The Blair government of 1997-2010 made education, education and education the top three priorities for a country leaping into the new millennium. To become a teacher in the late 1990s had a certain rock star status to it. The fact that our rock stars at the time were Damon Albarn, Brett Anderson and Jarvis Cocker might cause us to miss the point, that teachers, for a time, became people to admire. Bernard Shaw’s famous quotation “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach” was manipulated for a clever marketing strategy that simply said: “Those who can, teach” – and many young graduates who would not previously have considered teaching flocked into education.
I struggle to think of any time in my post-Vatican II life when Catholic priests held such status. I once suggested to a boy in class that he might discern a vocation to the priesthood. So shameful had it become in the public consciousness that I might as well have hung a bell around his neck and called him a paedophile. But there was a time when to be a Catholic priest was to be a hero: to be someone who would model a life of virtue that young men, like John Vianney who witnessed the courage of priests during the anticlerical terror of the French Revolution, could look up to.
Not long before I set off for our long drive to Provence this summer, I received a message from a priest friend I had met in Chicago, Fr Ryan Brady. He was planning to be in Ars, France on the very day that I would be driving through nearby Lyon and suggested I swing by for lunch en route. Always happy to visit the tomb of an incorrupt saint, I agreed, and, after trying my hardest to ask directions in French from a man who turned out to be German, we arrived at the Basilica of the Curé d’Ars, St John Vianney.
On arrival, Fr Ryan celebrated Mass, before leading us in a tour of the basilica and home where John Vianney lived. In the original part of the church was the confessional where he spent up to 16 hours a day hearing Confessions. Fr Ryan pointed to a painting which John Vianney insisted be hung there: it was of Jesus crucified and dripping with blood. “But do you notice,” he said to my children, “that he is smiling because in spite of his sufferings, when people confess their sins it brings great comfort, so he smiles even at His crucifixion because so many souls are being saved through Confession”.
As we journeyed south my kids spoke of the things that struck them about the visit. My daughter loved that such a small and seemingly insignificant man could become a saint, but it was his recognition of the sacred that really resonated. John Vianney clothed himself in the simplest of garments, but when it came to his priestly vestments he purchased the best embroidered fabric. He loved the beauty of the house of God in the solemnities of the Church and wanted to give greater splendour to it. The contrast between his home and church pointed to a right order which has been inverted in the years since his death as we increasingly invest in ourselves and our homes at the expense of God and His Church.
Tony Blair – Sir Tony, as he now is – got many things wrong, but that it became admirable to be a teacher under his leadership is undeniable. Under the patronage of St John Vianney we must hope that it becomes admirable once again to become a priest. In the chapel where his heart is displayed sits a prayer book with the names of priests written in it. Here Fr Ryan told me that he is afraid of only one thing: being alone. I was about to ask whether the parish had organised a rota before he clarified: “I know that the only way my fear could be realised is if I turn my back on Christ.” Those who can, do teach. If we want holy priests, then we must do more to elevate them so that they might say as a young John Vianney said to a local shepherd boy: “Show me the way to Ars and I’ll show you the way to heaven.”
That Fr Ryan would be in this particular place on this particular day can only be understood providentially. What part it plays in God’s plan, I do not yet know, but I know that my kids met two heroes that day. One a saint, and another striving to be one.
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