The seven Catholic priests who walked into a bar and were initially turned away by staff, who thought they were members of a stag party, have done more for the image of the Church than a hundred popes.
Here were seven perfectly normal blokes, fond of beer, celebrating the beginning of a life of dirt-poor pay, chastity, obedience, and probably also a fair amount of loneliness. Not for them families, mortgages and exciting careers. So naturally people ask why anybody in the 21st century would embrace such a life, never mind celebrate it.
If the answer to that were given from a pulpit, few would bother listening. But when a chap is sitting on a bar stool, swigging Rev James ale and checking his mobile, you listen because you cannot equate the normality of the man with the seeming abnormality of his choice of life. You listen and you learn.
One enterprising journalist from a tabloid newspaper decided to do just that and interviewed some of them about their lives and what had led them to the priesthood. One was an aerospace engineer who had taken a 95 per cent pay cut. Their ages ranging from late twenties to nearly forty, all had undergone seven years of training.
The seminarians in the original story are enjoying a brief spell of fame, the episode being reported around the world, and requests for selfies abound. The chances are that the people who met them and for whom it is their first encounter with the cloth will talk about it and remember it and in later years may draw upon it in their own journeys.
I am glad there are seven seminarians about to be sent off into parishes, because yet again my local church is losing its priest. I wrote about this in June last year and wondered then how long Father James would last, as by then we had clocked up five priests in seven years.
Well now I have my answer: barely 14 months. Perhaps George Stack, the Archbishop of Cardiff, should send us one of the seven seminarians. The beer around here is quite good.
Six priests in nine years – and three lasted around a year! Now we are getting one from a thriving church in a nearby town. For how long, O Bishop, how long?
This time I knew what was coming, when at the end of Mass Father James asked us to sit down. There is a certain sepulchral tone when the priest is about to tell you he is going, that he has enjoyed being with you, that he will always remember you in his prayers and that the next chap is going to be wonderful.
I like the Bishop of Plymouth, whom I used to know when he was at Westminster Cathedral and that was my regular place of worship, but I wish he had left us alone at least for another couple of years. The Catholics of Bovey Tracey would be ever so grateful, my lord, if you didn’t make another change for a quinquennium or two.
Still, I suppose our loss is Buckfast’s gain. The Abbey has its monk back, and given that monastic vocations are under as much strain as priestly ones that must be an occasion for thanksgiving.
I can only pray that whenever the next priest goes, our incumbent will be a married former Anglican priest with young children, who will not want to uproot until they leave school.
Only a couple of weeks ago there was a parish meeting about how to revive the church and expand the congregation.
Now the priest who led that meeting will not be with us to see through any of the proposals.
Of course the Church has a problem: vocations are falling, priests are retiring and those who have retired are dying, but parishes still need some stability and no one parish should have more than its fair share of instability. If bishops worked merely to that latter premise it would help.
A good priest gets to know not just his faithful parishioners, but his parish too. He forms relationships with local schools, other churches and charities, and seeks out the lapsed and the journeying. That needs time, not a crazed roundabout in which you jump off as soon as you jump on.
The Church needs to work out and then implement a strategy to give parishes and their priests a fair chance of order and predictability.
That might well entail the closure of some churches, which would be very painful, but less drastic than treating the priesthood as a game of Russian roulette.
There is quite a nice presbytery at Bovey Tracey, and I would like to think that the next priest who plants bulbs in its garden might be around long enough to see them come up.
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