Fr Gary Chamberland pictured with Fr Rolheiser. For our new series on priests and the challenges in their busy lives, Garry O’Sullivan sat down for an exclusive interview with Fr Ron Rolheiser speaking on this topic.
Fr Rolheiser, could you speak a little bit about the state of priesthood, the challenges for priests these days?
“Well, one of the big challenges is that there is just a flat-out shortage of priests, you know, like, okay, I’ll give you the Canadian and United States situation. I’ll do a priests’ retreat now and one third of the priests will be from other countries – one third.
I think up to now, dioceses, certainly Canada, United States, they patch it by bringing in people from Africa, from Asia, and different places. Not that that’s a bad thing. Some international clergy is good, but it’s not a long-term solution.
That is not the solution for a local church. And so this is a big crisis. And I don’t think it’s fully recognised because, it’s steady as she goes, we’re still patching and so on. I don’t think we’re looking ahead far enough to see what’s that going to be like in 25 years.
I’m not sure what it’s like in Ireland, but in the United States, with religious vocations really, really down, diocesan vocations used to be good. But I’ll give you an example. I teach in a seminary in Texas. And when I got there in 2005, we had 100 diocesan seminarians there. Now we have 50. And the seminary down in Houston, about the same, so you’re getting half the guys you used to and of that half most of them are not native-born Americans.
It’s a big crisis. Some places like Canada are trying to do it by amalgamating parishes. So bigger, bigger mega parishes, that is also a patch job, how big can it get? It’s a temporary patch. But we just must add more clergy, pure and simple.
For long range health and stuff, if you’re clergy, that’s not an answer”
And not only that, but we are also killing the guys we have. I gave a priest retreat in Pittsburgh and at the end, the vicar came in and he says, ‘bad news for you guys, we’re just so short, there’s no more sabbaticals. You can do something short. Go for a week or whatever. But this idea of three months or a year, we just can’t do that right now. We just don’t have the people for it.’
For long range health and stuff, if you’re clergy, that’s not an answer.”
What are the solutions?
Married clergy would be a solution. And the Church has to decide if they want to go in that direction. For now, you’re right, women priests is off the table for now. Remotely, there could be a question of women deacons or whatever. Regarding the laity. I’ll give you an example. In the 90s, I was provincial in western Canada, there was a shortage of priests and what some bishops were doing, pretty creatively, was putting a lay person in charge of a parish, and they would have a priest come in every two or three weeks, say Mass, consecrate hosts, etc.
And sometimes this was a nun, sometimes a lay person highly trained and they would do a very good job. The people would like it, a lot of times they’d say, we don’t need a priest, we need someone to come in and consecrate some hosts, but that’s not the solution either.
Sometimes it’s going to be some creative resurrection somewhere”
Again, those are creative patch jobs. It patches it for a while, but, really, I don’t know the answer. And then sometimes when you look at Church history, oftentimes you can’t pre-think an answer. Sometimes the answer comes along with somebody coming with an absolutely new vision.
I’ll give you an example. The Church has been in this kind of situation before. And then Francis of Assisi comes along, takes off his clothes and walks naked and walks out of Assisi and we got 700 good years out of that. Sometimes it’s going to be some creative resurrection somewhere. With an answer. So see right now, as far as we can think, the only solution would be right now married clergy, because they’re not going to ordain women and vocations… And importing from Africa and Asia to a certain extent, that’s a good thing but it’s not the answer for our churches.”
How do priests look after themselves under all this pressure?
“Well, I think today when I speak to priests it’s to help them keep their morale going and to be happy creative priests you know, like, if I’m a priest and say every day I’m in a crisis, what’s going to happen? Working just out of crisis mode, you know we trust God. And you do what you can.
There’s a great scene. If you’ve ever seen the movie Of Gods and Men, of these Trappists who were martyred in Algeria, and when al-Qaida came the first time, it threatened them. And then they had like nine months till they came again. The Abbot said, ‘we went back to our life’.
That’s all you can do, go to bed and say it’s God’s Church”
The bells, the garden to sit in, it’s what we have to do. It’s what they did. So be a happy priest. Do what you can. You don’t have to save the world. You just have to work in this parish. We can torture ourselves or on the other hand say, ‘What can I do healthily and what can’t I do’ and just accept those limits.
They tell the story about Pope John XXIII, which I think is true. They say some nights he went to bed and said ‘Goodnight, it’s your Church’. That’s all you can do, go to bed and say it’s God’s Church. There’s a danger of getting a saviour complex.”
Aren’t priests expected to be at everything, to do everything, to be a Jack-of-all-trades person?
“I try to talk with priests in spiritual direction or with seminarians, and that is in our lives, the tension between laying yourself out for the gospel and taking care of yourself long range.
Somewhere in-between self-care and self-sacrifice. I always tell priests ‘you can burn out, or you can rust out, so try to find the in- between’. See the danger in a priest’s life is there’s always something. It’s a funeral. It’s this or that, whatever, you want a day off but this woman is sick in the hospital, you go to see her.
The crisis is going to go on for the next 50 years”
And then if I take my day off, am I being selfish? But the issue is you’re running a marathon. You got to do this for 40 or 50 years. So in 40 or 50 years, you got to pace yourself. And yet, at the same time, you must be careful not to be self-indulgent. And how do you not respond to need, like, saying ‘I’m going on vacation’, but ‘Mrs Murphy’s dying. Can’t you stay for that?’
There’s always a Mrs Murphy who’s dying. And so, it’s really a great tension in priests’ lives. How do you just respond? Jesus said, give yourself over. You die, you die, you know? And at the same time, you’re running a marathon for 50 or 60 years. How do you pace yourself? That’s the tension.
And probably priests could be helped by either a good spiritual director or even a good friend or mentor who will say you’re overdoing it or you’re under doing it. I know priests who are very much into self-care (laughs) more than into ministry. I know priests who are the opposite and are killing themselves.
That’s a great tension. And it’s something that I think priests need to talk about but also dioceses need to talk about, or they will say, we can’t even do sabbaticals anymore. Well, what are they saying, no more rest because we were in crisis? But the crisis is going to go on for the next 50 years.”
And it’s kind of management’s job to manage a crisis rather than piling it on the priests, right?
“Yes, and we were just talking to a priest earlier on how do you take a day off when there’s something happening? How do you take a day off when Mrs Murphy’s dying in the hospital, he gets a call from the family, what does he say, ‘I can’t come. It’s my day off? I’m watching football on television.’
And the priest says to himself ‘I can’t do this’. And it’s just crises all the time. Somebody always dies. Somebody needs you. How do you not respond but if you respond you’ll die.”
Fr Rolheiser was interviewed in University Church in Dublin, and many thanks to Fr Gary Chamberland for making it possible.