"Not to Us, Lord, Not to Us..."

The Sleeman affair, if I may call the recent foray on the part of progressives to remould the Church into their own image and likeness, made it on to the news last night.  RTE (the Irish media service) tried to do its usual Church bashing.  It seems that the failure of people not to turn out in droves doesn't make any difference and is no indicator that people do not support the campaign.  As you would expect from RTE, one of the aging dissidents was wheeled out for an interview.  This time it was an elderly priest, appropriately attired in an open necked red shirt, representing the new Priests' Association - it seems RTE will now be turning to them for "acceptable" commentary on Church affairs (that might put a few priests's noses out of joint).  He opined about women's place in the Church and how the Church has to change - unfortunately nothing new or enlightening there.

So I see this new association is not to be a forum for priestly support and prayer, but then none of us young priests expected it to be one.  The editor of The Catholic Voice newspaper had attended the association's meeting in Portlaoise a week or so ago, and his account of proceedings, printed in the latest issue of the journal, was very different from the official media reports.  In the newspaper's editorial we are told that the meeting consisted of a group of about 170 mostly aging clerics and not the 300 RTE had reported - so this group could hardly be considered to  represent a significant number of priests in Ireland much less the majority.   Topics under discussion concerned the usual canon of dissent.

There is no doubt that we priests need fraternal support within the priesthood and a forum in which to associate with other priests. We need a community of  brothers in which each of us may continue to grow as servants of Christ and his Church, learn virtue, discuss problems and be ministered to ourselves: a school of holiness more than anything else.  We also need a forum in which we can continue to learn not only about the pastoral ministry, but also continue our theological and liturgical studies.   Sitting around in an indaba plotting the downfall of orthodoxy is no way to support the priesthood or help those within it.  At the end of the day, as priests we serve Jesus Christ through his people, and with him we need to be able to say to the Father with all our hearts the words of the psalm, "Not to us, Lord, not to us, but to your name be the glory" (Ps 115).