What is it like being a priest?

Priests used to have a sense of camaraderie, but priestly fraternity became unfashionable with the rise of feminism. It was deemed too clerical. One used to have a sense of family with the people whom he served, but now that a priest is limited to six, or at most twelve years with a particular community, he never sinks real roots. He becomes more a consultant than a shepherd, more a distant cousin than a father. And at the age of seventy, just when you  need people who know you and care for you, you are expected to retire, and find someplace to live, preferably a good distance from your parish, lest you cramp the new pastor’s style and you have to figure out some way to make ends meet.

People are endlessly fascinated with us. They love us and they hate us, but they never really know us. We stand in the way of that perfect garden wedding, or we are the saint who showed up just in time at Grandma’s death bed, and now we are expected to show up just in time for every other crisis. I’ve gotten requests to baptize the grandchildren of people to whom I haven’t spoken in years, I am not making this up, because I baptized all the other children and it would look odd in the picture on the mantle if it was a different priest doing the honors. I get emergency calls from people I haven’t heard from in twenty years and who I couldn’t pick out of a crowd of two. We are never just fellow sinners saved by grace. We are what’s right with the Church, or we are what’s wrong with the Church.  It never occurs to people that we are just part of the Church. They, too, are the Church. I cannot tell you the times that I have been dressed in Mass vestments and someone runs up to tell me that there is no toilet paper in the lady’s room, or they can’t get their car out of the parking lot. It does not matter that the hymn has started and the cross bearer is halfway down the aisle. The person who needs the toilet paper or has to get their car out before the dry cleaner closes will forever judge the Church and the Gospel by the fact that you didn’t care enough. Most people aren’t that goofy, but quite a few are. “Father the sidewalk isn’t shoveled.” “ Someone is going to trip over that first step.” ‘It’s too hot in here.” “It’s too cold in here.” “How come you don’t have someone answering the phone on Saturday nights after ten? What if somebody needs a priest?” There are fewer and fewer of us and the demand is always greater.

In addition to all this there is the current anti-clerical climate. We live in an anti-clerical country. Thomas Jefferson, the great founder and author of the Declaration of Independence thought that priests were the enemies of freedom. I suspect that he agreed with Diderot who longed to see the last king hung with the entrails of the last priest. The modern press in particular hates us, and will try to embarrass us as long as it keeps selling news print and TV air time.  We are the enemies of what they see as their freedom and they will always hate us for it. By our very existence we remind them that God has said of certain things, “thou shalt not.....”  Some people think of all priests as depraved because of the sins of some, and they use our sins to excuse their own. In the priesthood you will find yourself under constant scrutiny. The slightest gesture or word can be misconstrued. They will examine your finances, your friendships, your hobbies. I have actually had people go through my garbage and try to see my private papers. I assume by “private papers,” they meant the stack on my desk. I have no private papers. If I set something to paper I assume it will become public knowledge.

Sometimes the people you try hardest to serve will give you the most heartache. I served Spanish prayer groups for thirty of my thirty four years of priesthood and, while the faithful were so good and kind to me, much of the leadership despised me, especially when I questioned their financial practices. One even accused me of taking a check I had never even seen. I believe it was made out for twenty thousand dollars to the Cardinal by the University of Illinois. I have no idea how I could have cashed such a check. I’m not that smart. He was the treasurer of the group and was so anxious to be free of my oversight as the Cardinal’s representative that he was willing to ruin my reputation. Over the course of my life as a priest, I’ve had my house picketed and had petitions signed against me. One group demanded my removal from the pastorate because I dared to call God “Father and not “Mother” and I insisted they use the traditional Catholic formula for baptisms!

I remember sitting next to a fellow on a plane who was getting his doctorate in gerontology, the study of human aging. He told me that the healthiest, longest lived people in the country were monks and nuns. Parish priests, however, had a much shorter life span. I was unimpressed. Many of the men I was ordained with are now gone, and at sixty some of my dearest friends are broken in health, and I need not mention the men who have left the priesthood or resigned in scandal. I have only a few priest-friends left.

In some ways, the bureaucratization of the business of religion is the hardest thing to endure.  There’s a lot of business involved in religion. I’ve built buildings and run what is in effect a small company with sixty employees; teachers, janitors, secretaries, cooks, accountants. I never had a moment’s training in finance or personnel management in seminary. I remember the principal of the school striding up the aisle of the church as I tried to read my breviary after mass one morning. She hissed at me, “There is no heat in the school!!!” I looked at her and said “In all my years of seminary, I never had a single course in boiler maintenance.” I went downstairs, said a prayer to the Holy Spirit, pressed a prominent red button, and the heat went on. His wonders are ever new!

In the current atmosphere of business excellence, it is easy to forget that the Church is not a business. It is a family. The ever increasing bureaucracy which most people simply refer to as “downtown” comes to the office in the morning and goes home at night. I sleep precisely five feet from my computer. They are trained in business practices and know all the “rules and regs.” Sometimes they seem to look at pastors as well meaning incompetents. I remember a meeting at which I mentioned the tidal wave of mail that arrived daily on my desk from the “downtown” offices, all of it of immediate and overwhelming importance, at least to its authors. A diocesan financial official at the meeting sneered at me saying, “Well it’s us folks “downtown” who are keeping your ***es out of jail. (For “***” read a synonym for donkey. I am not making a word of this up.) There are always new  campaigns and strategies and five year plans. I remember an African priest who was simply bewildered that there was never talk of God or actual faith at most meetings he attended. The sadness of it is that he was the only one who noticed.

Because of the diminishing number of priests, it seems that offices “downtown” are increasingly filled with non-clergy and ex-clergy and ex-religious. Just a few weeks ago the Bureau of Sacred Praise, one of the many pastoral offices that exist to help us do our jobs better, hired an ex-priest to give a seminar on how to prepare adults for baptism.  In the words of a colleague of mine, “If they don’t care about the ordained priesthood, why should we?” He used a slightly stronger expression than “care about.” This has happened a number of times. Some of the functionaries of the head office are so firmly rooted in the glorious sixties that they are still holding up the glorious theological lights of thirty and forty years ago, though those lights have long ago given up on the priesthood, and have never held what the Catholic church holds and teaches. It is my hope that they don’t know how much it hurts  those of us who remain in the ministry that they hire those who left. I dread to think that they would willingly cause such pain.

And prayer, sweet, sweet prayer. To be alone for a little while with the Lord. Good luck with that. The real work of the priest, as I mentioned, is Mass, Confession and the Anointing. Add to this the duty to say the breviary, the collection of Psalms, readings and prayers. A priest is required to pray for his flock. It is among his most important tasks. This is part of the purpose of the breviary which is also the backbone of the priest’s inner life. There is always a good excuse not to pray. “I have five masses today,” “I’m on the road.” etc., etc. These are legitimate excuses, but soon they give way to less noble excuses. “I’m so tired I just couldn’t drag myself over to church.” You try to pray at regular intervals as the breviary demands, but you go over to church and the liturgical dance troupe is in the sanctuary practicing its high kicks and turns for the big mass. Or the ladies society is decorating at the top of their voices. Or some such. Prayer is the life of the priest and it seems there is a conspiracy to keep father from prayer. I cannot count the times that I have just found my place in the breviary and picked up my rosary when someone runs into church hollering that the local hospital is on the phone, come quick. Can you possibly say, “When I’m done with my breviary!” Many is the night I have finished my Breviary at the side of my bed, barely conscious of the words I’m reading.

A priest should prepare for Mass with prayer. There are prayers in the Mass book, called the Sacramentary, that are recommended for the purpose. The sacristy before Mass, however, is chaos. In addition to the customary requests for more toilet paper, there are always people who want their dog blessed or who need a quick exorcism or just want to mention that one of the altar boys has started a fire while trying to light the candles or the dear people (who you really do like and want to talk to) who just want to chat. If you tell them, “not right now. I’m trying to pray and get ready for Mass,” well, you’re just not being very friendly. “Whom does he think he is anyway? The priest over at St. Dismal and Precipitous is much friendlier.” I remember the pastor of my youth, Monsignor Sturmendrang. He had a look that could make people run the other way. I just can’t seem to pull it off.

So, why do this? Again the answer is the Mass. The sacrifice of the Mass. Always the Mass. In the old Latin Mass, offered long before you were born, the priest took off his maniple, a kind of wrist band, when he went to preach. The maniple symbolizes the cords that bind the priest to Christ, and Christ to the Cross. The priest, we were taught, was an “alter Christus”, an “other Christ.” When he preached, that was his own, but when he offered Mass, he became Christ crucified, his sufferings bound to Christ’s sufferings.  Everyone suffers. I don’t think that a priest necessarily suffers more or less than anyone else, but his suffering is uniquely tied to the cross by means of the offering of Mass. I suppose in a certain sense that the priest’s life is bound up with suffering in a way that other vocations are not. The priest’s suffering becomes his gift to the Lord, and from the Lord. It becomes a gift of love to the Lord’s People, the Lord’s Bride. If you grow into what priesthood really is, your suffering becomes entirely voluntary, and if you allow God’s Holy Spirit to do His job, your suffering echoes in some small way that of truly great priests like Maximilian Colby, or Padre Pio, or St. Jean Vianney, the Cure of Ars, or like that of Carol Wotyla. It becomes the priesthood of Christ.

God wants to make heroes out of self-centered schlubbs like me, and perhaps you.  The priesthood is a sacrificial life. Every real Catholic lives a sacrificial life, but the priesthood is meant to be a symbol of sacrifice. Its essence is sacrifice. I have known men who became priests because they wanted to help people, a noble motive, certainly. I have known those who were nagged into the priesthood by well meaning relatives and friends, or those who gave priesthood a try just because they weren’t doing anything else at the time. I have also known people who became priests because they thought it was an easy life that came with a certain amount of status. They were the saddest fools of all. 

There is a saying that the only people who make it in the priesthood are those who believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, or those who have a corner office at the chancery.  This is a bit glib. I’ve met some very holy people working at the chancery office, but the meaning still holds that if you don’t fall absolutely in love with Jesus Christ present on the altar, then you shouldn’t be a priest. Do you love Mass? Do you go to daily Mass when you can? Do you go to quiet Masses in small chapels where there are only a few people present, probably a couple of little old pious ladies, or do you just enjoy the grand events and the magnificent liturgies?  I would suggest this: as you discern your calling to the priesthood, start to go to Mass, every day if possible, stop at churches and make visits to the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. This will be your life if you become a priest. All the intimacy denied us as parish priests is infinitely re-paid by the intimacy that we have with Him in the Eucharist.

Happier than I sound, I remain

The Rev. Know-It-All