HE IS no Richard Chamberlain (The Thorbirds), nor for that matter is he Barry Fitzgerald/ Bing Crosby (Going My Way). Your Dublin priest is a more complex man. A mixture of "goodness and contrariness and openness and suffering and faith".
So concludes Father Desmond Forristal, parish priest of Dalkey, Co Dublin, who has been studying a 1996 survey of priests in the Dublin archdiocese. It confirmed his own experience of colleagues "over a period of more than 40 years".
In the survey, conducted between February and April last year, 323 priests anonymously answered 143 questions each, and from the findings Father Forristal prepared "a composite picture". It is "an honest warts-and-all portrait," he says. It, and the survey findings, might be subtitled A Portrait of the Priest as a Reasonably Happy Man.
A `man of God'
"The Dublin priest is first and foremost a man of God," Father Forristal writes in the booklet Reading the Signs of the Times (Veritas), which contains the results of the survey. And, like most of his countrymen, the Dublin priest "is not greatly impressed by authority". The Dublin priest is also very fair. He is critical of all those who hold power in the Church, "from the top down".
He "grumbles" about a lack of leadership in the diocese. He "finds fault" with the deanery and the diocesan agencies. But his love for the Church "is not in doubt". What he wants is "the Church as Vatican II wanted to see it". That is why he is "impatient" with those "who fail to lead the way to renewal".
He feels he is overworked. School management is "a burden"; youth ministry is "demanding". He has to be "constantly available" to his parishioners. He finds it "impossible" to live up to people's expectations. He feels "the sting of celibacy". Sometimes he gets support from the priests he works with, and sometimes he doesn't.
Hurt by scandals
He is "deeply hurt" by the scandals that have tarnished the reputation of the priesthood, and by the way these scandals have been treated in the media. He wants to see greater lay involvement in the government of the Church. He is strongly in favour of an increased role for women. He wants them to be admitted to all positions of responsibility and ministry "in so far as the current situation makes possible".
But there is always God, and he looks for further support to his close friends, his spiritual director, his fraternity group. He worries about the future. Generally, though, he is "a fulfilled and happy man". A very human being.
A more detailed look at the findings shows that the single greatest source of stress in the Dublin priest's life is the "general Church leadership", followed by "clergy scandals". Both may be related to the fact that publicity about such scandals, and about how they were handled by Church leaders, was high at the time of the survey. Next comes "taking up a new appointment", followed by school management, the Church's image, the media, etc. Celibacy is a lowly 11th in the stress league.
The survey was conducted by the Dublin Diocesan Council of Priests under the chairmanship of Father Dermot Lane, who also edited Reading the Signs of the Times.
Archbishop's comments
The findings on leadership were not lost on the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Desmond Connell. In a foreword to the booklet he comments that "it is not easy to interpret what the survey reports about stress created by leadership". Precisely because it makes demands, he continues, leadership "inevitably" causes stress.
But he assures the priests that "I share their stress as only a leader who himself knows the burden of stress is able to do." This he feels is "an important bond between us". He notes that "faith in the priests and not a little resolution" were required of him when he gave approval for the survey to be conducted. He trusted, however, that "this instance of leadership will create no unnecessary stress" a comment which has caused some eyebrows to dance.
Father Lane, in his introduction to the booklet, explains that the survey was felt to be necessary because the Catholic Church was going through "what some call `a crisis' and others describe as `a transition' " with increasing interest in spintuality and secularism, greater involvement of laity, scandals, falling vocations, women in the Church. etc.
Priests, he says, "find themselves in a society of which it can be said the only constant is change." They are "being pulled to the Left and to the Right by different groups, and all too often blamed for the ills and evils of the past and present." There were rumours about the morale of priests, so it was decided to try and establish the true level of that morale.
He points out that the role of the Priests' Council is to help the Archbishop to govern the diocese "through a process of effective consultation" to the betterment of the pastoral welfare of the people. He comments that in reading the results of the survey two passages from the gospels seem particularly pertinent.
Gospel truths
One concerns the Pharisees and Sadduccees who, as a test, ask Jesus to show them a sign from heaven. He answered that "when it is evening, you say, `It will be fair weather for the sky is red.' And in the morning, `It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.' You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky," Jesus told them, "but you cannot interpret the signs of the times." The Priests' Council was assisting the Archbishop in reading the signs of the times, Father Lane says.
The second gospel passage refers to Jesus's comparison of faith to a mustard seed, the possession of which means nothing is impossible.
The survey findings, Father Lane suggests, indicate that the level of faith among Dublin's priests is such that it is "surely a source of hope for the future as the Church in Dublin sets about the urgent task of moving mountains." He does not explicitly state the nature of those mountains.
One particularly interesting question in the survey concerned how life as a priest had turned out for the respondents; 36 per cent said it had been better than expected, 27 per cent said it was as expected, 16 per cent said it was not as good as expected, and an intriguing 16 per cent were "not sure".