When the opportunity presented itself for me to read and review Rebuilding Trust: Clergy Morale in the Wake of the Abuse Crisis, I jumped at the chance. I have spent the last eight years studying the state of the priesthood ever since the abuse crisis blew wide open in the summer of 2018. I have had many conversations with priests, seminarians, and friends who minister to priests in multiple dioceses. I have seen firsthand much of what is reported in the book.
Healing and rebuilding require an honest look at the state of things. There can be no waving away or sweeping under the carpet the very real concerns and wounds of priests in the wake of decades of spiritual corruption and crisis, which was revealed in its darkest and most diabolical form in the abuse of children at the hands of priests. What is often overlooked or ignored is what these scandals have done to priests themselves.
The authors of the various essays found in Rebuilding Trust are focused on healing and supporting the clergy. This is not a book of condemnation, but it requires brutal honesty, self-reflection, and conversion of heart to embrace the recommendations of the authors and to hear what priests themselves are reporting.
The Priests’ Well-Being
Priests in the U.S. report a distressingly low confidence in the episcopacy, which has far-reaching implications for the spiritual health of the Church in the United States. The National Study of Catholic Priests found only 49% of priests have a “great deal” of trust in their bishops, with that number dropping to a jaw-dropping 24% when the bishops are looked at as a whole. Brandon Waidyanathan and Christopher Jacobi explain in their overview of The National Study of Catholic Priests:
Such findings should be concerning from the perspective of the health of the Church in the country. We know from previous research that a low-trust organizational climate—i.e., an environment in which most others in one’s organization express low trust in organizational leadership—has negative impact on the individuals within an organization, regardless of one’s own perception of leadership. In other words, even if a priest is personally content with the bishops, living in an environment in which most of his confreres have a negative perception of the bishop will still affect him.
There is more to this statistic than simply overall spiritual health of each diocese; this trust is also a significant indicator of priestly well-being. The authors continue:
We also find that trust in one’s bishop is statistically associated with a priest’s overall well-being. Comparing priests who express “a great deal” of confidence in their bishop to those who express “very little,” we find that diocesan priests with greater trust score 87 points on the Harvard Flourishing Measure compared to 77 for those with low trust. This is a substantial difference in personal well-being.
This makes sense from a human and spiritual perspective. In a family, if children do not experience the love, care, protection, guidance, and concern of their father, their happiness and human flourishing will diminish over time. The same can be said of a parish if the priest is not dedicated to personal holiness, leading others to holiness, and protecting the sheep from the wolves. If the head is not leading with fatherly care, then everyone underneath them suffers. This is especially true of priests who share in Holy Orders through their bishop.
The Church is not a bureaucratic institution. It is the living Mystical Body of Christ. What works in the business or political world fails and leads to disorder in the Church. Christ gave a model of service to the entire Church when He knelt down and washed His disciples’ feet and stretched out His arms and legs to be nailed to a Cross. This type of leadership is the antithesis of bureaucracy.
Prescribing the Remedy
The book does not only diagnose and criticize the problem. The various authors seek remedies to strengthen and encourage bishops, priests, and the Church. The authors point to a variety of priests’ needs from training in managerial and leadership skills to growth in the spiritual life to priestly fraternity to avoiding burnout in order to help bishops and others rebuild the presbyterate.
The bishops are central to this rebuilding since it is their spiritual fatherhood and leadership that changes and heals diocesan cultures that have left too many priests distrustful and wounded. It does the Church no good to ignore the wounds of certain members in favor of focusing solely on those who are flourishing. This logic would mean our parishes should focus on the healthy and wealthy rather than the poor and wounded inside and outside our doors. It is the suffering who need the most attention and care.
The holiness of our parishes and dioceses is dependent upon the spiritual and overall well-being of individual priests. As Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard, OCSC, pointed out in his brilliant book The Soul of the Apostolate: “If the Priest is a saint, the people will be fervent; if the priest is fervent, the people will be pious; if the priest is pious, the people will at least be decent; if the priest is only decent, the people will be godless. The spiritual generation is always one degree less intense in its life than the one who begets it in Christ.” This is also true for bishops and their priests, parents and their children, etc. Individual holiness and flourishing matters.
The Lord does not teach us to view humanity as an impersonal whole. The presbyterate should not be seen that way either. That is a lie of post-modern progressivism. The Lord teaches us to value each individual human life. This means that each individual priest matters, and his impact on hundreds or thousands of people has implications for the wider Mystical Body. If the priest is flourishing, then his people will flourish. If he is not, then the sheep will wander or scatter. Priests desire a relationship with their spiritual fathers—the bishops—the same way the faithful desire to be led, cared for, and protected.
Bishop Edgar da Cunha and Matthew Robinson, in the chapter “Rebuilding Trust in the Diocese of Fall River,” hit the nail on the head when they write:
To summarize, why should the bishops of the Church continually study, pray, and implement practical strategies that focus on our priests’ health, holiness, and pastoral effectiveness? Because the very mission of the Church to preach the Gospel and dispense the mysteries of salvation depends on it.
The answer to a holier Church begins with a holier and healthier presbyterate that is healed over time from the gaping wounds of the clergy sex abuse scandals. The priesthood is a profound gift to the Church from Christ, not something to be ashamed of or something that should be hidden. Shame is from the enemy, not Christ. Helping priests grow in holiness and relationship with their spiritual fathers will go a long way to healing the entire Mystical Body.
Bishop da Cunha and Matthew Robinson turn to the presbyterate for greater evangelization and renewal in the Church when they argue:
One of the practical repercussions of such a reality is that perhaps the time has come for each diocese to consider further how to be more single-minded in strengthening and renewing its presbyterate, given the complex and challenging realities established in this study. Perhaps we do not need to try to evangelize the entire diocese at once; each parish only requires one person who is thriving personally and on fire for the Lord, the priest. A diocese with a presbyterate living their best lives will be a diocese that is set aflame for the love of the Lord (and probably in relatively short order). Was this not the model handed down by our Lord Himself, Who started with twelve apostles and changes the world? If it worked for Him, it will work for us.
St. John Vianney, patron saint of parish priests, demonstrates this truth by his example.
The point of this collection of essays is not to belittle anyone; rather, it is to encourage bishops, priests, laity, and religious that there is a path forward. Healing and rebuilding are possible if we have the courage, desire, and love necessary to do so. One holy priest can save thousands of souls. One burned out, lukewarm, or lost priest can lose thousands, which translates into generations to come. One holy bishop can save tens of thousands to millions of souls by ministering to and building up his priests.
Helping God’s Sons
I chose to read and review this book because it is also deeply personal for me. I have watched multiple priests leave the priesthood for a variety of reasons. Many of those reasons are covered in this book. Most recently, I watched a priest who ministered to my husband during periods of illness and who baptized my godson leave the priesthood. It did not need to be this way.
It’s essential to note that the struggles priests quietly carry are not about disobedience or power. These men want to be spiritually led, guided, and protected. They want to grow in holiness and flourish in order to lead souls to Christ. They are not grasping at or desiring power when they are honest about their struggles and concerns. They are spiritual sons looking for help.
The Church needs to abandon the power politics of the world and start to see with the eyes of Christ. We need to look to Him for our model, as the Diocese of Fall River is doing in their efforts to renew and heal their presbyterate. The desire of priests is to work and serve together with their leaders in the love of Christ to save souls. Rebuilding Trust: Clergy Morale in the Wake of the Abuse Crisis provides a much-needed blueprint for bishops, priests, and the wider Church.
Photo by Iuri Albuquerque on Unsplash
