Thoughts on Fatherhood and How Priestly Identity Is Undercut by Short Terms as Pastors

Fr Zed's comment on an excellent essay at Crisis, which I had considered sharing. When I was a young man in the 1960s, I knew men who had been Pastors of their Parishes since the 1920s. I know of a Parish in Kansas City, KS founded in the 1920s and closed recently. In the entire existence of the Parish, it had only two Pastors! One thing that kept it from being a 'normal' Parish, however, was that they were the only two Priests in the Diocese who could speak Slovenian!

Before the Council, the new Code of Canon Law, and the USCCB started messing with the old ways, a Pastor was 'married' to his Parish. It was a much better way, as the Crisis article and Fr Zed explain.

From Fr Z's Blog

At Crisis there is a thoughtful piece about fatherhood and how priests are assigned to parishes.

Permanent Assignments for Parish Priests Long Overdue

The first part of the article is a something that every young man looking forward to marriage and fatherhood should read. Seriously. Take the time.

Quite a bit long the way, after talking about fatherhood, he gets to the topic of how priests are assigned.

It is a good juxtapositioning.

I’ve long contended that the way that parish priests are assigned – as pastors – in these USA has been undermining the identity of priests and harming vocations to the priesthood.   In most US dioceses – I think that is safe to say – a practice has been adopted of assigning priests for a short term, such as 6 years, with the possibility of renewing the term once for a total of twelve.

From what I’ve seen, problems follow.

• First, it takes years for a priest to figure out where everything is in a parish.   Then he has to go.
• Moving priests around signals that his role is only temporary.
• The pastor doesn’t have the chance, as a father of a family would, to get to know the next generations who come along.
• Priests lack moorings for their work.
• Bishops don’t have to work things out with pastors when there is a disagreement: they can simply wait them out.
• If bishops ignore the terms they assigned and leave priests where they are for longer, a sort of double standard might be perceived.

Sure, it is necessary to move and remove certain guys, find the right match, etc.  That will always be the case for obvious reasons. But the downside of sort terms is far farther down than is good for any of us.