The Pope to Priests

Looming over my August has been the letter Pope Francis wrote to priests on August 4. Apparently this is what he did on vacation. As the organization having its unique purpose to ordain women priests, WOC should know what the Pope is thinking about this role. Not that he’s thinking about women in it – yet!

Francis begins with the Curé of Ars. When Southeastern Pennsylvania WOC was exploring how to do witnesses about forty years ago, we heard Cardinal Krol address the priests gathered for the Chrism mass on Holy Thursday. He stressed how none of the church authorities wanted to ordain John Vianney, who was convinced that he had a vocation, unshakably. Eventually, the bishops relented. I felt we had been given the go ahead!  Vianney’s problem was not having an education. That is not what keeps women, so many so well prepared, from the priesthood.

Francis uses Vianney differently: to emphasize that parish priests – and all priests – “serve ‘in the trenches,’ bearing the burden of the day and the heat (cf. Mt 20:12).” Like his metaphor of the field hospital, this image suggests the struggle of ministry: “without fanfare and at personal cost, amid weariness, infirmity and sorrow.” I know I think like the manager I was. If my key personnel had been subject to the kind of attacks that the sex abuse crisis has created, especially in the last year, I would be worried, and I would ask, how can I keep them motivated?

That’s what’s new about this document. Francis quotes from his own writings to encourage priests, to remind them of how they felt when they acted on their vocations, to urge them not to succumb to the “sweet sorrow that the Eastern Fathers called acedia,” to call them to the hope he himself felt was possible just before he was elected Pope, to be open to change and “always on the move,” and to pray to Jesus and Mary. 

Francis also “give[s] thanks for the holiness of the faithful people of God.” He writes from an address to the parish priests of Rome and Evangelii Gaudium:

Nothing is more necessary than this: accessibility, closeness, readiness to draw near to the flesh of our suffering brothers and sisters. How powerful is the example of a priest who makes himself present and does not flee the wounds of his brothers and sisters! It mirrors the heart of a shepherd who has developed a spiritual taste for being one with his people, a pastor who never forgets that he has come from them and that by serving them he will find and express his most pure and complete identity.

Would that we be served by such priests, who can see our actual needs. This letter is a profoundly human document addressed to those responsible for serving the people in God’s name.

BUT it is also profoundly gendered. The priests are brothers, the bishops fathers. They need to support each other in their fraternity. And finally, again quoting from Evangelii Gaudium, the Mary of the Magnificat:

“is the friend who is ever concerned that wine not be lacking in our lives. She is the woman whose heart was pierced by a sword and who understands all our pain. As mother of all, she is a sign of hope for peoples suffering the birth pangs of justice… As a true mother, she walks at our side, she shares our struggles and she constantly surrounds us with God’s love”.

Wine? How did I never notice that; it’s there. Francis also quotes the conclusion of that document:

To contemplate Mary is “to believe once again in the revolutionary nature of love and tenderness. In her, we see that humility and tenderness are not virtues of the weak but of the strong, who need not treat others poorly in order to feel important themselves.”

I never appreciate any woman being identified with serving wine, with motherhood, or humility and tenderness, but I do wonder how the church will ever be healed if we remain in our camps without being willing to be “on the move.” I do believe in the “revolutionary nature of love.” I hope that all priests, all faithful, every gender, can deeply feel that love for themselves and all they want to do for the people of God.