The malaise in the priesthood
is related to
a general malaise in the culture.

Fatherless parishes

By Brian Mullady

n Many parishioners have the experience of calling the rectory and never being able to talk to a priest after office hours. In some places, it is almost impossible to find the priest to attend a dying person although there may be several living in the rectory. Many also have the experience of the practical impossibility of confessing because the times for confession are few and far between. After Vatican II, many priests stated that they wanted to become more pastoral than the priests were before Vatican II. Sadly in many cases this means becoming almost invisible to all but a few close families and virtually unavailable for any but the most necessary and basic sacraments.

To be fair, most priests today are very overworked. They are expected to be bureaucrats and encouraged to surrender most of the basic religious instruction and sacramental action to the hands of diocesan "experts." Sometimes they baptize people or receive them into the church in RCIA without knowing anything about them including the fact that they are living in grave sin. Despite these difficulties, many good and holy priests fight valiantly to nourish the people entrusted to them.

I would like to suggest that for those priests who really do almost desert their flock there is another, deeper cause. Though this cause is rooted usually in a loss of the spiritual life, it has natural roots even in the culture. The malaise in the priesthood is related to a general malaise in the culture. It is lack of engraced masculinity which is expressed in a spiritual absence from the parishioners whom they are to serve. This very absence gives rise to deep unhappiness and depression on the part of many priests. This absence is spiritual and is akin to the spiritual absence of a dysfunctional parent.

This spiritual absence of clergy is analogous to the spiritual absence of natural fathers from the family. In the secular culture, this absence can be traced to a lack of a true grasp of fatherhood. A new book by David Blankenhorn, Fatherless America,1 speaks to the problem of the lack of fatherhood in the secular culture. Coupled with the loss of fatherly identity in natural fathers is the lack of masculine identity. The lack of masculine identity and fatherly identity go hand in hand. Since grace builds on nature, if there is a lack of natural fatherhood and masculinity in America, this could certainly mean that there is a lack of appreciation for the supernatural fatherhood and masculinity which has characterized the priesthood since Christ established it.

According to Blankenhorn, the current crisis in American culture is characterized by the almost complete absence of the father in the family. In fact, there are many who think that, "Today's expert story of fatherhood largely assumes that fatherhood is superfluous."2 In fact, fatherhood is looked on as part of the difficulty in realizing the fullness of life and nurture in the family.

The idea of the superfluous father has led to two complete breaks with the past: the opposition of marriage and fatherhood and masculinity and fatherhood. To correct the current destruction of the family, "[There] must be two propositions about men. The first is that marriage constitutes an irreplaceable life-support system for effective fatherhood. The second is that being a real man means being a good father."3 The first idea tries to "reconnect fathers and mothers."4 The second tries to "reconnect fatherhood and masculinity."5

These two basic divorces can also be seen in the idea of male identity fostered in the priesthood. The basic cause of these divorces is the denial that masculinity involves serving the goodness of being. The original meaning of masculinity was the acceptance of the gift of other which was the basis for the communion of persons. Masculinity like femininity was created to give self to other. The fullness of the masculinity can be seen in Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. The strong and reasonable moral life and emotional structure in man exist to support the affirmation of the goodness of another. Man's strength and initiation in the affirmation of the being of another and experience of communion in good only becomes perverted into desire to take and dominate because of the Fall.

Unfortunately this very desire to take and dominate characterize both natural and priestly fathers now. Service has been replaced by being served. This is caused by an excessively materialist climate where all goods are reduced to objects of use, rather than subjects of love. One psychiatrist expresses this as saying that "the utility appetite has hypertrophied in our modern world, and the irony of it is that the world praises this hypertrophy as perfection."6 This is especially true of men.

Priests show this self-serving tendency in the first place when they divorce their role as man from their service of the spouse, the Church. Practically this takes place when they play with the ritual of the liturgy or believe they can make up their own liturgy, when they teach doctrine which is contrary to the magisterium, when they almost desert the care of souls because it interferes with their own constant adolescent needs to be entertained and satisfied. In these areas they show that even the most central dogmatic and moral teachings connected with the vocation of the priesthood have become an object of use to their own desires. One father has defined the true role of fatherhood as, "Put yourself last."7 Many priests today are almost praised in dogma, morals and liturgy for putting themselves first.

The second place where this self-serving tendency is evident in priests is the divorce of the fatherhood of the clergy from the true idea of masculinity itself. Masculinity today means machismo. One is not present to anyone but oneself. Instead of affirming the being of others, others exist to affirm oneself. For priests, this is lived by a complete lack of "presence" to the family of the parish. One group of fathers described the proper role of modern fathers as "'being there' for family; steadiness; won't bail out."8 "Being there" has ceased to be a value for many priests. The rectory is completely divorced from the "office." The priest is only available as an ordinary person would be in a secular business. Otherwise his time is his own. He treats the parish like a businessman treats a business and often abdicates responsibility for all ecclesiastical business to a committee except the actual pronunciation of the words of institution.

The loss of a true idea of celibacy is also a symptom of the divorce of the fatherhood of the priest from true masculinity. Many look on celibacy as merely the fact of not being able to marry. The largely negative consequences of this point of view become almost impossible to bear when one looks on the church as a job to be done instead of a vocation. The more self-serving one becomes, the less other-oriented one can be. If the priesthood is just a corporation job, then why should one not marry?

But the Church has always looked on celibacy in a much more positive light.

Called to consecrate themselves with undivided heart to the Lord and to "the affairs of the Lord," they give themselves entirely to God and to man. Celibacy is a sign of this new life to the service of which the Church's minister is consecrated; accepted with a joyous heart celibacy radiantly proclaims the Reign of God.9

If masculinity is just self-serving adolescent machismo, it becomes much more difficult to support the idea of total consecration in the religious family of the parish. The difficulties which priests might have had in former times with celibacy take on new urgency.

The only solution for the culture and for the priesthood seems to be to return to the true idea of masculinity which corresponds both to nature and to grace. Blankenhorn expresses this as: "Equating masculinity with servanthood."10 One is a true man because he can go out of himself to give himself for others. All the strength, power and intimacy of the masculine personality only find their completion when they are placed at the service of others. The father does this in a family and the priest must do this in the parish. This can only happen when fathers and priests begin to look outside themselves at the good of others which is desirable in itself and not for some self-serving motive. The human father serves because of reason, the spiritual father serves because of grace.

Traditionally, the fatherhood of the priesthood has been based on the need to nurture the minds and souls of the faithful. The priest is to be a servant who gives himself completely to the community of the faithful. His service by daily presence in the parish is completed and nourished by his service at the altar. According to this way of looking at things, masculinity is the foundation of a giving of self which affirms the being of the others, all the others at every time and in every place.

Only if celibacy is experienced not as a denial of a natural state, but as a possibility for nurturing the life of grace on a supernatural and universal level can the priest find his spiritual roots of presence again. This can only happen if by prayer and self-examination coupled with the desire to root out faults the priest returns to see himself as an extension of the Christ who is in heaven for the church on earth. His role must be the supernatural servant of grace who is present full time to all the people of his parish.

The human father has to rise in the night to care for the crying child. The father often knows boredom, frustration and humiliation in his task of serving the family. He often experiences these in silence lest he alarm the family and spiritually upset them. He proves the strength of his masculinity by his loving and often silent presence. Only a priest who is secure in his complete love for the Church-which he expresses in obedience to her norms of doctrine, morals and liturgical practice and who surrenders himself to his people as Christ does continually on the cross-can be truly male. He will then be all divine presence to his parish.

Lacordaire once beautifully described the priestly life as "to teach, to pardon, to console and to bless always." Our contemporary society is so much in need of truth, pardon, consolation and blessing. Until priests see themselves again as true fathers and true men because true other Christs consecrated to God, parishioners will continue to lose their spiritual identities. Until priests again see their priesthood as a service through presence which is an engraced nurturing, they will continue to be frustrated and unhappy and the parishes will be like fatherless dysfunctional spiritual homes. n

1 David Blankenhorn, Fatherless America, (New York: Harper Collins, 1995).

2 Blankenhorn, Fatherless, 67.

3 Ibid., 223.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 Anna A. Terruwe and Conrad W. Baars, Psychic Wholeness and Healing (New York: Alba House, 1981), 206.

7 Ibid., 210.

8 Ibid., 205.

9 Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1579.

10 Blankenhorn, Fatherless, 211.