A Celebrity Priest's Disservice to Catholic Hospital Chaplains

09/03/09, Revised 02/25/12
Next time you or a loved one are in the hospital and a Catholic chaplain comes to give communion, pray or talk, remember that he is there because he is being punished and has been banished. His punishment/banishment have occurred because he had a personality clash with his superiors or bishop. Or he is there because he is not very well educated or gifted. In fact, he may even be a half-wit. Well-educated and gifted priests have more to contribute than ministering to sick nobodies and nothings and are only assigned to hospital ministries when they are being punished.

The above paragraph is more or less the text of a comment that I attempted to post under an article mentioning a certain celebrity priest that was published in a diocesan Catholic newspaper. I won't identify the paper because what I'm going to say about its coverage is not very complimentary and Lord knows, I have embarrassed the Catholic press enough as it is.

I've also revised this posting with the name of the priest removed. In this case, I think it is more important to focus on issues, behaviors and personalty-types rather than on a specific individual.

Posting comments under articles is not my style, but in this case I felt that I had to file a minority report among the other sentiments that included such words as "awesome" in predicates of Fr. Celebrity. I pushed the "Post Comment" button and immediately got a window telling me that my less-than-1500-word two-cents worth was being reviewed by an editor. Of course, it never appeared on-line.

However that's not the beef I have with this Catholic paper. The problem I have with it is that its article perpetuated the story that the priest in question was banished -- the word used in the article -- to a hospital ministry.

In the news business, we who believe in objective reporting have proverbs such as: One man's "rant" is another man's "reasoned argument." We therefore consider it unethical to describe anyone's speech -- say, at a town hall meeting -- as a "rant." Objective and competent reporters covering a controversy do not report as fact one party's characterization of, that is, spin on, an issue or event. One man's "banishment" is another man's "assignment" (the word that should be used) and perhaps even a third man's "calling from God."

Fr. Celebrity spun his assignment out in the California sticks by his superiors as being "exile," banishment for being an outspoken orthodox Catholic in an order filled with liberal dissenters.

"I'm being picked on by liberals!" has, of late, become a "last refuge" as Dr. Johnson would say. It is certainly true that some religious orders, such as The Society of Jesus, have, in recent decades, been hotbeds of dissent. It is certainly possible that such dissenters may vindictively transfer a priest because of his orthodox views. However it is also possible that they transfer him because he is a pain in the aleck-kafoozalem. Just as it is possible for a person to be fired because he is an incompetent employee and not as he claims, a member of a certain ethnic group, or a conservative.

Imagine yourself to be a provincial head, or bishop, and you have a priest who is running around, getting involved in all kinds of big busts: a Catholic radio network that is a failure, a Catholic college that is a failure. Imagine yourself to be supervising a priest who has all the symptoms of a huge ego that he balms by mixing himself up in risky, grandiose projects that may bring scandal to the church. Even if you're orthodox -- but not a fool -- you, too, will want to make him cool his heels.

In the San Jose [CA] Mercury News, the priest was quoted as saying of his assignment to a hospital: "They are trying to get me out of the way. Why else would they exile me? I am highly educated. I'm in the prime of my life. I have so much more to contribute than to minister to the sick.''

In all my reading about this guy, I have never encountered anyone other than myself who has expressed shock about this statement. Here is a Catholic priest saying that ministering to the sick is beneath him, a waste of his time. He is also saying that hospital ministry is a punishment and suitable only for the less-than-highly-educated. Shame on my fellow orthodox Catholics for not catching this.

What a slap in the face to the the likes of Frs. Allan Helwig and John V. Connor who for years ministered in hospitals and nursing homes in the Washington Archdiocese, to Fr. Francis X. Walsh who dropped dead of a heart attack on his way to visit the sick. And what a slap in the face to humble Jesuits such as Fr. James Byrne, who had umpteen degrees and who wore his humble novice jacket until his death, or Fr. Aloysius "Wish" Galvin who exuded strong, compassionate, joyful Catholicism, or Fr. John Nicola who taught Thomistic philosophy when no one else cared about it.

Fr. Celebrity's exiled-by-liberals tale concludes with his being rescued by Cardinals Christoph Schönborn and Joseph Ratzinger, the latter now Pope Benedict XVI. Allegedly the two persuaded the superior of the banishee's order to transfer him from the California hospital to the location of another grandiose project that is also turning out to be a failure.

This is also a slap in the face of the current pontiff. If it is true that Ratzinger/B16, and another prince of the church and a superior meddled in the affairs of a province 6,000 miles from Rome, it means that they also think that hospital ministry is a punishment and unworthy of the brilliant.

I find that hard to believe.

Return to Tradition: a Hook to Pull Celebrity Priests Off The Stage?

As you may have gleaned by reading other pieces on nealjconway.com, I think that one of the ugly by-products of the Catholic Church's great renewal in this new millennium is the Catholic celebrity, someone who projects himself as some kind of a model or hero.

The worst ones are the priests. They're supposed to lead lives of poverty, chastity and humility whether they formally vow to do so or not. They are supposed to point beyond themselves to Christ.

You can read my analysis of such clergy -- or as I call them "celebritergy: in my essay Celebritergy and Their Enablers.

In recent decades, liturgical practice, including the translation of the Mass as it was said until 2011, and the rise of Catholic media have been very accomodating of big egos.

All practicing Catholics have attended Masses during which a priest adds his own ruffles and flourishes to the prayers or interrupts the progress of the liturgy to make a joke or some comment.

Often such celebrants are very popular, however what they do, at the very least, shows disrespect for the liturgy.

Of all offenders, the ones who embellish the prayers are the worst. By altering the words, they betray contempt for the liturgy. It is too boring, they think, to recite exactly Sunday after Sunday. It is insufficient so they have to make it sexy with their clever turns of phrase.

In a column of February 2012, entitled Clerical narcissism and Lent (1), George Weigel explained, "One implicit purpose of the new [2011 Mass] translations, with their deliberate recovery of a sacral vocabulary and their adoption of a more formal literary rhythm, was to discipline the tendency of priests to turn the Mass into an expression of the celebrant’s personality."

In 2009, Bishop Edward J. Slattery of the Diocese of Tulsa, Oklahoma announced that he will celebrate Mass in the cathedral in a traditional and now seldom-used form in which priest and people face the same direction. This is called "Ad Orientem" or "Liturgical East" because in the early church, Mass was said facing east whenever possible.

One of the reasons Bishop Slattery cited for his restoration of this ancient tradition of priest and people facing the same direction is that the versus populum (facing the people) Mass tends to place "an inordinate importance on the personality of the celebrant by placing him on a kind of liturgical stage."

What are narcissistic priests to do? They can't all appear on EWTN.

--NJC

(1) Clerical Narcissism and Lent, George weigel, Feb. 22, 2012