Thursday, June 17, 2004
How to reform the clergy
My friend jcecil (see side bar) has some good ideas for reforming the Church. I thought I'd tackle my favorite ideas for reforming Holy Orders.
1. Abolish seminaries. Train guys in a monastic setting to live as a secular priest, mostly in an eremitic setting of some comfort? I think it's a good testimony that more of these guys aren't going off the deep end. Candidates for priesthood should be trained in a Catholic university alongside the lay people they will serve in parishes. Why the duplication of professors for separate lay and clerical institutions?
2. Prior experience. Before the candidate enters the seminary, there should be a work history that clearly demonstrates an aptitude and ability working with people as a minister does. How long? That might be up to the bishop. But I think five to eight years minimum would be about right. A bishop and lay review boards should have leeway in discerning good candidates.
3. Age. Ideally, a pastor should be fifty-ish, with grown children, a stable marriage, and personal maturity. Though I've known good young priests, most don't blossom until their forties, and an ordained priest younger than 35 remains a pup in training.
4. Optional celibacy. I think a person's state of life should be set at ordination, though. Perhaps a bishop might give a dispensation for an already ordained priest to marry, but seriously, if a stable, mature person hasn't married by age 50, celibacy is likely not to be a problem.
5a. Parishes need some kind of veto power over incoming pastors. I have no idea how.
5b. Should parishes hire their own pastors? I doubt it, but it could be a workable notion some places.
6. Women, obviously.
There's probably more, but that's enough for today.
