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THE HEART OF PRIESTHOOD
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The Heart of Priesthood
SEVEN REVOLUTIOARY OBSERVATIONS BY
Father William McNamara O.C.D.
In preparation for the general assembly of the world Synod of Bishops which discussed “The Formation of Priests in Circumstances of The Present Day,” the Bishop of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia gave me the Lineamenta, the Vatican’s thoughtful approach to that segment of the Synod. It was a superb statement. The Bishop asked me to make some suggestions of my own based on my experience as counsellor and retreat master for so many priests in Canada and the United States.
It was encouraging and inspiring to hear the Bishop’s final recommendation of a “propeadeutic” or “spiritual” year for prospective seminarians. Daniel Murray’s trenchant plea for such a year of formation must be heeded.
Most of my time outside the Hermitage is spent working with priests and seminarians. I have been asked to concentrate on those areas because they seem of the utmost importance to the Church. Priests constitute the large number of leaders in the Church. They are richly endowed by grace and in a position to be uplifting and transformed in the twentieth century. As Cardinal LaVigerie put it, for the priest “there can be no compromise between holiness, at least in desire and sough after with courage, and absolute perversion.”
After forty years of experience with priests and seminarians, here are seven observations:
1) The Church itself is in such a mess, the work of the priests so unsatisfying, and their lives so unnatural, and therefore inevitably unholy, I admire them for persevering in their priesthood and their ministry. After every retreat or workshop where I speak of humanness, heroes, holiness, prayer, deep faith and celibate love, as well as the absolute necessity of a simple, daily contemplative lifestyle, based on a God-centered life in Christ, the priests agree but add sadly and adamantly: “ It cannot be done because of the system’’ I say to them ‘’You can do it but you’ve got to be heroic. If the human condition and the messy, muddled Church (not the Magisterium ) force you to be heroic, to really exist (i.e. “stand out”), in the dull drowsy masses of mediocre humanity, the unhappy situation is redeemed by your creative fidelity.”
The charm and glory of the priesthood is found only in heroic virtue and creative fidelity. For the priest this is the “right glory” and literally, the meaning of “orthodoxy”: ortho = right: doxy = glory. This is why one of the Desert Fathers said, “ the theologian is one who prays right.”
Obviously the dissident priests and theologians don’t pray right. Though this is what I say to the struggling priests in whom the vivifying Spirit is stifled, to the Bishops and the Holy See I would say: Please change the “system” radically. It isn’t working. It cannot work. It is against nature. The supernatural life is aborted.
2) Changes should begin in the seminary and be intensified – not measurably increased, but spiritually intensified – in the ongoing formation of priests unto the end. The end is rightly understood as either death or realized union with God. Death, of course, is the final breakthrough; but it would be egregious folly to wait till then for the direct and immediate experience of God called contemplation. Action without contemplation is blind. No one can give what he does not have. The apostle is one sent by God, personally, with a message that is caught, not taught. Once the good infection is caught, then the mystical experience – meeting God, the I-Thou relationship – can be interpreted and explained. But doctrine without that inner light is bound to be dull and dreary. The ministry is reduce to a mini-spree. The life of the Church is institutional, intellectual and mystical. Without a thriving mystical life, the institutional dimension becomes abhorrent, so people – even priests – don’t read. Religion without mystical experience is a corpse.
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