SEPTEMBER 23, 2007

(Last week over 250 of our diocesan parish priests - including Fr. Al, Fr. Rege and I - met at Oglebay Park for our triennial convocation. Since I have to have this Corner to the printer before I return, I have to cheat a little bit. I wrote the following essay a dozen years ago for another purpose, but I reprise it to honor my brother priests for last week. )

Unique is defined in the dictionary as "sole; alone; one of a kind." On the calendar of saints, there is one who is unique: St. John Vianney. What makes him one of a kind is the fact that he is the only simple parish priest listed among the canonized saints - the only diocesan priest (of whom he is the patron) that the Church by official proclamation publicly celebrates as having gone to heaven.

There have been many priests who have been canonized, most of them from religious orders such as Franciscans, Jesuits, Dominicans, etc. And there are many others who started out as priests, but wound up as bishops or popes before becoming saints. (St. John Neuman served as a priest in Pittsburgh before becoming bishop of Philadelphia, for example.) But John Vianney started out and ended up as a diocesan priest in France. His title, "the Cure of Ars", means that he was no more than a parish priest. There was even some serious question as to whether he would get that far, since he was dropped from the seminary several times for being too intellectually slow for the studies. When he finally barely scraped through the exams and was ordained, he was sent to the most backwater boondocks the bishop could find so that he could not do much harm.

Even while John was at the parish, it was generally agreed that his sermons were boring, his administration less than ideal and his leadership not quite exciting or inspiring. But he did one thing so well that out of all the simple parish priests in the Church's history, he alone has been singled out for the calendar of saints: he loved his people and served them to the best of his limited ability. This often meant being in the confessional for 12 hours at a time, or walking through the most inclement weather to administer the Sacrament of the Sick, or keeping all night Vigil in the church in prayer for the intentions of his flock, or even receiving on his death bed long lines of penitents who wanted one final word of consolation or advice or forgiveness or blessing.

I could speculate at great length why parish priests are not well noted enough for their endeavors that would lead to their canonization (although I fervently believe that most, if not all, eventually and quietly make it to heaven). But if the Church has decided to pick only one simple diocesan parish priest as a role model, I am glad it's one whose sole publicly celebrated attribute is love of his flock, not scholarship or public speaking or (God forbid!) fund raising.