Pray for Irish Priests

When my mild-mannered friend Der Gute was preparing to study in Canada, I warned him that people might give him a tough time for being German. It's been at least forty years since we've had a big migration of Germans, so nobody bothers to teach Canadian kids not to be rude to Germans. And World War 2 is refought on TV nightly.

"What do I do if they do?" he asked.

"Tell them you were born in 198-," I said.

So Der Gute went to Canada and, sure enough, people made jokes about his Germanness and some Polish foreign student made his life miserable, but Der Gute hung onto the thought that he was born in 198- and Hitler was not his fault.

This is a terrible week for the Catholic Church in Ireland. Terrible. Of course, it is entirely the fault of some bishops and priests and cops (many now dead) in Ireland, just as the scandals in Irish-dominated Newfoundland and Irish-dominated Boston were entirely the fault of some bishops and priests and cops in Newfoundland and Boston.

If my experience of Canada and the USA are anything to go by, I predict four outcomes: 1. the public at large will blame all bishops and all priests (though not all cops), 2. the public at large will neglect to remember that the kids who were abused were Catholics themselves and use the scandal to demonise practising Catholics, 3. the public at large will suspend their belief that most child abusers were themselves abused as children and 4. innocent priests are going to be insulted to their faces, including ones in their twenties.

This would be a good week to pray for good priests, especially good priests in Ireland, especially good young priests in Ireland. This is a time for laypeople to embrace their good priest friends and to befriend other priests. The worst thing we can do is make good priests feel isolated and defensive and unloved.

Maybe it was a better life for priests when they had as much importance in a village as any other tradesman. A mediaeval secular priest had his cow, his little garden, his little profit, his little church and his pastoral duties. He was not raised above his fellow villagers as a spiritual superman. He was not left in splendid isolation, a rival authority to the mayor or parish council president. However, such simple priests didn't always know how to read or preach, so there were various reforms which led to the situation of the 19th century priest-boss who had lots of obedient parishioners but very few friends, unlimited power but no-one to love.

I have a priest friend who loves to meet married couples. He loves female companionship, and I had to smile once when he enthused about a young married woman he had met, briefly mentioned her husband and said, "That's a great married couple to be friends with." Now I could be wrong, but what I think he meant was, "That's a safe woman to be friends with." And I'm all in favour of priests having prudent and chaste woman friends, woman friends happily married to someone else. And the more friends the better. Safety in numbers.

The difficulty of parish priests in making friendships was brought home to me when I did an M.Div. and listened to lectures about clerical misconduct. There was a strong emphasis on not confusing roles. Just as a doctor shouldn't practise on members of his or her own family, a priest shouldn't depend on the people he ministers to for affection. And, therefore, a priest should look outside his parish for his emotional support. With parishioners, he has to be professional. The same holds true for lay ministers.

A female classmate and I worried about this, since if we got jobs ministering professionally in a parish, that would mean we wouldn't be able to date anyone we met in that parish. Being obsessed with romance and marriage, that was a real problem for us. Meanwhile, we wondered about priests stuck in isolated areas, where the only people around were parishioners. And what about priests (and lay ministers) with no extended families?

So how do priests and laypeople balance friendship and prudence? First, I think laypeople should stop thinking of celibate priests as spiritual supermen. They're single men called to be priests. They like the stuff single men like. They suffer the problems single men suffer. They get lonely on Friday nights. They eat out of tins over the sink. They like to be invited to parties. They like to go out with friends to the movies. They like women who don't make scary demands of them.

So it would be nice if laypeople, especially married laypeople or other single men, asked priests to dinners, parties and the odd movie from time to time. Not teenagers. If you're too young to hang out with middle-aged laymen, you're too young to hang out with middle-aged priests.

Some priests have to turn down their parishioners' social invitations because other parishioners start wondering if there is favouritism going on, blah, blah, blah. That's okay. But it would be nice if people made friends with priests not of their own parish. I do. Meanwhile, priests who don't have friends should consult with their spiritual directors.

Meanwhile, the least we can do for good priests, especially good Irish priests, at this time of horrible revelations about the revolting behaviour of some Irish bishops, some Irish priests and some Irish cops, is to pray for them. So let's pray for them.

It should go without saying that we must pray for the survivors of sexual abuse, too.