As to mangling the serfs: Owing to my former, official, black-shirt wearing ministry, when people in my last parish had a problem with one of the priests inflicted upon us for a while, they would come to me. (Talk about being in an awkward position!) And I would urge them to remember that in the vast scheme of things priests are not that important. This guy preached the Love of God well enough. So that was good. And his being somewhat lacking in the diplomatic department did not interfere with his presiding at Mass. And there’s no requirement that anyone interact with him outside of that context. So let him be a jerk. Who cares?
But, yeah, some people get mangled. I remembered when a total south end of northward moving horse came by on a mission from the diocese to talk to us about our future. And it suddenly hit me, HE’s “in process” TOO. I need to be as patient with him as I would be with anybody else. There may be plenty of books about sanctity and all, but to the extent that any of us are granted sanctity it is through many repetitions of (a) being horse’s patootie; (b)realizing that we are being a horse’s patootie; (c) repenting; (d)rinsing; (e) repeating. (At least, that’s how I do it, except for the sanctity part that is .....)
I’m thinking that getting mangled is to some extent “the wrath of God” on people who want to do their walk in Christ by proxy. And we must confess that in all lines of work and the ordained ministry is no exception, we find people who eagerly enable dependency and immaturity — and THEY find plenty of “victims” who make a devil’s bargain in the hope that they will be allowed to remain asleep, dependent, and immature. In that connection, I am always a little amazed at the number of people at Mass who can’t wait to get out of the church as soon as possible. It’s like they’re saying, “Yeah, I’ll venture THIS close to the mountain, but I’m not going to let God touch me.”
= = = =
EXCELLENT POINTS.
Much the same in Protty turfs.
And, I agree that emphatic ‘over-staements,’ hyperbole, emotional emphases, . . . muddy things considerably.
I greatly appreciate your candor about the appearance of wanting to have things both ways.
The pontifical dust in the air; whining and wailing about how flawlessly perfectly infallibly wonderful the RC org is . . . generates a lot of incredulous teeth on edge amongst no few Prottys.
“We have this treasure in [I’m talkin’ about some KIND of] earthen vessels.”