There is a big shakeup going on in my diocese. Pastors are being relocated throughout the diocese and because of a shortage, many priests will become first time pastors. My parish will not be exempted and the pastor of my parish will be moving to my aunt and uncle’s parish.
They announced yesterday before Easter mass that an auxiliary Bishop for our diocese will be conducting an informational session this week to answer questions and to see what we desire in a pastor.
So I ask myself, what DO I desire in a pastor?
I suppose when we think of an ideal pastor, many of us conjure up images of Bing’s Fr. O’Malley, young, vibrant, and with great business sense or perhaps of the lovable old…Read the rest at the National Catholic Register>>>
April 5, 2010 at 8:17 pm
The results of a computerized survey indicate the perfect priest preaches exactly fifteen minutes. He condemns sins but never upsets anyone. He works from 8:00 AM until midnight and is also a janitor. He makes $50 a week, wears good clothes, buys good books, drives a good car, and gives about $50 weekly to the poor. He is 28 years old and has preached 30 years. He has a burning desire to work with teenagers and spends all of his time with senior citizens.
The perfect priest smiles all the time with a straight face because he has a sense of humor that keeps him seriously dedicated to his work. He makes 15 calls daily on parish families, shut-ins and the hospitalized, and is always in his office when needed.
April 5, 2010 at 9:02 pm
What I Want…
A Pastor who will encourage his flock to become saints.
April 5, 2010 at 9:30 pm
1) Administer the sacraments licitly and validly.
2) No clown masses or puppet masses.
3) If you can't give good homilies, at least give short ones.
4) Don't do anything stupid.
That's pretty much it for the prerequisites. Everything else is gravy.
April 5, 2010 at 9:32 pm
On second thought, number two is really part of number one, so I guess it's just the three things.
April 5, 2010 at 9:47 pm
I love my pastor! He is orthodox, hard-working to the point of exhaustion, covers three missions, and, as far as one can evaluate these things, genuinely holy.
— Mack Hall
April 5, 2010 at 10:31 pm
A priest that says the black, does the red, hears confession daily, and gets rid of the guitars and drum kits at mass.
April 5, 2010 at 10:48 pm
look for a priest with a strong personal devotion to St John Vianney and our Blessed Mother. All the rest is details.
April 5, 2010 at 10:53 pm
My pastor died suddenly on December 16th, and we buried him on the Monday before Christmas. We also had one of these listening sessions, and our new pastor is a priest who was here before as an associate. He comes in June. We'll see how it goes.
A good story about my newly-deceased pastor (he was only 44 when he died of pancreatic cancer): Since we have only one priest, extraordinary ministers are a must. So, I was helping out one time at a First Holy Communion. A father brought his son up who was a questionable age. My pastor stepped right in, without missing a beat and said, 'No, the kid can't have it." Another time, a kid started to walk away with the eucharist in his hand. Again, without missing a beat, Fr. Jim stops him and makes him put it in his mouth.
That's the kind of guy I hope the new pastor will be.
April 6, 2010 at 12:29 am
I hope they never send our parish priest to another parish. Right now, our archdiocese is planning to consolidate some of the smaller parishes, and I'm hoping they don't decide to move priests around in the process.
Our priest is orthodox and gives great homilies and good counsel in the confessional. One look in his face, the first time we attended Mass at our parish, made me trust him almost immediately. There's humor, kindness and good sense in it, and he hasn't made me regret that trust. May God send more like him. The world needs lots.
I've made myself a bit of a pest over the last year or so with our parish priest, asking questions and trying to learn more. Sometimes I'm tempted to think he, and some others, were better off when I was invisible, but I sure wasn't. He changed things–or, rather, God changed things through him.
April 6, 2010 at 12:29 am
Reverence for the Blessed Sacrament. This can be most easily found at a parish that offers the Tridentine Mass. Confessions are usually abundantly available, and liturgical abuses are absent. No banjos either.
April 6, 2010 at 1:23 am
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April 6, 2010 at 1:29 am
Someone like the pastor we had at my first church, back in the sixties. This guy would distribute the Eucharist, place the extra Hosts back in the Tabernacle, turn on the altar and start chewing out those who were doing the standard "Let's get out right after Communion" dash for the exits.
No kidding, at the top of his lungs he'd be calling on all the faithful to "…just look at those who couldn't wait to exit God's house." Put a stop to that particular practice, at least when he said Mass.
He also had no problem chewing butt in the confessional. My father related how he'd confessed to taking the Lord's name in vain once. Fr. Hardnose asked if he had any children, when answered in the affirmative he asked what would be done if they used inappropriate language. The answer was, "Wash their mouths out with soap."
The kindly old prelate then opined in a very loud voice thats what should be done to those who break the Second Commandment.
Don't see too many like that these days, although I found one recently when going to Confession. Biggest butt chewing I had in years!
April 6, 2010 at 2:12 am
What would I like in a Pastor? A leader. One who will back up my husband (who works for our parish)when he wants to teach the true teachings of the Catholic Church. One who will tell the current uneducated dolt of a Director of Screwing Up Catholic Teachings (commonly called a DRE at other parishes) to get with the Magisterium or get out and one who does not allow the organist to plan all the "liturgical celebrations" aka the mass. (Note to organist, we would like to hear a song written prior to 1977 once in a while and the reason people do not sing is not because we are dumb as you surmise, but because we hate the music).
Honestly, our Pastor is wonderful who is there when we need him and will tend to those who are sick, needing the sacraments and does not do anything to screw up his portions of the Mass, however, he has a hard time telling people no. So, for example, at the Easter Vigil, we did the seven readings (a shock) but the responsorial psalms were not done, instead we were subjected to a verse that was most certainly not from the bible and certainly not in keeping with the psalm given in the missalette nor the alternate psalm listed.
I also want confessions heard more than just on Saturdays for a half hour. I would like to have a stern lecture from the pulpit about appropriate clothing choices for Mass. (Uh, and parents, WHY do you let your daughters out of the house dresses as though they are going to a "gentleman's club" and not mass?) I would like to hear the churches teaching on contraception and grave reasons for using NFP. I would like to see sacraments being prepared for with reverence and not with clay molding sculptures.
Most of all, I want to be able to go to my parish to receive most of the spiritual nourishment that I need and more. I should not have to drive an hour or more to attend a reverent mass, hear good homilies or missions talks, or to be the only family with more than 3 kids.
April 6, 2010 at 3:48 am
A priest in the mold of Papa Benedetto with the right touch of Italiano found in Fr. Corapi & Padre Pio as well as Mother Angelica.
April 6, 2010 at 5:55 pm
Holy, devout and kind is what I want. Our parish (not in your Diocese) is merging with another in a couple of months, and many of us are praying an ongoing Rosary novena for our bishop so that he gives us a really good priest. The pastor from the parish with which we are merging would be ideal, but we fear greatly we will be stuck with our current administrator, who has remarked publicly that Pope JPII did not know how to run the church, nor does the Curia. He disdains the recitation of the Rosary and the Divine Mercy in church, used the pulpit to urge us to support the Universal Healthcare Bill in spite of anti-life intent of it, and has walked out of the confessional with people in line on several occasions. There is much more that rankles, but you get the idea.
As I said, we are praying our brains out for our Bishop and wait with bated breath.