Can priests hack present challenges?

With our times getting complicated and hot-button issues popping up, one wonders whether we, priests, can ably act as true beacons of light and moral compasses we are expected to be before all the Church's faithful.

With this recent public debate on reproductive health, for example, not a few people have complained that they hardly hear anything from their priests about this issue, outside of rallies called for this purpose.

They said that it's lamentable, because the issue involved in reproductive health concerns them everyday, and yet they hardly get any guidance or reminder from priests other than occasional motherhood platitudes.

If ever, they said, the words are full of condemnatory tones with hardly any explanation why, for example, contraception is morally wrong and why they ought to be careful about the reproductive health bills now pending in Congress.

Much less do they hear anything about how to develop authentic conjugal love and conjugal chastity, using both supernatural and practical arguments. This is what they want to hear, they said, and not just skills in natural family planning.

Many, for example, want to know how to live chastity when one of those fierce clashes with one's own sexual urges takes place. It's the priests' inability to offer feasible advice in this area that turns many people off and leads them to seek solutions in other, usually immoral, sources.

In the end, they said, the Church campaigns manage to attract only a few and very specialized following-usually old women and what they call "Catolico cerrado"-and can even alienate the young ones who are actually also looking for truth and fairness in issues like this.

I believe this is a concern that has to be attended to urgently. Many Church documents and exhortations have already been issued by Popes, councils, bishops, etc., urging the clergy to be at par with these modern challenges. But what are the results?

I'm afraid these have largely fallen on deaf ears. There's still a lot of room for improvement. Only a little percentage of the clergy appears to be competent in handling our current Church and world situation.

Most of us are still groping in the dark, clumsy and unsure about what to do and what to say. Many just get satisfied with celebrating the sacraments, without doubt necessary and indispensable. But this, given the times, is not enough.

There is need for the average priest to learn to pray and study, to articulate and apply relevant doctrine to concrete situations, to build and strengthen an abiding sense of the Church, to develop the skill for effective evangelization in today's setting.

We priests are supposed to be the sacramental representation of Christ, head of the Church. We should be able to say to the people, "It is I (Christ), do not be afraid." Christ said these words to his apostles who thought they saw a ghost walking on the lake toward them.

A few are wondering how many priests are truly internalizing, not just externally tweaking, our sacramental identification with Christ as priest. We are not Christ's ghosts, nor Church bureaucrats and performers.

Instead, there is a lot of priestly complacency and mediocrity nurtured in a culture of tolerance and impunity. This has to be wiped out. A strong infusion of authentic spiritual life and a firm grounding in sound doctrine are needed.

It's painful to hear priests succumbing to spiritual lukewarmness and doctrinal ignorance, confusion if not outright error. It's painful to see them entangled in petty quarrels, envy and rivalry among themselves.

You can just imagine if they get involved in highly scandalous situations!

The formation of priests should be an ongoing, endless affair. There's need for continuing renewal of commitment, because this simply is the requirement of love and fidelity that's supposed to animate the priestly vocation.

The formation in the seminary also has to be carefully developed with eagle-eyed supervision from the authorities. There, heroic dedication, obedience and discipline should be learned as essential signs of love. We have to purge the seminary of bad eggs.

In the end, we priests should try to do our best in our priestly life and ministry, and to make our best better always. This is how we can hack the current challenges.

* * *

Email: [email protected]