I’m always hearing about courageous priests. “The world needs more courageous Priests!” “We need a courageous Priest to defy the Bishop!” That type thing.
What we actually need are courageous Catholics who do something more than complain about the Church. We can find fault in every corner of the Church, and never run out of fodder. We can find fault in the life of every Priest, and never run out of fodder. At some point, one tunes it out and focusses on the spiritual life, and one’s duty, because nothing is ever courageous enough. No deed is courageous enough unless one ends up in prison, and then one is promptly forgotten as the populace turns it’s attention to another Priest in the public’s circus of entertaining commentary.
But the search for courageous Priests is ruining the lives of some Priests.
Defy the Bishop and be assigned to a place of lesser impact – then what? What authority has the time to deal with rudeness, anger, and confusion caused for really no reason other than the fact one is being prompted to disobedience, impoliteness, and lack of charity for the sake of pleasing a populace which is entirely incapable of being pleased?
Many also complain about the Church and deciding that their children will never go to a Seminary, or never enter a Convent unless it’s a “good” one.
But the problem there is – if the Lord is calling one’s child to religious life as a Priest or religious, who is anyone to deny the Lord? If the Church needs betterment, perhaps one’s own sons and daughters are the ones who are going to be changing it.
One is never wrong in praying for and hoping for courageous Priests. One is never wrong also in living their own lives courageously – and dealing with the matters of the world which need to be addressed with great courage, and which can only be addressed by the laity, whilst Priests tend to their own matters.
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