The other weekend, the local seminary vice-rector invited me to speak to a group of men on a weekend discernment retreat.
I thanked him later for trusting me. He said that he didn’t, but that he was a gambling man and thought he’d take a punt.
I was asked to speak about what lay people want in their clergy, with an option how to avoid becoming burnt out.
What a good question—what DO lay people look for in a priest? And is there any such thing as a “typical lay person?”
I suspect we’re all completely different from each other. And like most human beings, we can be both terribly predictable and unpredictable.
So I ended up talking about three things: fatherhood, friends, and boundaries.
I figured that even if no one in the room ended up in the ordained ministry, they’d at least have some good tips for becoming better men.
We’re living in an era which I think might be unparalleled in history for absent fathers.
They’re absent for all sorts of reasons; family breakdown is one, and sometimes they’ve never been there in the first place.
Real fathers—physical and spiritual—are the men who put the hours in. They invest hours of time in their children, because they think they’re worth it.
They’ve stuck around and done the hard slog because they love who they see growing to adulthood in front of them.
Young men coming into the priesthood today may have absent fathers – not present, not interested, weak, addicted, abusive.
A young man whose own father didn’t put those hours of time into his inner reservoir might feel like there’s a great gaping hole there.
So what I look for in a priest is evidence that his inner reservoir is full of hours that he is ready to spend on his spiritual children.
He might have to do inner healing for this before he is ordained, and that’s all good.
He might also have to continue that healing process as he grows in the priesthood.
The second thing was friends, not fans. Whenever I hear that a priest committed suicide, I always think, “He must have had no real friends.”
Some of these priests have been enormously popular with lay people who adored him.
But when the rubber really hit the road, he wasn’t able to go to someone and get real if painful help.
A real friend is someone you can go to and say, “I am in the worst trouble ever, and I am so sorry for what I’ve done, but I really need help now to put it right.”
A true friend will say, “OK, what can I do to help you put this right?”
Contrary to popular opinion, real friends don’t help you bury the body, fiddle the accounts, or lie for you in court.
Priests need friends almost more than other people do. I like to see priests with married male friends, and married couples.
Married men make great friends for priests. Having a male married friend gives both of you a place to escape, compare notes, and share crosses with each other.
It can also make celibacy easier when you’ve spent two hours in a house with a lot of lively small children, especially if one or more of them has a cold.
Last of all, boundaries—which is really the unified field theory of the whole thing.
I always look for good boundaries in a priest. When I don’t find them, I steer clear of him, because he is not a safe person.
Understanding personal boundaries from a Christian perspective—where you begin and end under the rule of Christ and his plan for you—is priceless.
It’s protective against all sorts of dangers, including emotional entanglements, co-dependency, over-commitment, sexual affairs, and burnout.
One of the signs of good boundaries is that a priest is a good delegator. He shares the load appropriately with his parishioners.
He knows he isn’t a social worker—but he also knows where to find one for the people who need them. He’s got a referral network like no-one’s business.
And I think that if I find all three things in a priest—fatherhood, friends, and boundaries— then I’ve found at least the seedbed for real holiness.
A priest who takes his spiritual fatherhood seriously knows how to feed it with prayer and quiet time in front of the tabernacle.
He chooses his friends wisely with a view to eternity. And he knows how to protect his vocation.
What do YOU personally look for in a priest?