So I have a couple priest-friends who can pretty much match me for jerk-power, but it works out because we know each other. We can do something stunningly stupid, and those who know us will put that low moment into the overall context of all the other things we do, shrug, and tell us to straighten up and fly right.
This is how it is with all your friends and family. Because you live together, you see them at their worst, but you also see some of their bests and mostly their middles. I can be profoundly asinine in front of my kids, they’ll call me out, I apologize, we move on. That one dumb moment doesn’t define me in their eyes, it just adds complexity and variation and credibility when I talk about the need we wretched sinners have for forgiveness and salvation.
In parish life, this doesn’t always happen. It’s quite likely that some or all of the priests you know aren’t really people you know. These are busy guys, overworked, and it’s impossible to have a close relationship with thousands of people. Complicating this is the reality that Church-life hits us where we are most vulnerable.
***
When I invite non-Catholics to come to Mass, the #1 worry they tend to have is that they’ll do it wrong. They know we have a very carefully-prescribed liturgy, and they don’t want to be the idiot who bumbles along and gives offense. You have to reassure them that there’s not a spotlight and a loudspeaker and a public tar-and-feathering for liturgical-violators.
The other week, my daughter* altar-served for the first time. The way altar-server training works is this: The priest or deacon spends ten times more time any sane person could reasonably endure trying to teach the kids what to do, and the kids go home in a panic because that amount of training is ten times less than they need in order to get it right. So first-time serving is nerve-wracking for everyone involved.
To reassure her that she’d be fine, I joked on the way in about how Father stands up at the end of Mass and tells everyone all the things the altar servers did wrong. It was a joke. Not ever in the history of our collective Mass attendance had any priest ever done such a thing. She reported afterward that she’d made three mistakes; there was no announcement, no locking in the dungeon, not even a good public flogging. The next week she watched with relief as other children made six mistakes, and they, too, were spared all shame.
So then, as I wrote yesterday, the joke got popped. My nine-year-old, far more mortified about the prospect of public humiliation for doing it wrong than most people would be if they had to walk around the mall stark naked, saw her little friend be one of the people who got the You’re Doing Mass Wrong talk in front of the whole congregation.
In that moment, this otherwise nice guy who was probably just having a lapse in judgment just officially put an end to all confidence my nervous child has that she can go to Mass without fear. Because she doesn’t really know the man, there’s no relationship there to give her context and reassurance that this is not just What Priests Do to People Who Do Mass Wrong. So now every other priest in the universe has to work to disprove that perception.
***
Let me tell you a worse story. As a catechist and blogger and parent, I get to tell people all about the Sacrament of Confession. I assure people that there’s absolute privacy, etc. etc. Except that one time there wasn’t. This one time, about a year or so after I’d returned to the Church, I went to confession, face-to-face with a priest at a parish (not mine) that had confession times that worked better for my schedule.
He was old and cranky and I irritated him. He got mad at me in the confessional. So far so good. It happens.
Then I went out to pray my penance, and I’m kneeling there in the nave and the man fully walks up to me and proceeds to continue the berating, specifically mentioning certain things I’d said in the confessional that he found particularly galling. (I think he thought this was okay because he was angry at me for confessing things he didn’t think were sinful enough to warrant wasting his time. And because he was a crazy man.) How many different ways did we just violate the sacramental seal? If I had known enough to do it, I might have written the bishop. But I had no clue.
What I did know to do was take steps to prevent a recurrence. Avoid that priest. Avoid all face-to-face confessions. Go someplace no one will know you. I’ve never ever had any other priest do such a thing, but it only takes one Father CanonBreaker to really make you wary.
I don’t tell that story to discourage people. Go to confession, and I mean that. I still sin, so I still go, and you can too.
But I tell that story because the reality is that our sins hurt other people, and some of our sins can hurt people very badly.
***
The frustrating thing about priests is that they are like all the other people. Some of them are shiningly virtuous, some of them are nefarious, and the bulk are average sinners with a normal dose of wretchedness same as you and me.
What you want as a parent and as a Catholic is for the Church to be a safe place. You want your kids to feel comfortable and secure and at home. Instead, what they end up learning is that Church is home just as viciously as any other home is: The people in it might be safe or they might not be.
So ironically, it’s people who aren’t raised in the Church who get the idea that it’s supposed to be all nice inside. Kids who grow up Catholic have a sad advantage in negotiating this valley of tears, in that by the time they reach adulthood they’ll have had plenty of opportunities to lose their spiritual naivete.
This doesn’t mean we should tolerate sin. What it does mean is that spiritual combat is a real thing, and it’s something our children aren’t spared. By the time they reach adulthood, any kid who’s really been raised Catholic is probably going to be already quite a bit battle-hardened. Our challenge as parents isn’t to try to pretend there’s no evil in here, but to try to teach them how to fight it well.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, who is no stranger to the problem.
*Yes, my very own daughter is an altar server. This is because I’m a radical reactionary ultra-traditionalist. Okay, actually it’s because she kept asking, and our pastor allows it, and there’s nothing really for girls and I’m in no position to start something, and I’m pretty sure she’ll turn out okay anyway and it might even be good for her. Meanwhile, we visit nuns when we get a chance.
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