Dundrum House

22 November 2006

It is good to be here again and to have the opportunity to take some time to reflect together and to help one another to put our ministry and its challenges in perspective. A clear focus of our assembly this year is the question of stress and pressure. At least it is a subject that we can all identify with!

I don’t want to anticipate the things we will be discussing during these days, but I would like to suggest a context in which we might look at them.

The priests of the diocese of Albano had a discussion Pope Benedict last September – I sent you a copy of it by email at the time. I think it is worth recalling the exchange between the Pope and an elderly priest because it sums up many of the points we need to look at seriously if we are to deal sensibly and creatively with the situation that we are facing in the coming years.

The old priest, Fr Zane, asked this question: “Young and old, we all feel ourselves inadequate, in the first place because we are so few in the face of so many needs and we all have different backgrounds; we also suffer because of the scarcity of vocations to the priesthood. For these reasons we are often discouraged, trying to patch a bit here and a bit there, often able to do no more than first aid without any definite plans. Seeing so many things to be done, we suffer the temptation to privilege doing at the expense of being, and this inevitably has an effect on the spiritual life, the conversation with God, prayer and charity (love) for our brothers and sisters, especially those who are far away. Holy Father, what can you say about these things? I have reached a certain age…but these young confreres, can they have hope?”

We can sympathise with the stress and pressure underlying that question. We all feel the demands on our time and the need for our ministry; we all feel the questions posed by the realisation that for the whole of the diocese we have only one seminarian – and that is one more than many other dioceses have; we know well the feeling of patching and doing first aid without any clear picture of what our ultimate priorities are; we know well the pressure of ‘doing’ rather than ‘being’ with very little space left to give prayer the priority it should have if our ministry is not to be running on empty; and we who are in the last decade of our active ministry can be tempted to take refuge in the cop-out that ‘it will last my time’ even though we know that it would be a betrayal if we were content to leave ‘these young confreres’ with no sense of hope and purpose other than to tidy up the house before finally locking the door.

We have, of course, over the last decade or so, had the additional pressure that the whole child abuse issue has brought to us, both in recognising the pain of victims and their families and in the horror of recognising that some of our brother priests throughout the country and in other parts of the world have done such harm to children and to the Church and have brought their own lives into disaster. We also recognise the pain suffered by our brothers who were falsely or mistakenly accused. This is an area full of no-win situations and impossible dilemmas.

That was one of the areas Pope Benedict addressed at the Ad Limina visit:

“In your continuing efforts to deal effectively with this problem, it is important to establish the truth of what happened in the past, to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent it from occurring again, to ensure that the principles of justice are fully respected and, above all, to bring healing to the victims and to all those affected by these egregious crimes.”

In relation to taking the steps necessary to prevent this from occurring again, I want to thank you and your parishes for cooperating so well with the process of information and working on parish policies. All but three of the parishes are in that process and most have their parish policies approved. It is important that we all support one another in this. The final date for the remaining parishes to get involved is the end of January. It is essential that this deadline be met so that we do not find so much effort by so many parishes let down by a few.

We also have to keep on reflecting about how the principles of justice can be fully respected for victims and accused and above all how to bring healing to victims and to all who have been affected. That last element is one that we need to think about. The bringing of healing and indeed of care and justice to all is not something that can be left to any individual or group. Caring and healing and being fair and well informed in our attitudes is something that makes demands on the whole community, the whole body of Christ. It is perhaps the only area of this sad story where we have not really begun to learn the lesson. Here, as in many other areas of crisis and challenge, not least the challenge of priestly ministry in a changing world, what we really have to learn is that these issues are issues about our life as the community of Christ’s followers. Anybody, clerical or lay, who thinks it is somebody else’s problem is part of the problem themselves.

In relation to what Pope Benedict said about establishing the truth, we must honestly face the truth and deal with it. It is important to discover the whole truth. Unfortunately, the untiring effort of the State to focus exclusively on the Catholic Church in this area does not suggest a willingness to look at the whole picture. I suspect that nobody wants to look down that appalling vista.

Before I get too stressed myself, I’d better return to Fr Zane! The Pope said two things to him, both of which are essential. The first was about accepting our own limitations:

“The words of Gregory the Great… that each one must recognise his own weakness, apply also to the Pope. The Pope too, day by day, must recognise his own weakness, his own limits… In any case, let us accept this: that it is only together that we can compose the ‘mosaic’ of a pastoral work that will respond to the greatness of the challenge…

What should I do at this time in the Church, with so many problems, so many joys, so many challenges in relation to the universal Church? So many things happen day after day, and I am not able to respond to all of them. I do my bit. I do what I can. I try to find the priorities. And I am happy to be helped by so many good collaborators... And only with that network of collaboration, which inserts me with my limited capacity into a wider totality, can I and dare I go forward.

And so, naturally, even more so, a parish priest, who is on his own, sees that so many things remain to be done in this situation briefly described by you, Fr Zane. And he can only do something ‘patching’ as you put it, carrying out a kind of ‘first aid’, conscious that one ought to be doing much more. I would say, then, that the first necessity for all of us is to recognise our own limits with humility, to recognise that we ought to leave the greater part of our concerns to God.”

That is number one for us ‘to recognise our own weakness’, to see ourselves as part of a great mosaic of pastoral work, to ‘do what we can’, to try to find the priorities’ , ‘to recognise that we need to leave the greater part of our concerns to God’.

That is easier said than done. But if we could make a start on it here it would be a very important step. It will be a painful task. Like the process of rationalising the Mass schedules it is hard but the alternative of doing nothing would be much harder.

We need to recognise that we are stressed, that in most parishes we are trying to do what was done by a greater number of priests in the past; we are also doing it in a culture which is far less appreciative. I know that individual parishioners can be very supportive of their own priest, but the general culture certainly is not one that sees much place for the church outside of weddings funerals and first communions.

The whole community of the baptised people forms the great mosaic of the pastoral life of the Church – parents are the first and most important educators of their children in faith; the vocations that God gives echo and are sustained in a living community; pain and hurt should be confidently spoken and should be met with healing love in the life of the community; the Gospel is brought to bear on the world by those who live in all the various areas of politics and business and the life of a neighbourhood by people who draw their strength from the faith and worship of the community. If that sense of mission is lacking in the community as a whole, the situation will not be solved by us running around trying to do things that we plainly cannot do. We would be better to sit down and ask how we can allow that vocation and mission of all the faithful to be understood.

Our goal is not to try to do everything ourselves; it is to awaken what Cardinal Ó Fiaich called the ‘sleeping giant’ of the whole Church and particularly the lay church. The task we are facing is simply impossible if we regard it as a task primarily for ourselves.

Not only are we stressed, but we can see how things are going to develop. There will be, we hope, one ordination in the next seven years. So however bad things are now, they will be a lot worse when we are ten years older! Either we can close our eyes and ignore what we can see coming – a sure prescription for stress that festers in our hearts – or we can try to ‘find the priorities’, ‘do what we can’ and recognise that ‘we ought to leave the greater part of our concerns to God’.

The second point that Pope Benedict made to Fr Zane, was even more fundamental:

“As for the interior life, to which you referred, I would say that it is essential for our service as priests. The time we set aside for prayer is not time taken away from our pastoral responsibility, but is in the proper sense pastoral ‘work’, and it is praying for others… This is proper to the Pastor, that he is a man of prayer, that he stands before the Lord praying for others, representing the others, who, perhaps, do not know how to pray, do not wish to pray, do not find the time to pray. So it is obvious that this dialogue with God is pastoral work!

I would say, therefore, that the Church gives us, almost imposes on us – but always as a good Mother – to have time free for God, by means of two practices which are part of our duties: to celebrate the Holy Mass and to recite the Breviary. But more than reciting it, carry it out as a listening to the Word which the Lord offers us in the Liturgy of the Hours. We must interiorise this Word, be attentive to what the Lord says to me in this Word… The Church gives us this freedom, this free space of life with God, which is also life for others.”

This is the most important reason why we cannot allow ourselves to be caught up in an increasingly impossible race to do everything. If we try to do everything and leave no space for the freedom and interior life which give fruitfulness to our ministry then we are wasting our time, however hard and stressfully we are working:

Pope John Paul put it bluntly:

“When ,,, [the primacy of holiness] is not respected, is it any wonder that pastoral plans come to nothing and leave us with a disheartening sense of frustration? We then share the experience of the disciples in the Gospel story of the miraculous catch of fish: "We have toiled all night and caught nothing" (Lk 5:5). This is the moment of faith, of prayer, of conversation with God, in order to open our hearts to the tide of grace and allow the word of Christ to pass through us in all its power: Duc in altum! On that occasion, it was Peter who spoke the word of faith: "At your word I will let down the nets" (Novo Millennio Ineunte 38).”

I hope that this opportunity to let down the nets into the deeper waters will be fruitful for us all. And I hope our gathering in the Spirit will help us to see more clearly what is asked of us – not to try with diminished numbers to do everything that was done before, but to reflect calmly and full of hope on the Good News and on the thirst for it which often lies unrecognised in hearts that do not even know their thirst, hearts that do not know how to pray or do not wish to pray.

Benedict XVI said to us at the end of the Ad Limina Visit:

“Help [your people] to recognize the inability of the secular, materialist culture to bring true satisfaction and joy. Be bold in speaking to them of the joy that comes from following Christ and living according to his commandments. Remind them that our hearts were made for the Lord and that they find no peace until they rest in him (cf. Saint Augustine, Confessions, 1:1).

So often the Church’s counter-cultural witness is misunderstood as something backward and negative in today’s society. That is why it is important to emphasize the Good News, the life-giving and life-enhancing message of the Gospel (cf. Jn 10:10).”

And he said to Fr Zane:

“We have two thousand years of the history of the Church, with such sufferings and with such failures: we can think of the Church in Asia Minor, the great and flourishing Church of North Africa, which disappeared with the Muslim invasion. Therefore, parts of the Church can really disappear. But on the other hand we see how through so many crises the Church has risen with a new youthfulness, with a new freshness…

So also in difficult times when vocations are lacking, the Word of the Lord remains forever. And whoever – as the Lord himself says – builds his life of this rock of the Word of Christ, builds well. So we can be confident. …[S]eeing the Church of today, seeing, with all the suffering, the vitality of the Church, we too can say, we have come to believe and know that you give the words of eternal life, and therefore a hope which does not fail.”

As Pope John Paul pointed out in Knock, we are in a new continent, looking for new ways to understand more profoundly and carry out more effectively the mission we have received from Christ. More profoundly and more effectively – in other words it is a message that makes real demands. A following of Christ which would simply wait to see what the priest asks people to do or would simply take part in the Sunday liturgy would be a caricature. It has to fill our life. The first commandment is to love our Lord and God “with our whole heart and soul and might”. Perhaps we do not sufficiently believe and preach the world changing nature of faith in Christ Pope John Paul said, “It would be wrong to think that ordinary Christians can be content with a shallow prayer that is unable to fill their whole life. Especially in the face of the many trials to which today's world subjects faith, they would be not only mediocre Christians but "Christians at risk".” ( Novo Millennio Ineunte 34 ).

What is not in question at all is the truth and power of the message and the deep need for it in people’s hearts. But we, the whole Christian community are the ones who need to reflect on the message deeply enough and live it intensely enough in our new continent so as to awaken the hearts of others to our joy and our conviction and our knowledge that we are loved by God. That does involve looking for new ways to allow the world to see the fundamental truth and decision of Christian life: “We have come to believe in God’s love for us” ( BENEDICT XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 1 ). May the Spirit guide us into those ways.