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An Abundance of Supply and Demand
Introduction
The shortage crisis
The words of the gospel
today seem as though they were written just for us, the Catholic faithful of
the Archdiocese of Milwaukee at this moment of history: “Jesus looked with pity
upon the crowds because they were troubled and abandoned like sheep without a
shepherd.” Again, they seem written for
us who just this spring of 2002 ordained but one solitary person to the
priesthood. “The harvest is abundant,”
says Jesus, “but the laborers are few, so ask the lord of the harvest to send
laborers into his harvest” (Mt 9:
9-13).
Just about a year ago, we
quoted an article from The Economist Magazine, June 30th, 2001. It was captioned: These days, too few
heed the call. Among many things the
article said, believe it or not, “these are good days for Roman Catholicism
in America!” It litanized the
reasons for such optimism at that time: 172, 000 adults joined the church in
2000; in politics Catholics are the most important swing group in the nation;
much of the social infrastructure in the poorest part of any city in America is
held together by priests and nuns. The Jesuit Order, the article said, has done
arguably more to help the poor than any other non-governmental organization,
and in many poor areas, Catholic schools provide the only decent education.
But a shortage crisis cast its gloomy shadow over that optimism, and that is now compounded by the sex abuse crisis that recently has been brought squarely out into the light of day. The article from the Economist Magazine thinks that both, the rule of celibacy and the rash of sexual scandals, might be closing people’s ears to heed the call to ordained ministry.
The meaning crisis
(What
is a priest?)
But the shortage crisis in the priesthood today is not just about numbers, it is also about meaning. We have also a shortage of meaning when it comes to “priest,” and we’ve had it for a very long time. And our present crisis now forces us to ask ourselves, in a pared-down, bare-boned, forthright manner, what does it mean to be a priest? That question is more important than the question of numbers. It is perhaps the very key to the question of numbers.
In the first reading
today from Exodus the Lord God commands Moses to tell the Israelites: “If you
hearken to my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my special
possession…. You shall be to me a
kingdom of priests, a holy nation” (Ex 19: 6).
That same promise is echoed in the first letter of Peter: “You are a
chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people…” (I Peter
2:9).
If we, God’s people, are
a priestly people, then when we search for a priestly head for ourselves, what
is it that we should be looking for?
Obviously we, the priestly body, should be looking for what we need in a priestly head. What do we need in a priestly head? Do we
need an administrator (one who get
will get things done)? Do we need a
"doctrinist" (one
who will tell us what the church teachings are)? Do we need a legalist (one who will tell us what the
church laws are)? Do we need a celibate (one who will remind us of the
superiority of "non-sex" over sex)? Do we need a male (one who will remind us that this is a man’s world? We have a
whole world full of terrorists to remind us that this is a man’s world.)
Or, at the end of the
day, is it a priest that we, the priestly people, need, and it is a priest
that we must go in search of. Not
very enlightening but we are trying to get a start.
One who is good at mystery (and poetry)
Questions about profound realities are never very easy, and the temptation is not to ask them. But the ever-increasing shortage of priests and the recent exposure of sex abuse constrain us now to ask, “What is a priest, in the first place?” We run the risk of the answer being too spiritual or too “way up there.” Or too innovative and too untraditional. Despite the risks, let’s ask the question anyway.
As a starter, I would say
a priest is one who is good at Mystery.
Mystery is what we encounter every now and then in certain wonderful
events and people around us, and it makes us cry out, “There is more here than meets the eyes.” Mystery runs competition to that other voice
in our lives, which wears us down all week long with its chant, “What you see
is all there is.”
A priest is one who calls the Sunday Assembly to
Mystery. In the Elevation of the Mass,
holding the Bread on high and declaring “there’s more here than meets the eye,”
the priest challenges the Assembly to Mystery.
In the dismissal of the Mass, in the Ite Missa est, the priest
commissions the Assembly to Mystery, to go forth in search of the “more than
meets the eye.” At the end of the day,
that’s the philosopher’s search for meaning or the Gospel’s search for the
“pearl of great price” (Mt
13:44-45).
A priest is good at mystery (good at "the more
here than meets the eye"). I would
say the priest is also good at poetry. Poetry is “the more here than meets the ear.” Poetry is, in fact, the language of
Mystery. Years ago as a young priest,
I read the words of Jesuit theologian, Karl Rahner: "The perfect priest is
a perfect poet." I liked what he said, but at that time I really didn’t
know what he meant. After fifty years I
think I do know now.
In the past, when looking for priests for God’s
priestly people, the culture of the church and seminaries was to search for
good administrators to get things done, or for good “doctrinists” to tell us
what to believe, or for good legalists to tell us what to do. That culture, if it did not positively
exclude “left-handed” thinkers and starry-eyed poets, it at least looked down
upon them.[1]
One who is good at ecstasy
Carl Jung, the father of modern psychology, in his Memories,
Dreams, and Reflections describes the day of his First Holy Communion. He
was in great expectation of that day, believing that something wonderful was
going to happen. The day finally arrived.
The wine tasted bitter, the bread was stale, all took Communion in a
matter-of-fact-way. The minister, his
father, finally dismissed the congregation. They all pealed out of church with
remarkable speed and with a kind of ho-hum attitude. No one was to be found exclaiming like Peter, James, and John on
the Mount of Transfiguration, “Oh how good it is for us to be here. Let’s build
three shelters on this mountain, and hunker down for good.”
On the contrary, the young Jung found himself exclaiming, "Oh how bad it was for me to be there!
I must never go back again." And he didn't. His First Communion was his
last! Realizing that nothing had happened that day, he writes, “Their
faces were neither depressed nor illumined with joy.” They were filled neither with disappointment that nothing had
happened, nor with ecstasy that something wonderful had indeed happened.
That brings us to another
consideration in our pursuit of “What
is a priest?” A priest, I would say, is
one who is good at ecstasy. Oh not the ecstasy induced by death-dealing
drugs but another kind of ecstasy. The
ecstasy that happens in moments of Revelation[2]
in our lives, when the great Veil or Curtain is drawn back momentarily for us,
and we get, as it were, a peek through to the Other Side and catch a glimpse of
Glory. And with the glimpse of Glory
comes ecstasy that makes us cry out, “Oh, how good it is for us to be here.”
It’s like the glimpse of glory which Peter, James, and John experienced in the transfigured Jesus on Mt. Tabor. That ecstasy has Peter exclaiming to Jesus, “Oh how good it is for us to be here. Let’s build three shelters on this mountain, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah“ (Mt 17:1-9). They want to hunker down and stay up there on their “high” forever.
Good at ecstasy, the priest helps the Sunday
Assembly to rise to a Mt. Tabor “high.”
Good at ecstasy, the priest’s Ite Missa est does not dismiss a
“ho-hum” crowd who make a mad dash for the church doors and for a more exciting
world outside. Rather the priest dismisses a crowd whose face seems to say, “Oh
how good it is to be here,” a crowd that almost seems to want to linger on and
looks determined to come back next week.
One who is good at tragedy
Finally, I would say a priest is one who is good at tragedy. (I say “finally” not because this is the end of the discussion. Here I am, a priest, giving you, God’s priestly people, my list of what a good priest should be good at. It still remains for you, God’s priestly people, to offer your list of what a good priest should be good at. Together the both of us will come up with the full answer. I say “finally” not because it’s the end of the discussion, but simply because it’s the end of the homily (for it already page six, and I know how antsy people can get when you’re on page six).
Finally, a priest is one who is good at tragedy; good at the Ground Zeros in people’s lives. Good like that Franciscan priest, Father Mycal Judge, one of the four chaplains for the New York Fire Department. His story is that he had an encyclopedic memory for people’s names, birthdays, and passions. That he knew everyone in New York City from the homeless to Mayor Juliani. That he called all the alcoholics by name, and would tell them, “Look, look you’re not a bad person; you just have a disease that makes you think you’re bad, and that’s going to `f…’ you up.”
The story of his death in the line of duty was one of the first to come out of the tragedy of September 11th. On that fatal day, he had taken off his helmet to give the last rites to a dying fireman when suddenly debris came crashing down upon him. He died there on the spot, and his body was carried off to a nearby church, and there was laid upon the altar. At a memorial held for him, an endless flow of priests, nuns, lawyers, cops, firefighter, homeless people, rock-and-rollers, recovering alcoholics, local politicians and middle age couples from the suburbs streamed into Good Shepherd Chapel on Ninth Ave, an Anglican church, to do a memorial for a Roman Catholic priest. Everyone loved him because, among many things, he was good at tragedy—the tragedy not only in other people’s lives but also in his own, for he himself was a recovering alcoholic.
A priest is good at
tragedy--good not with “faky” words that try to excuse the “inexcusable God”
for allowing tragedy in the first place. Good not with pretentious words that
pretend to explain tragedy away; tragedy has no explanation. But good simply at
wordlessly walking God’s people through the tragic. The priest is good at the
consolation that does not pretend to take grief away but simply stands beside
it.
Conclusion
No shortage of supply and demand
That is what the priestly
people need when searching for its priests--not administrators, not “doctrinists,” not legalists (there are other people for all that). Not even celibates or males, but rather
people who are good at the mystery, the ecstasy, and the tragedy which make up
the fabric of human life. And it is
upon that that we and the church should be expending the psychic and
physical energies of our search. And here is a well-kept secret which we now
announce from the housetops: Of that there is no shortage!
There is no shortage of candidates out there
who are good at what good priests are good at. If shortage there is, it's
man-made, like those gas and fuel shortages that mysteriously come and go. Not only is there a rich and abundant harvest
out there to be gathered into bins; there is also a rich and abundant supply of harvesters out there as well.
There is a rich harvest of women out there, waiting to be gathered into the bin
of ordained clergy. There is a rich harvest of married men out there, waiting
to be gathered into the bin of ordained clergy. And just as it is a waste not to reap the harvest, so it is also
a waste not to reap the harvesters. There is no shortage of supply out
there.
Neither is there a
shortage of demand out there.
The times seem to say that we don’t need priests anymore; that in an age
of technology priesthood, like poetry itself, survives with difficulty and dies
with ease. That's not true. It's not priesthood that's dying! It's the
world out there that's dying--just dying to know there’s more here than
meets the eye; just dying to be
consoled at Ground Zero; just dying to
be lifted up to Mt. Tabor in the Sunday Assembly.