Priest of the Year

It's New Year's Eve and for the priest of the year I have decided to choose every priest who wears his collar or habit faithfully. Two years ago I wrote this article in the Boston College Observer. I repost it here and add some additional comments.

Priests Should Wear Collars

It’s happened again. Someone I thought was a layman happens to actually be a priest. This time I was sitting in St. Mary’s Chapel and the regular priest was late. Another man, whom I see everyday, celebrated Mass, and I never knew he was a priest. The reason for this is that he goes out and about in regular, everyday clothes. I wish that priests in general, but especially the Jesuits, wouldn’t do this. While Vatican II called for a reform of the dress of religious, it did not say to abandon it. Jesuit deacon Chris Collins says, “We were taught in the novitiate that we do not have a specific religious habit, but are to wear what is common to respectable diocesan clergy- that is, the Roman collar...” Many diocesan priests do not wear the collar because they feel more pastoral without it. Dressing in street clothes allows them to relate better to some people. However, times have changed and many people now feel they relate better to priests who wear the collar. While many priests do not mean anything bad by not wearing their clerics, to avoid ambiguity it seems like a good idea for priests to dress properly.

From a practical standpoint, it is beneficial to actually know who is a priest and who is not. For example, a person in a state of sin could easily identify someone to whom to go to confession, or a woman would know that a man is unavailable. Clerics are a priest’s wedding ring. People would also be properly able to address priests as “Father” and not as “sir.” Furthermore, clerics are a sign of poverty, as a priest does not own excess clothing.

Secondly, there is a spiritual reason why priests should be dress differently. It reminds the priest that he is not his own but belongs to God 24/7. He is a source of inspiration for all of us who are not priests, remind us to follow Jesus in all the ways we are called. The collar raises our minds to God in a secular world, as it is a sign of contradiction in a world in rebellion against God. As seminarian Carlos Suarez states, “A collar is a matter of identity. By wearing it the priest is declaring something about himself, challenging the perspective of the world by standing out in proclamation of the Christian message. It makes him easily identifiable and sets him apart from other people, not as a matter of setting him higher, just setting him apart…there is an identity that goes with it, an identity that they must strive to live up to, and that others assume of them. Lastly, it’s a defense for the priest. If you're wearing your collar, you're less likely to do things, say things, or go places that you might be tempted to if you weren't wearing it”

Lastly, for Jesuits, it is particularly surprising that they do not wear their clerics. Jesuits take a vow of obedience to the Holy Father, and Pope John Paul the Great expressed his desire for priests to return to dressing visibly. Pope Benedict has not stated a contrary view, nor has he changed canon law which says, “Clerics are to wear suitable ecclesiastical dress, in accordance with the norms established by the Episcopal Conference and legitimate local custom.” In the Directory on the Ministry and Life of Priests, which JP approved, it says, “In a secularized and materialistic society, where the external signs of sacred and supernatural realities tend to disappear, it is particularly important that the community be able to recognize the priest, man of God and dispenser of his mysteries, by his attire as well, which is an unequivocal sign of his dedication and his identity as a public minister. The priest should be identifiable primarily through his conduct, but also by his manner of dressing, which makes visible to all the faithful, indeed and to all men, (his identity and his belonging to God and the Church…This means that the attire, when it is not the cassock, must be different from the manner in which the laity dress, and conform to the dignity and sacredness of his ministry…Because of their incoherence with the spirit of this discipline, contrary practices cannot be considered legitimate customs; and should be removed by the competent authority…Outside of entirely exceptional cases, a cleric's failure to use this proper ecclesiastical attire could manifest a weak sense of his identity as one consecrated to God.” Exceptional cases include physical activity (even John Paul changed for skiing), in house, and other circumstances.

Whether or not a priest wears his collar does not make a him good or bad priest. Let us also thank those priests who do wear their priestly dress and ask that all priests on campus wear the collar most of the time outside of St. Mary’s Hall so we can know who they are. There’s no need to be ashamed of being a priest.

I do not claim to judge priests who do not wear their collars, but I think it may stem from a lack of an understanding of priestly identity. A priest is not his own. He belongs to God. Priests need always need to be ready to serve God's people. I know priests who have been stopped in public to hear confessions. This would never happen if the priest was hidden in street clothes.

Similarly, I don't think there is any better way to promote vocations than to be a young priest in public wearing a collar. For many, being a priest is something for white, old men. If many of the younger, non-European/American Jesuits wore their collars at Boston College, it would draw interest in Catholicism. People may ask a younger man a question he is not comfortable asking someone older.

Furthermore, it is a constant reminder of the faithful that we are to give our lives to God as well. The black dress, representing mourning, keeps our eyes on something other than this world, and the white collar focuses us on the resurrection, our hope.

Finally, it is sign of true poverty of spirit for a priest to own few clothes and dress in clerical attire. It's always disappointing when I see a Franciscan wearing a suit that probably cost hundreds of dollars.

Liturgy of the Hours at Boston College

There is a liturgy of the hours group at Boston College which meets on Tuesday and Thursday mornings after the 8:00 AM Mass to pray morning prayer. It was started by a Jesuit, Father Tony Corcoran, last year. He is now a missionary in Siberia. At first, the prayers and psalms were simply taken from the ordinary, but when he left us for Russia, he said that at some point we should begin to add the feast days of the saints. Sadly, many people at BC are opposed to doing the office as prescribed by Mother Church. They use the fact that the office is difficult to do properly (it involves flipping of pages) and that Father didn't make us do it fully as an excuse. Of course, as I mentioned, Father said someday we would begin doing the full version. It makes perfect sense of beginners to start out slowly, but Boston College students are some of the brightest in the country and certainly capable of learning the rubrics properly.

That isn't to say we won't make mistakes as we stumble through it or need to ask questions, but it is worth doing correctly. Holy Mother Church gives us the saint days and seasons to mark our year and celebrate the life of our Lord and the history of the Church. To ignore them continually turns into iconoclasm and is horribly not Catholic. Furthermore, the Liturgy of the Hours are in fact liturgy when someone ordained is praying. We must always keep in mind that the liturgy does not belong to any one person but to the Church, as expressed by our Holy Father in his great book The Spirit of the Liturgy and we have no right to change it. We live it. Our love for our Lord and His Church should cause us to make the effort. It's worth trying to do it right even if that involves making mistakes.

Conversation with an Agnostic

I recently received an e-mail from an agnostic friend and thought that some of his questions were very good ones. I would like to make my responses public. His statements were made in response to C.S. Lewis' essay "Man or Rabbit," a plea for intellectual honesty. Lewis is calling people to be intellectually honest. If Christianity is true, we must be Christians. If abortion is wrong, we must outlaw it. We cannot live lies or do immoral things.

Lewis makes a second point in his essay.

The idea of reaching "a good life" without Christ is based on a double error. Firstly, we cannot do it; and secondly, in setting up "a good life" as our final goal, we have missed the very point of our existence.

The atheist asks if he can live a good life without God, thus missing the meaning of life which is union with God. The atheist doesn't know what life is about because he or she denies that there is God to be one with.

Lots of people think that Christianity is about morals, but I want to stress that it is not. It is about union with God. This article from Traces magazine, put out by Communion and Liberation, treats of this topic. At the funeral of their founder, our Holy Father, while still Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, spoke on this topic as well. The text can be found here. One key text is

In this way, he understood that Christianity is not an intellectual system, a packet of dogmas, a moralism, Christianity is rather an encounter, a love story; it is an event.

The goal is not the doctrine or the morals but Christ. Doctrine explains how to act, and the act brings us to Christ.

Keeping this in mind, it becomes clear that the purpose of Mass is not to be told how to live but to be drawn closer to Christ. The Mass is a prayer of worship to the Father which Christ offers to Him through the priest. The homily, therefore, is not supposed to tell us how to live per say but to draw us closer to Christ. Sometimes this involves morals.

My friend raised the question of whether having an external source to speak to us about morality is necessary. I would have to say yes. Without the external source, morality can become simply my opinion on morality, not what I know the truth of morality to be. My friend, who is pro-life, knows how many people are wrong on this question. Similarly, the Scriptures tell us that we are set free from the law. This does not mean we are free to disobey it but to, by the power of the Holy Spirit, have our wills drawn into conformity with it. Many times we do not understand why we should avoid a certain act until after we give it up. While my friend is possibly free from the law that says we shouldn't commit adultery (something obvious to most people), it takes Christ and His Church to tell us that lusting is the same as committing adultery in our hearts. We need to be called to a higher standard sometimes.

Furthermore, I would add that many times that the atheist, because he has closed himself off to the grace of God, cannot begin to overcome immorality. We all know what can be called "the problem of human freedom." We fail to do the good we want to do and we do the evil we don't want to do. If we look hard enough, we can all find in ourselves a bad habit we have tried to overcome but cannot.

Lastly, he asks why the Gospels call the faithful sheep and Jesus the Good Shepherd. Looking at the image, we see how the lamb is carried on the shoulders of Christ. Those who are shepherds recognize this. In order to teach the sheep to stay close to the shepherd and recognize his voice, a lamb has its legs broken. It learns to rely on the shepherd as he carries the lamb around. We are very much like this sheep. Our Lord spiritually breaks our legs. We learn to hear His voice and listen to His word. We learn His voice and we learn to follow Him. We walk with Him. He leads us home, to the Father's house. Most importantly, like a shepherd, He takes care of us.

Review of The Nativity Story

Recently I had the chanced to watch the film The Nativity Story and I thought I would write a brief review. The music was very good, and at the end, when the family flees to Egypt, I was struck at the sight of the pyramids, and how Christ's exodus from Egypt parallels the exodus from sin that we all go through.

Other than that, I thought the film was blasphemous. First, Mary is portrayed as a whinny brat and not the beautiful lady "full of grace" that she should be. About Joseph she says, "How am I expected to marry a man that I do not love?" This concept would not be one that she would have expressed, even if she was a sinner, due to the culture of her time. Similarly, when our Lord is born, Mary experienced birth pains, something that she did not.

"[T]he report concerning the child was noised abroad in Bethlehem. Some said, ‘The Virgin Mary has given birth before she was married two months.’ And many said, ‘She has not given birth; the midwife has not gone up to her, and we heard no cries of pain’" (Ascension of Isaiah 11 [A.D. 70]).

Mary experienced pains when the Church was born on Calvary.

I was also very disturbed that Mary had her palm read in the temple marketplace. Lastly, many people like the film because of its portrayal of Joseph. I have a strong devotion to Saint Joseph, praying to him daily, and I was very disappointed in the way he was portrayed as well. While we see his self-sacrificial love, he was portrayed as too sinful for my taste. It is a long-standing tradition in the Church that Joseph, while born with Original Sin, never committed sin and that Saint John the Baptist also was sinless, being cleansed of Original Sin at the Visitation.

Putting all this together, I am sad to say that I cannot recommend the film to people.

"Good Morning"

Recently I was at Mass and after the procession, the hymn ended and the priest began with "ho ho ho." Then everyone laughed and he smiled and the Mass began "in the name of the Father..." like Mass always begins. It reminded me of an e-mail I sent to a friend a while back on this subject. I wanted to share it now.

I wanted to explain more thoroughly the view which ____, ______, _______, and I hold that a priest should not begin with "Good morning" or "good afternoon" and should not end Mass with "have a nice day."

This is articulated very well in the book Why Catholics Can't Sing and also implied at in our Holy Father's masterpiece The Spirit of the Liturgy. I would add that I also don't approve of "Let us begin in the name of the Father...." instead of simply "in the name of the Father."

Let me state to begin with that a priest who does such is not a bad priest, he isn't doing anything that is not allowed, it's just something we all don't like. This is not what defines for us if a priest is a good priest or a Mass is a reverent Mass. One of the most flippant priests I know never begins this way and one of the most reverent ones I know always does. I argue would also argue that it is allowed for them to do this because it's before the sign of the cross and therefore before Mass and after the final blessing and therefore technically after Mass. Therefore, this is simply our preference, but one which I think is justified.

Mass is a very sacred event. Many times the sacredness of Mass is lost. When we enter into Mass, we begin with either a piece of sacred music such as a hymn or a chant or the entrance verse. The priest is wearing robes and he processes in. A train of altar servers lead him. A book of the Gospels may be held in the procession. A thurifer incenses as he walks. All of this says something is different here. And then he begins, "Good morning, everybody." It seems such a contradiction to the act. The sacred atmosphere dies a little Similarly, when I kneel down to pray I don't begin, "let me begin with..." but just simply, "in the name of the Father..." It's minor things like these that help to build the sacred atmosphere at which the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass can be offered reverently and with the most amount of beauty.

I hope this is helpful.

On Conscience

I wanted to do a post on what the real Church teaching on conscience but have found two resources that do it far better than I do. The first is this article by Doug McManaman. The second is this audio by Dr. Janet Smith. It's specifically about contraception but lays out the basics of conscience very well.

Links

I have just updated the links section as part of my New Year's Eve great update. I wanted to briefly comment on what the links are.

The Mary Foundation produces great audio CDs which can be ordered for free. I highly recommend all of them. They also has other useful resources, which due to their extensiveness, I cannot say I've checked them all out in order to endorse them.

Boston Faithful Seeking Understanding is an apologetics group based in Boston of which I am a part of.

Catholic Educator's Resource Center is a great resource for apologetics.

Companion of Jesus is an excellent site on real, Jesuit spirituality.

Eternal Word Television Network is the website for the great television channel.

One More Soul an organization dedicated to the truth on life issues.

Sons of Saint Patrick is a Catholic men's group at Boston College.

The New Liturgical Movement is a blog dedicated to the reform of the Roman liturgy. I do not endorse all of the views expressed (for example, some of the writers are opposed to the use of any hymns and only support chant propers) but for the most part, they do a great job. I certainly do not endorse the things that appear in the comments box.