Commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the Vatican II documents, Optatam Totius and Presbyterorum Ordinis, both dealing with the Sacred Priesthood, Pope Leo penned an apostolic letter titled “A Fidelity That Generates the Future.” Although an overtly positive effort, the Holy Father nonetheless felt compelled to include these lines:
The issue of formation is also central to addressing the phenomenon of those who, after a few years or even decades, leave the priestly ministry. This painful reality should not be interpreted solely in legal terms, but requires us to look carefully and compassionately at the history of these brothers and the many reasons that may have led them to such a decision. (n. 11)
The Pope hits on a number of remedies, without necessarily connecting them to the unfortunate phenomenon of clerical defections. When John Paul II assumed the Petrine office, he faced a situation in which 100,000 men had abandoned their priestly vocations over a ten-year period. He staunched that hemorrhage in a variety of ways.
In this essay, I would like to identify several issues that give rise to the current problem, from the perspective of having served as a seminary professor, a vocations director, and currently as a mentor for many seminarians and young priests.
In no particular order, consideration must be given to these matters.
• Seminary life is community life. Most priests today live alone. Even when two or more live together, they do not eat together or pray together. The average rectory today is a hotel with a cross on top.
• Formation programs keep adding years as though that will address the problem, which it does not and cannot.
• Most seminaries do not provide their students with a spirituality of study and a deep appreciation for theology, which is to say, their intellectual formation is poor.
• Financial compensation for Catholic clergy is the lowest in the country for any religion. One bishop told me the rationale: “Keep them poor, and you keep control.”
• Priests are caught in an unenviable vise between what they call “chancery rats,” who cannot stop meddling in their pastoral work, and laity with “stole envy,” who are wanna-be priests. Any complaint lodged against a priest is taken seriously by diocesan authorities.
• Education in and experience of chastity is woefully lacking, such that young men are coming to priestly formation having been sexually active for years, often enough in both directions, making celibate continence all the more difficult. And how many of these poor fellows are addicted to pornography, starting even in childhood?
• At least two generations of priests have grown up now in an atmosphere where delayed gratification is nearly unheard of and rarely promoted, which does not translate well into a vocation in which human satisfaction is not always immediate, if it comes at all.
• Most lay folk fail to affirm good priests for a proper celebration of the Sacred Liturgy, for a good homily, or for “being there” when needed. One person said to me, “Why should I congratulate them for doing what they’re supposed to do?” Which seems not to recognize that “doing what you’re supposed to do” today often takes great courage.
• For decades now, seminaries have not trained men to be shepherds but to be perpetual sheep, easily controlled. And of course, “leading from behind.”
• That methodology has been fueled by a creeping feminism that has invaded the Church, among other things, making men feel bad simply for being men.
• Most priests are not faithful to the Divine Office, with perhaps a slim majority praying no more than Lauds and Vespers.
• All too many priests have dual wardrobes: Gammarelli cassocks and Brooks Brothers lay attire, a practice subtly encouraged in seminaries where students wear clerical garb for class and Mass and then switch off to lay dress for the rest of the day, thus presenting the model of an “on-duty, off-duty” vision of priestly life.
• Priests are concerned that properly exercising their confessional praxis will get them into trouble. Someone confesses “sinning against purity,” which needs to be followed up by the confessor with, “How did you sin against purity?” but which has led not a few “penitents” to report the priest to the diocese for “sexual harassment.”
• When a priest’s phone screen shows the chancery number, most men freeze in fear: “What am I being accused of?”
• The preceding twelve years of the Francis pontificate were a non-stop assault on priests and seminarians—unlike the twenty-seven years of the John Paul pontificate of love and affirmation of priests. Signs point to a return to the John Paul II approach so far in the Leo pontificate, thankfully.
• In many dioceses, young priests—almost universally “conservative” or “traditional”—are assigned to obnoxious, dictatorial pastors imbued with “the spirit of Vatican II,” leading to hellish living situations and constant conflict over liturgy and pastoral practice.
• Young priests are forced to violate their consciences and to submit to liturgical practices they dislike (e.g., female servers, extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion; Communion in the hand).
• Priests are made pastors way too young. They know they lack the experience to lead a parish, which causes terrible insecurity.
• Priests are burdened with too many parishes. One priest of my acquaintance has five parishes, separated by less than ten miles; adding all five Sunday Masses together, he has fewer than 300 people. Bishops are afraid to close parishes due to lay push-back, but are not afraid to place the heavy yoke on the shoulders of their priests.
• Seminaries do not prepare men for parish administration or the school apostolate. Summer assignments could easily be used to offer courses to address such lacunae.
• As Cardinal Avery Dulles predicted, the Dallas Charter has driven a wedge between a bishop and his priests. Most diocesan clergy hold their Ordinaries in disdain and regard them with fear. Most bishops treat their priests like indentured servants, rather than the brothers and closest collaborators called for by the Second Vatican Council.
• Last but by no means least, men have been coming to us from a culture and families where commitment is a rare commodity; they have not been schooled in the ability to make a firm decision from which there is no turning back. I saw this forty years ago as a young priest asking my freshmen boys in high school once a year why they would and/or would not want to be a priest. The first negative response was always: “Priesthood is forever!”
Some of the difficulties I have identified come from the broader culture, which means we need to attend to them through a long, painful process of evangelization, which should and can come through our Catholic grammar schools and high schools (which means clergy have to promote their use and guarantee their catholicity).
Most of the other concerns I have highlighted can be more easily handled, but they require attitudinal changes on the part of both bishops and priests, especially by bishops becoming fathers and not CEOs. Not infrequently, when a priest and bishop come into conflict, the bishop reminds the priest that on the day of his ordination, he promised the Ordinary “obedience and respect.” The beautiful gesture of an ordinand’s hands being placed into the hands of his bishop goes back to feudal times, as a knight pledged his fidelity to his lord. In return for the knight’s “obedience and respect,” the lord pledged his protection. Most priests do not experience that protection anymore.
The priesthood has never been an easy vocation to live (and, of course, marriage is not, either), but when the buffets come from within and from without, one can understand why young men are shaken. While we cannot forestall the external attacks, we can—and must—confront those which are of our own making.
Pope Leo concluded his apostolic letter quoting St. John Vianney: “The priesthood is the love of the heart of Jesus.” He then went on in his own words to declare that such love is “so strong that it dispels the clouds of complacency, discouragement and loneliness.”
May each of us in his own calling do everything possible to ensure that our priests never succumb to “complacency, discouragement and loneliness.”
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Cupich, Seitz, Martin…
“Some of the difficulties I have identified come from the brooader culture . . .”
No kidding.
Only remedy – the rest of this paragraph. What’s the hold-up?
After reading this article, I can see why thwarted, disillusioned priests are signing up for the SSPX training program and a life that is centered, not on talk and busy-ness, but one centered on Christ, growing in holiness and self-respect. The PC church (Post-conciliar, or Politically correct, whichever you prefer) has denigrated priesthood by elevating a misleading and false notion of a “general, lay priesthood” to the point that it seems an obvious move by the hierarchy to someday just remove the consecrated priesthood out of the way, almost, altogether. I say “almost” because we do need the sacraments and they cannot be conferred (with the exception of baptism) without consecration, i.e. ordination. That said, I can see the church becoming so desperate that hosts will be consecrated by the one or two remaining priests in a diocese and delivered to churches for use in pre-consecrated masses one day. Meanwhile, again, the SSPX grows . . . and why not? There, the priests are valued, appreciated, respected. They hold a divine office and are respected as such. They’re “clerical” – involved in the lives of their parishioners because they can afford to be. Not a single SSPX priest takes a parish “alone”. They are all safely situated in priories where their brother priests divide amongst themselves their tasks, priestly duties and fellowship. Deo gratias.