This is excellent. My husband works with priests who are pastors on the admin/business parts of their work, and a huge part of what he does is help them firm up boundaries (or create them they don’t have them already). He’s constantly telling them that a lack of boundaries doesn’t make them more “pastoral” but actually gets in the way of their true vocation as pastors. And all of the priests we know who have burned out or had psychological breakdowns of some kind were the 100% available all the time types.
Also, I am so grateful to have several friends who are my age. I will never have illusions about the humanity of priests because of them.
This reminded me of the Sopranos show and how the wife developed an inappropriate relationship with her priest mostly because she'd ask him for counsel 24/7. Nothing bad happened between them, but it escalated to a point where they had to put space between themselves because no boundaries had been recognized.
I never hear ‘do the red, say the black' before, but I really like that way of thinking about the Bible.
"do the red, say the black" is actually a reference to the rubrics for the mass-- what the priest is supposed to do is printed in red ink, while what he's supposed to say is printed in black.
I actually hadn't thought of it in light of the Bible, but it makes me want to find a copy printed that way and re-read the gospels...
"Rather than giving unusual consideration, this type of clericalism dehumanizes the priest, by expecting an unrealistic or unhuman amount of availability to the laity. Priests are assumed to be somehow universally holy and available. This assumption can lead to an expectation of a nearly supernatural amount of patience and kindness from someone who, at the end of the day, is just a man. "
I get in trouble for this thought, and you're welcome to disagree as well. In my travels, I've noticed that Confession is a point of emotional work for priests. While frequent confession can be and is a good thing, do the laity really need to confess for years about that repeated venial sin? Does Fr. So and So need to hear for the 500th time about how you yelled at your kid, when you could just say a Confiteor or any other like prayer and have it absolved?
A priest shortage means that we absolutely have to roll back our expectations on priest availably and shepherd our shepherds a bit. Spiritual directors need to be laity. Maybe not insist on frequent confession for 100% venial sins, if they are of a non-addictive quality. At the very least don't make "The weekly confession line is super long, so therefore my congregation is super devout" a metric by which we measure ourselves.
Hmmm… I think regular confession even for venial sin is a good thing, but I also think that scruples can make “regular” more often than it needs to be for a lot of people. I’ve heard a lot of priests recommend going once a month for “normal” sins, and I think that seems to thread the needle between the need for absolution and the need for the priest not to get overburdened.
I would tend to agree. Once a month isn’t too bad. My major objection is focuses on using confession lines a metric of a congregation’s spiritual health. Short confessions lines would exist with a group of serious practicing Catholics as well as the indifferent. Interestingly, in the early Church, Confession was something more like an anointing of the sick proposition. Too much Confession would get you thrown out as unserious. Penances might take years to complete and usually it was about the heavy duty things like adultery etc. From my view it’s understanding that Confession = mortal sins= bad = just stop doing that as fast you can, which sometimes goes absent in our “collect all the sacraments you can” culture.
This is excellent. My husband works with priests who are pastors on the admin/business parts of their work, and a huge part of what he does is help them firm up boundaries (or create them they don’t have them already). He’s constantly telling them that a lack of boundaries doesn’t make them more “pastoral” but actually gets in the way of their true vocation as pastors. And all of the priests we know who have burned out or had psychological breakdowns of some kind were the 100% available all the time types.
Also, I am so grateful to have several friends who are my age. I will never have illusions about the humanity of priests because of them.
Thanks for the feedback. It’s genuinely nice to hear I’m thinking along the lines of someone who has a more professional opinion on this.
This reminded me of the Sopranos show and how the wife developed an inappropriate relationship with her priest mostly because she'd ask him for counsel 24/7. Nothing bad happened between them, but it escalated to a point where they had to put space between themselves because no boundaries had been recognized.
I never hear ‘do the red, say the black' before, but I really like that way of thinking about the Bible.
"do the red, say the black" is actually a reference to the rubrics for the mass-- what the priest is supposed to do is printed in red ink, while what he's supposed to say is printed in black.
I actually hadn't thought of it in light of the Bible, but it makes me want to find a copy printed that way and re-read the gospels...
Excellent article overall.
"Rather than giving unusual consideration, this type of clericalism dehumanizes the priest, by expecting an unrealistic or unhuman amount of availability to the laity. Priests are assumed to be somehow universally holy and available. This assumption can lead to an expectation of a nearly supernatural amount of patience and kindness from someone who, at the end of the day, is just a man. "
I get in trouble for this thought, and you're welcome to disagree as well. In my travels, I've noticed that Confession is a point of emotional work for priests. While frequent confession can be and is a good thing, do the laity really need to confess for years about that repeated venial sin? Does Fr. So and So need to hear for the 500th time about how you yelled at your kid, when you could just say a Confiteor or any other like prayer and have it absolved?
A priest shortage means that we absolutely have to roll back our expectations on priest availably and shepherd our shepherds a bit. Spiritual directors need to be laity. Maybe not insist on frequent confession for 100% venial sins, if they are of a non-addictive quality. At the very least don't make "The weekly confession line is super long, so therefore my congregation is super devout" a metric by which we measure ourselves.
Hmmm… I think regular confession even for venial sin is a good thing, but I also think that scruples can make “regular” more often than it needs to be for a lot of people. I’ve heard a lot of priests recommend going once a month for “normal” sins, and I think that seems to thread the needle between the need for absolution and the need for the priest not to get overburdened.
I would tend to agree. Once a month isn’t too bad. My major objection is focuses on using confession lines a metric of a congregation’s spiritual health. Short confessions lines would exist with a group of serious practicing Catholics as well as the indifferent. Interestingly, in the early Church, Confession was something more like an anointing of the sick proposition. Too much Confession would get you thrown out as unserious. Penances might take years to complete and usually it was about the heavy duty things like adultery etc. From my view it’s understanding that Confession = mortal sins= bad = just stop doing that as fast you can, which sometimes goes absent in our “collect all the sacraments you can” culture.