Notebook
I spent my first 12 years in parish ministry as a curate, seven years in a suburban parish, then five in the commuter belt. They say a curate is “a mouse training to be a rat” (!); sometimes I wonder just how scarily effective that training was.
You look at the photo adorning this column and imagine that I must be a dream to minister in your parish. This is far from the case. In fact, I have had rows and arguments with people in every parish I have been assigned to, and I have invariably been in the wrong. You would think that having to write so many letters of apology over the years would teach me to avoid such situations. It never seems to, though.
I once heard an indirect assessment of my fitness for parish ministry: “He preaches a mighty sermon and he is always praying, but he’s a nightmare to work with!” The words weren’t meant for me but they reached me. And maybe there’s truth in them?
Schools
Sometimes when I visit schools I become jealous of the way children are taught now: they often learn in groups, do projects together, they learn that for an assignment to be successful, everyone has to play a part. This is mighty learning, but not the way I was taught in national school. The very individual path to knowledge was reinforced for me in secondary school, college and seminary.
Somewhere along the way, I picked up skills to form teams, to lead and coordinate them, but I am not so sure if I ever learned to be a member, a ‘team player’. And yet this is a key skill for parish life. I wonder if those being ordained today learn it?
In my 36 years of priesthood, I have worn many hats; curate, editor, writer, pastor. At one stage I was diocesan director of parish renewal. I visited parishes all over the diocese, encouraging priests to set up parish pastoral councils. I have put a lot of work into doing likewise in the parishes in which I’ve worked. I wonder how effective a member of such bodies I have turned out to be?
Reopen
Take the parish where I am now located. We faced a crisis last summer. When the call came to reopen our churches for worship, we were far from ready. I knew the tremendous effort involved was more than I could manage. I thought the pastoral council might carry the can, so tried to ‘shoehorn’ them into the task. I ignored the reasons that they might find this hard: their vulnerabilities, the challenges exposure to the virus might bring. And when they wouldn’t row in, I ‘bad-mouthed’ them in these pages: for causing offence, I am sorry.
To become moral and Christian is a lifelong struggle: this human condition continues to drag us mortals down. Without prayer, we’re in trouble, all of us. So pray for priests like me, that we might become as Christian as you.
“A Christmas like no other” seems terribly likely this year
Will we have Mass for Christmas, and if so, how many will be allowed to attend? Will we sing carols, bless a crib, or gather food parcels for the poor? This year’s Feast of the Nativity won’t be anything like Christmas 2019. As with everything else since March, we will adapt to the circumstances, as Catholics in Ireland have shown themselves amazingly adept at doing.
(And any time you find yourself in lockdown, you’re welcome to my kitchen table for Sunday Mass — at 11.30am on Murragh and Templemartin Facebook page).
Goodbye to good council
Is it too late to praise the pastoral council in Newcestown whose term has just come an end? Probably. But here’s what they did: every year they organised bereavement, thanksgiving and graveyard Masses. In the year of the World Meeting of Families, a family picnic in the GAA field followed our Eucharistic procession. A parish native led us in a few days of retreat one Lent. Council members raised funds for the Simon Community. And each January they had a party for people living alone, arranged for January because people had too much on in December and nothing in January — inspired!