Pastoring
A central task of the priest. I use the gerund (remember them?) to suggest that pastoring is something that priests do, not just a role that they play. Lots about pastoring this week.
“A pastor at heart,” Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong died last Monday at 90. Bob Smietana of Religion News Service has a long obituary in NCR that reminds me how much I enjoyed hearing Spong on the radio; he was a master publicist for my view of what church should be. Serving the diocese of Newark, NJ, Spong ordained the first openly gay priest, the first of three dozen LBGTQ clergy. “He also championed women clergy, making sure that any church in his diocese that was searching for a new priest interviewed at least one woman candidate, said Bishop Bonnie Perry of the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan. That put him lightyears ahead of leaders in the Episcopal Church, said Perry.” My kind of pastor.
Smietana covers the controversies that seemed always to surround Spong, but concludes with a quote: “‘The older I get, the more deeply I believe but the fewer beliefs I have,’ he said, citing an adage once relayed to him by an older bishop. ‘And I think that’s probably where I am. I have a sort of mystical awareness (of God) that’s indescribable, but I can’t avoid it. When I’m asked to define God I’m almost wordless.’” After a lifetime of writing theology!
Depth also characterizes Ludmila Jararova. I am so impressed that Kate McElwee of WOC and Deborah Rose-Milavec of FutureChurch had the great insight to create an event that juxtaposes Ludmila’s priestly ordination in Communist Czechoslovakia with the well-publicized visit of Pope Francis to Slovakia this week. They asked Medical Mission Sister Miriam Therese Winter to speak about Ludmila and her experience interviewing her for her 2001 biography, Out of the Depths. Winter stresses the tension of being part of an underground church in a state that persecutes religion, and the toll that secrecy required of Ludmila and her colleagues. And I stress colleagues.
In NCR, Chris Schenk, CSJ, writes about what I will characterize as Ludmila’s role in pastoring this community of over 500 secretly-ordained priests. Pastoring often done by women everywhere: like Ludmila, remembering all the names, making all the arrangements, and then being denied acknowledgement by half the men who were her peers. Given their reaction, the bishop decided to ordain her secretly, and did so on December 28, 1970. Schenk writes, “For the rest of her life, Javorova would be obliged to exercise her priestly ministry in secret. Even so, she ministered to many people who inexplicably ‘came from nowhere’ to pour out their hearts and receive a consoling word about God’s great love for them. ‘So she did a priestly ministry with no credit, no recognition,’ said Winter. ‘And some of the suffering that she suffered physically, psychically was very, very deep and painful.’” The toll taken by her ministry: her pastoring and its denial.
An “international crowd” is how Schenk characterizes the more than 400 who Zoomed into this WOC and FutureChurch event. She links to a long review of Out of the Depths by Arthur Jones. He quotes Winter from his interview with her: “Ludmila’s story for me — though her priesthood is the entrée — is in the power of her spirit. In her deep spirituality. I think what she contributes to the dialogue of females being eventually ordained — you see the male model, male priests, did not, could not work for her — is the way in which her deep dialogue with God is constant in helping her to discern what is her pact with God.”
“She contributes a real depth to priestly ministry,” Winter said, “a depth we don’t often refer to anymore in our anxieties about delivering the services priests need to deliver, given the diminishing numbers. She brings it right back: What is it but a call from God? A gift. And that God uses whatever you have, whoever you are, with all your limitations. And Ludmila speaks honestly through that. I found that spiritually very stirring.”
Now to that papal visit. I’m only going to quote from Pope Francis on the plane, which is when he often shares his spontaneous thoughts. Asked by Gerard O’Connell of America, about the Communion controversy in the United States, he replied:
“When the church defends a principle in an unpastoral manner, it acts on a political level. And this has always been the case, just look at history. What must the pastor do? Be a pastor. Be a pastor and don’t go around condemning, not condemning…. But is he a pastor for the excommunicated too? Yes, he is a pastor and must be a pastor with him, to be a pastors [sic] with God’s style. And God’s style is closeness, compassion and tenderness. The entire Bible says so. Closeness is already there in Deuteronomy where he says to Israel: ‘Tell me what people has its gods as close as I am to you?’ Closeness, compassion. The Lord has compassion on us as we read in Ezekiel, in Hosea. Tenderness was there already in the beginning. It is enough to look in the Gospels and the things of Jesus. A pastor who does not know how to act with God’s style, is slipping and does many things that are not pastoral.
“For me, I do not want to specify, since you spoke of the United States, because I do not know the details well of the United States, I will give the principle. You could say to me: ‘But, if you are close, tender and compassionate with a person, would you give the person Communion?’ This is a hypothesis. Be a pastor, and the pastor knows what he must do at all times, but as a pastor. But if he goes out of the pastoral dimension of the church, he immediately becomes a politician…
“With this principle, I think a pastor should be able to move about well. The principles are taken from theology. Pastoral ministry is theology and the Holy Spirit who is leading you to act with the style of. God. I dare say up to here. If you say: can you give or not give? This is casuistry, what the theologians say.”
Theology as politics! No Pope got to be Pope by ignoring politics, but I want all priests, bishops, and cardinals to be more than political, to be pastoring in the mold of the three pastors I have presented here.
2 Responses
Right on, Regina!
Regina, thanks for introducing us to Ludmila–I had a Pope Pius classmate with that name, and I had never known anyone else with that name! And most especially, thanks for including the long quote from Pope Francis, who, when he speaks from his heart, is so kind, generous, and pastoral–I wish he were able to break free of the confines of clericalism to be his pastoral self freely and without fetters from institutional barriers and rigid mindsets.