The month of the Sacred Heart and the Year for Priests

St. John Vianney, patron saint of priests, said often that the meaning of the priesthood is the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

The Sacred Heart is an icon in human flesh of the infinite love of God. Jesus sacrificed himself out of love for us; and the very life of the Blessed Trinity is selfsacrificing love. All of us are called to sacrifice ourselves out of love for those whom God gives us to cherish; priests are called to sacrifice themselves completely out of love for the church that Christ gives them to serve. The expression of this love in their ministry calls priests to teach what Christ has revealed, to sanctify by allowing Christ to use them to transform his people through the sacraments, to govern by guiding people to live the way of the Lord Jesus.

June is the month of the Sacred Heart in Catholic devotion. This year, the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus falls on Friday, June 11. It marks the official end of the Year for Priests in the universal church. In Chicago, priests will end this special year with a gathering on the feast of St. John Vianney, Aug. 4. On May 22, 14 priests were ordained for the Archdiocese of Chicago (see story on Page 14) and will begin their pastoral assignments on July 1. All these events are rooted in the love of Christ for his people, in the meaning of the priesthood itself; and each event lends encouragement to priests and to those whom God is calling to join their ranks.

Shortly after the Holy Father announced the Year for Priests, stories of the sexual abuse of children and young people by some priests surfaced again in the media. The stories were of abuse of many years ago and most of them concerned events that happened in Europe. Each of these reports is a story of the corruption of priestly self-sacrifice. Each is a story of a priest cruelly using a young person who trusted him. What was unique in the stories this time, however, was the attempt to connect these crimes and sins to the Holy Father. Since the pope is universal pastor, what he does, or fails to do, affects us all. Even when a story is shown to be false, the fact that it appeared at all brings it back as an “allegation” every time another story is told. When a story is repeated often enough it seems true to many, even when it is not.

In 2002, Pope John Paul II said that addressing the scandal of sexual abuse of minors by some bishops and priests will result in the purification of the priesthood itself. To a great extent, I believe that has happened in this country. It has to happen elsewhere as well. The suffering of purification will be spiritually successful, however, only if it deepens priestly love. Current reports do, in fact, focus more on the priesthood than on the victims or on the crime itself. Under intense public scrutiny are the procedures of admittance to seminaries, the church law governing the lives of priests, the question of the sexual orientation of men in the priesthood, the sacrament of Holy Orders itself. The internal life of a church and the lives of a single class of men have seldom undergone such public examination.

What is it about Holy Orders that elicits curiosity and resentment on the part of some? Basically, priesthood doesn’t fit. Celibacy seems a reproach to a society that has disconnected sexual experience from personal commitment. The priesthood has a permanence that doesn’t fit into a world that says even marriage isn’t for life. If validly ordained, a priest can no more be un-ordained than he can be un-baptized. Neither the state nor the church can undo an action of the risen Christ, and it is Christ who both baptizes and ordains. Some seem obsessed with the idea of “defrocking,” whether because it is the ultimate punishment (a “laicized” priest is not treated as a priest in the law and life of the church) or because it seems to weaken the claim to permanence in the priesthood itself.

Since the priesthood is a state of life and not a job, the priest is not an employee. Even Catholics seem surprised to hear this, since priests are paid and seem to have steady work. But in the church’s law, priests give their lives to the church and, in return, the church they serve is to give them support in the form of adequate housing, food, medical care and a life appropriate to the dignity of the ordained priesthood. The government calls that a salary, but it isn’t. Priests are not my employees but my sons and brothers; I can’t simply “fire” them. Nor are they employees of the parish to which they are assigned. Even though incorporated in order to own property, the church is a family. We call priests “Father” because Christ uses them to give life in his church. Fathers remain fathers, even when they have betrayed a family’s trust. The tragedy of the sexual abuse of minors is felt first of all and most profoundly in the lives of those who were actually abused sexually; but the abuse is a tragedy for the entire family.

Can this theologically grounded understanding of ordained priesthood give birth to a protected caste, more concerned about its own privileges than about loving the people? At times it has, and perhaps the ongoing purification of the priesthood was, in God’s design, a necessary part of the Year for Priests in the church.

The church is the Body of Christ, its members intertwined like limbs. If St. John Vianney was correct in saying that the meaning of ordained priesthood is the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, then ordained priests are to be the heart of the church. Almost all of them are, for which the Church thanks God at the end of the Year for Priests.