Shut Up About My Priest

I'm a sucker for gurus. A bit of a teacher's pet as a student, I still go into new social settings with an autopilot for pleasing authority. Not proud, just sharing information.

So what to do with the authority figure of the Roman Catholic priest, for a girl like me? My introduction to these holy men couldn't have come in a better form: the gregarious canon lawyer who walked Anthony and me through marriage preparation classes. I still admire that he kept a straight face as he came back with the results of our exhaustive questionnaire at one of our first meetings. "You seem extremely well-suited for one another," he began. "Only three major discrepancies are showing up when I compare both sets of answers: money, sex and children." Yes, great news. Because those things are mere periphery in adult life, right?  Alas. We somehow aced a section of the silly quiz called "lifestyle expectations", and the rest is history of some sort.

In many settings, to say the word priest is to invite grandstanding over power, perversion and dereliction of duty. (Money, sex and kids, anyone?) Those cases are tragic and very human exceptions to the rule. We're supposed to pray for them. And prosecute where fitting.

But today my indelicate plea is not on behalf of the men gone astray. I'm talking about the good, smart, dedicated men who serve a billion Catholics. They come from every conceivable echelon of society, and go forth to minister to a crowd who is equally diverse.

Our little family has known about twenty of these men, which I realize is hardly a representative sampling. My data also skews hard in favor of the rareified Western Province Dominicans.

Vicki Thorn, foundress of Project Rachel, admitted her own surprise at the requests of post-abortive mothers to meet with a priest rather than a therapist in beginning their healing. This is a small but unparalleled example of the dark places made light by Reconciliation through our shepherds.

We have also been given friends reclined at table, scholars and counselors, hacky-sack players, wilderness guides, and men who act in persona Christi at the altar. I don't expect these roles to stir reverence in their disinterested detractors. I'm not asking for high-fives, but I am asking for silence. Shut up about my priest.

Secular tyranny has a foe in me because its heretics are branded without so much as a formal creed to violate. I do have some ideas about what it takes to be considered unclean, however. 
I. don't. recycle. Anyone who goes beyond my reduce and reuse inclinations is fine by me. But this is not a moral contest. I'm not in your church.

Extreme and inaccurate characterizations run both ways. The temptation to build a cult of personality around popular priests is a reality. The good ones don't allow it. They point to Christ, in their every action, and our duty includes keeping that distinction clear. One is a guy, sent by A Guy, in obedience to The Guy. Thankfully, my own unfair expectations of priests have been tempered through familiarity. The earthly joys they set aside in order to answer their Holy Orders --- frankly, that sacrifice continues to stun me.

We regularly invite the priests of our Cathedral parish for meals, and our family life is newly animated by each of their arrivals. I hope the cacophany of a young family is replenishing to them. For every casual six hour meal, there have been poignant moments which reveal their mission and set them apart all over again. Some of those moments feel chiseled into the walls of my home. Last year, a favorite priest was late arriving for tacos. We worried. Father Vincent  eventually made it to our door, and out of the childrens' earshot, explained the delay. As he removed his black wool coat and accepted a mug of coffee, he briefly described being called to a wintry driveway to anoint the body of a man who had dropped dead next to his idling pickup truck.

Smug one-liners about Roman Catholic priests too often go unchallenged, and their burden grows because of it. Their burden is my burden, if I'm doing anything right. As the suffering flock looks to these men for guidance, may the title of Father be spoken with the love it merits, or kindly left alone.