Old Bullies

Needed.

 

 

Via Father Z (EDIT: actually, here) I read of a young priest “lectured” by a permanent deacon for wearing a cassock.

I have written already why the cassock should be the obligatory garment of a priest wherever the occasion does not make it practical for him to wear his trousered clerical garments. This blog post is not about that.

This blog post is about the fact that an old Sixty-Eighter dares to lecture a priest about what is supposed to be, as far as I know, the standard habit anyway; and, just a tad less gravely, that the young priest is at the end so intimidated he feels the need to cry on Father Z’s robust shoulder and seek from him some suggestion about what he is to do, even coming to the point of saying that he does not know how to explain to his deacon and his flock what is what.

Heavens. These old people, they have no respect for anything these days…

My first suggestion to the young priest is to grow some balls, wear his cassock with pride not only in, but also outside of the confessional, and tell the deacon to kindly shut up if he does not have anything sound to say.

My second suggestion to the priest is to explore the possibilities of the deacon being transferred, removed, or otherwise sent to play the tambourine elsewhere. Then, if the lay of the land is a favourable one, he should make very clear to the deacon, in a matter-of-fact way, what his options are and that by continued resistance to sound Catholicism – one who talks in this way with his own priest certainly does a lot of damage all the time – they will be used without any problem.

My suggestion to the old bullying deacon is to pray, if he still knows how, and to change. But old dogs and tricks comes to mind, so this may well be a difficult one.

The cassock makes sense only if inside it there is a man ready for conflicts, because the cassock is just the garment that will, sooner or later, cause them to happen. A weak cassock-wearing priest does no service to himself or to the cassock. A priest should first become fit for the cassock, and then wear it because it is the garment fitting him.

Make no mistake: people will notice.

Mundabor