One of the most serious
problems facing Catholicism today is the quality of its spiritual leadership in
the face of deteriorating communal values and religious practice. It is no
longer good enough for us priests to simply be priests as a
noun, we have to be able to priest as a verb! By
that I mean we can never be satisfied with simply being designated spiritual
leaders, we must strive with God's grace, to become real spiritual
leaders. A fancy title just doesn’t cut the cake anymore! We simply have
to be more of who we say we are!
I define "spiritual
leadership" as the ability to influence people - through invitation,
persuasion, example and the skillful use of the Church's rituals - to move from
where they are to where God wants them to be.
We surely know today that
organized religion has lost its power to impose unquestioned rules on the
behavior of its members. This turn of events frustrates many priests, leaving
them with a propensity to blame the laity for their lack of faith and the
culture for its "secularism" and "moral relativity" in
increasingly shrill denouncements.
No amount of ranting and
raving, however, about how we ought to be listened to will fix this. The fact
of the matter is, that in a society where "a consumer" is a primary
self-definition, we religious leaders have to not only know what
the truth is and believe it ourselves, we also have to be able
to sell that truth to others. We have to be able to convince
people to see it, accept it and live it. We need to be more than
"right." We need to be "convincing" as well.
What is needed are priests
who are capable of telling people about the love of God in language that no
longer sounds hackneyed and archaic, but in convincing language that resonates
with authority and conviction. It is not good enough for us shepherds to
believe that "grass is good" and "water is necessary," we
have to be able find it and to lead our people to it - sometimes in a barren
spiritual landscape. We shepherds need to be what John Paul II
called "incarnations of the Good Shepherd's love."
When I was a young boy, I
remember going to the circus once. The details are fuzzy, but I do remember one
clown in particular. He pulled a banana out of his pocket and peeled in ever so
ceremoniously. When he had pulled back the peeling completely, he took the
banana and threw it away and began to eat the peeling.
Even though I thought that
was funny as a child, I did not understand till much later why it
was so funny. It was actually a commentary on human nature. It seems that we shepherds
are forever focusing on the container rather than the treasure it holds - to
paraphrase St. Paul a bit!
Surely, most of us already
know that organized religion has lost its power to impose unquestioned rules on
the behavior of its members. No amount of ranting and raving from us about how
we ought to be listened to, and no amount of new editions of the rulebooks,
will fix this. Such fits are simply counter-productive, and the church is up to
its ears in new rulebooks already. We must get better at our ability to influence people
to move from where they are to where God wants them to be!
Instead of blaming ourselves
for our lack of skills of persuasion, and a lack of dynamism in the Church’s
own pastoral structures for evangelization in changing the cultural climate, we
persist in our propensity to blame the laity for their lack of faith and the
culture for its “secularism” and “moral relativism.” We might just
need to shut up and put up!
Instead of blaming others,
the better approach might just be for us to start owning the fact that the real
problem may be our own styles, mistakes and inability to influence others -
though invitation, persuasion, personal example and the skillful use of the
Church's rituals. Pope Benedict has said on a couple of occasions that, even
for him, it was easier to define the truth than it is to persuade people to
accept it and live it out. Instead of looking around for a solution,
maybe we should look within. Designated spiritual leaders need to become
real spiritual leaders. In a society in which being a consumer is a primary
self-definition, the priest and deacon must be good and good at it.
Today he has to know how to hustle, to be innovative, to be a self-starter, to
spark imagination, to sell, to move from a vision to the details of execution.
The People of God already know that God wants them to become holy. The problem
is that many of them don’t know how to become holy and many
of us don't know how to lead them to it! But that’s
our job - to help you to exercise faithfully and fully your call
to holiness in your own vocations.
In this area, the Church has
a problem – a problem that has become abundantly clear to me as a former
pastor, multiple times, and from teaching in a seminary. Seminaries and even
deacon formation programs have always done a good job with personal spiritual
formation, but they are still not doing such a great job forming priests-to-be
and deacons-to-be in the skills of being effective spiritual leaders of
communities. Graduates leave the seminary and deacon formation programs having
been the recipients of personal spiritual formation, but
without much training in how to lead the spiritual formation of a community. This
problem is being exacerbated by the fact that newly ordained priests are
becoming pastors of multiple parishes immediately after ordination and deacons
are being given greater leadership roles within parishes. It is not
enough, according to our mission and ministry, for a parish priest tor deacon
to be personally holy; he also needs to have the skills to lead others to
holiness. It is not good enough for us to be champions of the
"truth," we must have the ability to lead others to the
"truth." As I used to my deacon class every year, their goal is not
just to be sure that the golden light of holiness shines from their rectories.
Their goal is to be sure that the golden light of holiness shines from every home
in their parishes! Instead of wasting time trying to convince people how holy we
are, we need to be able to show our people how holy they
are!
Last of all, priests my age
and older have, no doubt, already discovered the sobering fact that handing
over the administrative duties of the parish to others does not mean that all
of a sudden we are possessed with extraordinary spiritual leadership skills. It
is much easier to balance a budget and build a parish hall than it is to
inspire a congregation to move to a deeper level of discipleship!
Let's don't just pray
for more shepherds, let's pray for shepherds that
are more effective!
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