Breaking the Rules: What American Priests Tell American Catholics.

It is hard to generalize easily about the work that faces a parish priest, but it is plain that there are a lot of things that can't be taught in any seminary and must be learned, by trial and error, on the job. The experience of other pastors can be helpful, but only up to a point. You learn, among other things, that as helpful as "rules and regulations" may be, they can't be applied in a cookie-cutter fashion. How do you deal, for example, with the question of baptizing a child whose parents are marginally attached to the church, and sometimes not even marginally? How do you handle the case of a couple who want a wedding ceremony, for the sake of their families, but who are really not at all observant? If you take a hard line you might extinguish the little spark that still attaches them to the church, that makes them feel they have a place there; if you are completely lax on the issue, you leave them unchallenged, unlikely ever to have anything more than their current nearly nonexistent relationship to the church.

In a book that will appear in July (Bending the Rules: What American Priests Tell American Catholics, published by Crossroad), Jim Bowman interviews twenty-nine American pastors. What emerges is a picture of how Roman Catholic pastors deal with a number of difficult questions.

As someone who has been a pastor (in a small Orthodox parish) for less than two years, I can hardly draw on a long and rich pastoral experience; but I do notice some contrasts--and a few similarities--between the Catholic and Orthodox parochial experience.

One contrast is that on the evidence of this book the most common task of many Catholic priests would seem to be getting around the letter of the law. This impression could be reinforced by the series of questions Bowman posed: he asked priests how they handled the questions of birth control, abortion, marriage and divorce, altar girls and women's ordination, gay and lesbian issues, liturgy, the pope, the liberal-radical argument, and obedience; in addition, what would happen if pastors held to a consistently rigid line with regard to church laws?

For the most part, the answers are not surprising. Most priests reported that laypeople seldom if ever ask about birth control, having made up their minds. They seldom ask about abortion either, except for those who come seeking healing or reconciliation following an abortion. Since the book was put together, the issue of altar girls has disappeared, with Vatican approval of the practice; most priests interviewed here were open to women's ordination. In those parishes where it is an issue, gays and lesbians meet compassion and understanding. There is a fair amount of liturgical innovation, and feelings about the pope vary (but there are few unquestioning loyalists here). There was general agreement that a consistently rigid approach would empty the churches. One surprise, for me anyway, was how freely the annulment process was ignored or bypassed, where it proved difficult for a couple to obtain one.

The general impression the book gives is of a number of dedicated, hard-working men who are genuinely devoted to their ministry and to the people they serve. One great similarity is how very parochial parish life really is, in the Catholic as well as the Orthodox church. Of course parishes are, by definition, parochial. But there is little sense--too little, sometimes--of being part of a larger community. One Catholic priest interviewed here says, "We live in the local church--the parish church. People who like their parish are happy with the church. As for statements of pope and bishops, people don't care one way or another. They have enough problems."

There are a few priests who are prone to the odd jargon of clerics who have attended too many workshops: people are "empowered" and one priest is "nonjudgmental about people coming back in the conversion modality." Some statements reveal an idea of priesthood I find odd: "Priests are the ones who manipulate the symbols. We need the freedom to do that. If we come to the point where we are restricted I hope it's not for nineteen years, when I will be old enough for my pension...." Others are just wrong: one priest says, "As for receiving Communion, we encourage one with hatred in his heart, who can't forgive, to do so. In the same way with those who practice birth control. You encourage going to Communion." But a person who hates, who can't forgive, certainly should not go to Communion nor be encouraged to do so. Matthew 5:22-24 is fairly clear about this.

This occasional sort of thing isn't as bothersome as another more consistent impression left by Bending the Rules. That is that Roman Catholic priests must spend a lot of their time working to get around the law of the church, or explain it away, or present it as an ideal that is often unattainable. With regard to two of the issues here there is a contrast rather than comparison with the Orthodox practice. Orthodoxy tolerates a second and third marriage, but where both of the partners were married before, the language employed in the wedding service is penitential. There is no prohibition of birth control, though a selfish refusal to have children would be considered sinful. On other issues--abortion, gay and lesbian partners, the relationship of priests to bishops--the teachings of the two churches are quite similar. And it is true that in pastoral practice Orthodox also must sometimes invoke economia--a practical application of the fact that there are situations in which the letter of the law can do damage to the spirit, and a lessthan-ideal situation must be accepted for the good of both the person involved and the larger community.

What I miss in Bowman's interviews, though, is the sense that the Christian life involves ascetic struggle and repentance. Is a second marriage something to arrange as expeditiously as possible? Shouldn't repentance for the failure of a marriage be encouraged, even as continued communion with the church is also encouraged? Many of the priests here are eager for their parishioners to feel good about themselves, to feel at home in their worlds. Everything else in the culture encourages the same feeling--should the church? It isn't a question of wanting people to feel self-loathing, but the church's work is not to echo the Zeitgeist. We are not as we should be. The church should offer a context for transformation.

Some conservative Catholics believe that the church has lost an important spirit it once had; liberal Catholics answer that this is an illusion, that the only thing lost is a narrow, Tridentine mentality. However, think of the spirit of French Catholicism between the wars, the sensibility found in the writings of people like Paul Claudel, Francois Mauriac, and George Bernanos, which seems utterly gone now, as alien to the contemporary Catholic spirit as it could be; or think of the lucid and rich sense of tradition in Flannery O'Connor's letters. This was not a Tridentine narrowness, but a way of thinking that can be found in Saints Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine. There is certainly little of that spirit, little sense of the church as a serious school of spirituality, a challenge to the spirit of the age. This should be an important part of pastoral work, and it may be; but if it is, there isn't much sign of it here.

Perhaps the Catholic sensibility I miss in Bending the Rules was never part of parish life in any degree, although I find that hard to believe. Part of the problem might lie in the way the book was framed: if you list items like divorce and remarriage, contraception, etc., and ask Catholic priests how they deal with them you will hear relatively little about spiritual struggle. However, another part of the problem might be that for years these issues themselves were framed not in terms of human transformation, but of obedience to the law on the one hand, and committing sins on the other. Fasting was often seen not as an aid in ascetic struggle and the focus prayer requires, but as a rule. A bishop is quoted here as saying that it was a good thing Vatican II abolished "foolish" fast laws, like Lenten fasting or the fast from midnight before reception of the Eucharist. Is the community really healthier for fasting less than it used to? And is this totally unrelated to the shallowness that shows up in so many innovative and trendy liturgies? Some conservative Catholics, it seems to me, have a valid point.