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Thank you for this brother. I'd like to share my opinions on what we as priests can do and it centers on the way we lead as priest and the pastorship model we practice.
For 20 years, I have watched the way we Pastor and I've become a veritable collecting point for horror stories of priests with too much power. Simply put, there is no accountability for a priest being a pompous jerk, power oriented or treating his parish as his personal fiefdom.
I have first hand watched priest build fantastic rectories for themselves, make unbelievably poor decisions regarding finances, treat people with contempt and then get "rewarded" by the Bishop with a bigger, better parish to destroy when they are done with the first one.
The typical response of the priest to having his mistakes pointed out? "I'm being persecuted because of my love of the truth!" and people applaud this poor martyr instead of confronting cruelty & arrogence.
We give 30 year olds with no life experience the power to ignore the wisdom of a group of men and women who sacrificed and fought for their parish, all the while balancing their personal checkbooks and raising kids as best they know how. I've seen it first hand over and over.
I've seen priests remind their employees that they are "at will" employees, holding their heads the means to feed their families. I've seen priests gut a the parish savings account to buy bigger better things for the parish without consultation with those who made the savings.
I've seen first hand that we simply have too much power and often very little respect for the value of money. Every penny we get someone bled for, sweated for and many of our brothers don't even think of it.
We have too much power.
We have too much power.
As priest, we need to be holy. Hard core holy. Not hard core traditional, not hard core conservatives or liberals, just plain holy.
We need to lay down our power every time it is appropriate. We need to seek the authority God's People will give, not the power we can impose.
We need to lay down our power every time it is appropriate. We need to seek the authority God's People will give, not the power we can impose.
We need to be humble and stop pretending that a theology degree imparts secular wisdom on us. We need to stop pretending that a call to priesthood is a call to pastorship. If we priests are saints, God's People will respond with might, with sacrifice and with devotion.
Thanks for starting this conversation. I pray I contributed to it well.
