, an all make priesthood is precisely because of the symbolic value. Now, this is not the complete reason why there is an all male priesthood (and I stress again the teaching is, in actuality, much larger) but this is an aspect of it.

We start from an understanding of the inner life of the Trinity. From the beginning God the Father gazes upon the His Son and gives all of Himself to the Son Who in turn receives this self gift of the Father and returns it the Father. The love between these two Persons of the Blessed Trinity is so strong and so palpable that it becomes a Third Person; the Holy Spirit.

We come as close as possible to living the inner life of the Trinity here on earth in the marriage covenant. This is stamped into the very creation of our bodies. The husband pledges his life and love to his wife. He does this also physically in that he gives of himself to her in the marriage bed. The wife receives this, mingles this giving with her own gift and returns it to her husband. The love between them is to be so strong and so palpable that with blessing of God, it is to be fruitful and becomes a third person; a child born into the world, a symbol of their love, the one flesh made up equally of both of them.

The number one symbol of Jesus’ care for His Church is that of bridegroom and bride. Jesus is the bridegroom and the Church is the bride. This relationship of love is to bear fruit (80, 90, and 100 fold) by the spread and growth of the kingdom. We hold that the priest, when performing the sacraments, is standing in persona Christi or in the person of Christ. It is not the priest who performs the sacrament, it is ultimately our One True Priest; Jesus Christ. To best symbolize this (keeping in mind this in only one part of larger teaching) a male person best symbolizes Christ. It has nothing to do with talent or ability or holiness but with symbolism. It is not exactly so much about Jesus' gender but what that gender symbolizes in the greater teaching. This does not make "maleness" better or worse, just this part of the equation.

Now, some people will bring up a couple of valid point to consider. The first might be that there are many other aspects to the human person that are ignored in favor of this one aspect. For example, Jesus was not European, was probably not as tall, or blue eyed, or any of the other attributes of which a person may take inventory. But we are not looking for a copy of Christ nor what would be considered incidental attributes but closer to that which is essential to the person. That I am bald or have a full head of hair is incidental to who I am as a man, but that I am male is much more essential to my being. Will we have hair in heaven when we are reunited with our glorified bodies? Who knows? But will there be gender in heaven? Though some would argue it there is much agreement that somehow this will play a factor.

Another point of consideration is that is it not our teaching that on some level we are all to be symbols of Christ in the world? Yes, that is also true. But that is considered in a much different fashion. The symbolic values change in this case. We are symbolizing a different aspect of “being Christ for others.”

This is a very simple answer to a very complicated question but I hope it invites you to explore it more deeply.

SOMETHING TO "MULLEN" OVER

The Catholic Church can be seen by many, including members from within her walls, as being antiquated and discriminatory in its view that the ordained priesthood should be reserved to men. I wonder how many people have left their home in the Catholic Church for another denomination based in large part on this topic.

Sunday night St. Mary Seminary and Graduate School of Theology in the Diocese of Cleveland held their annual Mullen Lecture in which Missionary of the Blessed Sacrament Sister Sara Butler, a member of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission, discussed “The Ordination of Women and the Witness of Tradition.” Formally a strong believer in the ordination of women, Sr. Butler has come not only to accept but also to believe in the Church’s teaching that the ordained priesthood should be reserved to men and that the Church has no authority to do otherwise. There is not enough room here to report everything that she said, but allow me to give the basic argument.

In the Old Testament there is no evidence of women offering sacrifices as a mandate from God. There is a similar lack in the New Testament. Even Mary was not chosen for the priesthood for whom it would have been most fitting. Of course, priesthood is not a reward, and so we take this a step further in noting that Jesus had among his personal companions and disciples many women and he did not pick from them either. In His freedom to choose as He desired He reserved this parituclar office to men and it was not from lack of candidates who were female, worthy, and capable. So the question becomes if the quality of being male in representing Christ is essential to state of the priesthood (as opposed to looking at the mere function of the priesthood.) Is it an indispensable factor such a water being necessary for baptism or bread and wine being needed for the Eucharist? It is the constant and universal Tradition of the Church that this is so. No women were chosen to replace the apostles as bishops or priests and neither has it occurred in the history of the Church that such a thing has happened and been sanctioned. When it did happen it was immediately and universally condemned as was with the case of the two women who were “ordained to the Catholic priesthood” this past Sunday. We actually do not recognize anything as actually having taken place. The two retain the same status they had as before the ordination.

Now, the talk did not touch on the “why” of the question, just the “that”. And it is the case that the Church has consistently believed and taught that it has no authority to do differently in this regard and the strongest argument comes from that Tradition. Scripture alone cannot completely support a male only priesthood (which might show why there is such a difference in the Protestant theology.) Sacred Tradition, which testifies to the unyielding witness to this belief, plays a fundamental role and cannot be ignored in Catholic theology. All arguments to the contrary, and there are some very good arguments, will ultimately come to rest up against this obstacle and it would be dangerous to ignore the importance of Tradition for Catholics as it is one of the fundamental pillars of the Church. Destroying the pillar in this instance risks destroying it in all instances.

In the end we see the male priesthood as being instituted by Christ and that we have maintained His will from Apostolic times on, which has been testified to by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church, by Scripture, and upheld consistently by the magisterium.

If you would like to read more on the topic, you might want to pick up Sr. Butler’s book, “The Catholic Priesthood and the Ordination of Women.”

SURSUM CORDA!

Four men were ordained for the diocese of Cleveland today in a beautiful ceremony at St. John's Cathedral. Thanks be to God!

Here is the tail end of the procession going into the cathedral. In a beautiful act of humility at the end of the mass, Bishop Lennon begged the pardon of the congregation, knelt down in the sanctuary and received blessings from the newly ordained after which he kissed the palms of their hands which had just been consecrated for the work of God.

Here is what the those who were about to be ordained saw just before they entered the cathedral:

LET'S GET TOGETHER AND BE ANGRY

Today four men will become priests in the diocese of Cleveland. There will be the usual protesters outside. There will be the family (though they were not there last year) whose children hold signs that say, “My father is a Roman Catholic Priest.” It has been interesting watching those little tykes grow into adults over the years.

There will also be those who stand on the Cathedral steps as we walk in that hold the banner, “We are priestly people too!” promoting ordination for women. If someone wants to hold that position, fine, but I find it almost as appalling as that “Christian” denomination that protests military funerals. Wrong time. Wrong place. Fortunately it seems that less women and no one under 50 seems to be taking this particular route in protesting.

Let us be honest. Who reading this would not, if they had the power, change something that really bothers them about the Church? I would. In a heartbeat. I also know that many, many people would be very unhappy with the Church the way I want it. First of all, they would have to learn Latin, chant, and look at my back for at least half of the mass and that is just the start of it. But you know what? I get over it. I move on and try to be the best damn Catholic that I can be with what is given to me.

I’m tired of angry Catholics. No, I take that back, I’m tired of whiny Catholics. Every last one of us most likely has some legitimate complaints. With over one billion people in her care someone is going to be disappointed with every decision made. But she plugs along as best she can.

It is Okay to make your beef known. But one must also be humble enough to know that they may be wrong or that it may not be time for their idea to come to the fore (and most probably the former.) But anger does not have a place. If meeting after meeting, gathering after gathering you are tooting the same horn on the same note there is something wrong and it is not with the Church. At some point you must say, “I may believe that this is wrong, but I must stop being angry and become constructive with the tools I have been given.” How many things have not to be studied and taught, how many people turned off to the faith, how many people have to be left unfed, how many visits have to be left unaccomplished, how many opportunities to pray must be wasted, how many vocations not promoted, how many other social justice issues be forgotten, how much time and energy wasted, how many opportunities to volunteer sneered at before we say, “That’s enough. Let us pull together now and get to work.”

It is one thing to debate a topic; it is another to spend your spiritual journey licking nursed wounds and kicking everyone who does not march into your camp. Catholic men and women, it is time to stand up strong and live the faith with reckless abandon. There is enough hurt and pain out there that needs our attention without men and women of faith worrying that they are not getting everything entitled to them. Besides, you and your cause will be much more attractive if you are living a positive, constructive life rather than spending vast amounts of energy moaning about how the system is getting you down. If you are not leading people to the Eucharist, it is not of God.

“Be a force of fortune instead of a feverish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will devote itself to making you happy.” – George Bernard Shaw.

Stop trying to save the Church. The Church is here to save you.

DOES THIS CHURCH NEED SAVING?

Peter gets what I always thought was a raw deal. Christ calls him Satan simply because Peter seemed to care about His well being in trying to save Him from his future crucifixion (Mark 8:27-33). But it is all clarified in Christ's statement, "You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do." In other words, you are missing out on the big picture Peter. Instead of preserving Christ's mission you looked to preserve Christ and, oddly enough, to preserve Christ the way in which you want Him would be to lose Him.

So it is with the Church. An excellent discussion on The Curt Jester (Why Do We Need These Solutions Now) looks at those who say that the Church must be preserved at all costs. All that needs to be done, say some, is to get in line with the prevailing culture (read: married and women clergy, abandoning teaching on pre-marital sex, divorce and marriage, abortion, contraception and the usual host of other issues.) Yet our goal should not be to preserve the Church. The faith is not here to preserve the Church, the Church is here to preserve the faith. If we corrupt the faith to preserve the Church, we lose the need and meaning of the Catholic Church. Yet, if we preserve the faith, the Church will survive. It may not be in the way that we want it, but keeping it the way we want it is thinking like human beings do. We need to think like God does and that means preserving the faith which He gave us above all things.