The phone rang right at suppertime. An hysterical voice on the other end started berating me for not listening to her, for abandoning her in her most dire need, for not really hearing her confession, for being self-centered and abusive towards her and everyone else in the parish. No, rather it was the parish community itself, those egotistical, ungrateful people, who had abandoned her, offended her, tried to “set limits” they knew she couldn’t accept.
This was the third call from her in the past twenty-four hours. Supper was getting cold, and my wife was becoming less and less patient. For several months she had put up with invasive calls from this same person and was getting tired of it. Finally I broke it off and told the person not to call my home again. If she wanted to talk, if she wanted to hear my recommendations—which included her getting therapy—then she should make an appointment, and I would be glad to do whatever I could. There was a loud click, and I never heard from her again. She shortly thereafter went back to the Catholic Church, which she had stormed out of several years earlier, largely, it seems, because the local priest had responded to her demands much as I did myself.
For a long while afterwards I felt awful. She had succeeded in laying a heavy guilt trip on me: true to form, I had “abandoned,” “rejected,” and “insulted” her, “like all priests do to their spiritual children,” she insisted. She was actually becoming a wedge between priest and his wife, and I was allowing it to happen. Should I have yelled at her to “go get help”? Or continued to sympathize with her only to reinforce her co-dependency? Or given up, and opened a grocery store somewhere downtown?
Why didn’t they teach me about things like this in seminary?
Last month the starosta and choir director got into a squabble that threatened to turn into a fight. It ended peacefully enough, but the finale was hardly amicable. Then a couple of days later one of our people heard of a great offer for a used van. She had often urged the parish council to provide transportation for youth outings, so she took the bait, signed papers with a local used car salesman in the name of the parish, and (generously) made a first payment out of her own pocket. In addition to a leaking roof, mortgage payments on the education building and a horrendous problem with termite control, we now have payments to make on a ten year old van that gets twelve miles to the gallon.
Why didn’t somebody warn me about these kinds of things when I was in seminary?
One of our young priests phoned the other day. He’s exceptionally dedicated and conscientious as well as being very bright. He sounded both distressed and depressed. One of his aged, ailing parishioners was on life-support in the local hospital. The medical team, the hospital ethics committee and several family members felt the old man was struggling to die and that consequently he should be taken off the ventilator. The priest agreed. Two of the man’s daughters, however, were determined to draw every breath from him they could. “You people,” including the priest, they argued, “are simply trying to get rid of him!” Take him off life-support, they yelled, and we’ll sue every one of you for wrongful death—beginning with the priest, since he was supposed to be the moral arbiter.
After he told me all this, he added plaintively: “Why didn’t they teach me how to handle this kind of situation when I was in seminary?”
These may be exaggerated (albeit real) situations, but they call up a familiar theme. Why don’t seminary courses provide us with ways and means to deal with such common crises as these? A cynical answer would be that seminary faculty members avoid dealing with matters like this out of fear that if they do, none of the students will go into the priesthood…. But that’s unfair. And it’s also wrong.
The point is, there are a great many aspects of priestly ministry that can be learned only by direct experience in a parish context. Our seminary intern programs provide invaluable experience in this regard, and they need to be expanded. Massively expanded, so that every one of our future clergy; and anyone—ordained or not—who will be working, praying and otherwise dealing with people on a close, personal basis, can profit from this vital aspect of seminary education. Similar programs need to be developed and funded for clergy already in the field, to give experience with a broad variety of situations in which fragile, sinful human behavior threatens the well-being of our parishioners and parish communities.
Seminaries are not equipped to offer training in dealing with such daily realities as co-dependency, obsessive-compulsive disorders, or the panic and grief that so often accompany the impending death of a loved one. Courses in pastoral counseling and bioethics, for example, can offer valuable information and insight. But seminaries are simply not made to deal with many of the critical issues that occupy, preoccupy and often distress our clergy and others in the Church who hold some form of pastoral responsibility.
Perhaps in addition to a father confessor, each of our priests needs an experienced elder—a practiced and spiritually sensitive priest or lay person—who can serve as a more or less official mentor. Even if the person doesn’t have all the answers (and nobody does), the possibility to talk on a regular basis with someone we trust, for whom we feel a certain affection and respect, goes a long way toward easing stress and providing pastorally appropriate answers to “crises in ministry.”
What we should be taught in seminary, in addition to normal course content, is that each of us needs another member of the Body of Christ to offer us a renewed vision of authentic priesthood. This means someone with whom we can share—in total confidence and confidentiality—the problems we face, both personal and pastoral, knowing that this person continues to pray for us and remains available to listen and to hear what we are saying. In brief, each of us needs an older brother or sister in Christ, who knows us, cares for us, and offers us in daily prayer to the guidance and the mercy of God.
No seminary curriculum can provide this kind of support. It is a matter of personal relationship, of friendship and love. It is a precious gift that only God can offer us, one for which we can and should pray, if need be, with tears.