“Father, I know you’re so busy…”

 “Father, I know you’re so busy…” This is a common sentiment these days, not helped by the recent news of priests feeling overworked and overstretched.  In my own diocese recent months seem to give evidence of the miserable plight of priests, as a few of our brothers have requested personal or medical leaves.  Their departures are deeply felt by parishioners, who many times voice their concerns about how the current state of priestly life seems to be a burden hard to bear.  They are concerned.  They want their priests to be healthy and happy.  I want that too.  But I am not sure that most of us really have a handle on what is going on and why priests are under strain.

The common culprit named is basically administrative overload.  The problem seems fairly obvious: we don’t have enough priests and they are being stretched very thin over many different communities and with so much administrative responsibility that they no longer are able to do the rewarding ministry they are ordained to do with any peace or excellence.  Basically, that they have become burnt out ecclesiastical bureaucrats – too much miserable administrative work to do without enough time or resources.

There is some merit to this concern.  The bureaucratization of just about every structure of society from health care to education to the government sector is a phenomenon that many of us face each day and that certainly does make life less productive and enjoyable.  But it is not unique to the Church.  And I do not think that it accounts for the lion’s share of what truly bothers priests. 

I am going to make a bold claim here:  I don’t think that what is making priests unhealthy and burdened is burnout, at least in the classic definition of burnout due to being overworked and overstretched.

First of all, there is no real evidence of this from the priests who leave active ministry.  We had a presentation at a clergy institute in our diocese a number of years ago by Fr. Stephen Rossetti, director of the St. Luke Institute, a facility that ministers to unhealthy priests.  He told us that in the past, following commonly held views in the field of psychology, they had instructed priests to avoid burnout in ministry by making sure not to neglect their human needs: to take regular days off, engage in non-ministerial activities and relationships, and to generally avoid workaholism.  These were real problems for priests, he acknowledged, but after many years in the field he related to us that they were not usually the major problems of priests who left active ministry.  Priests who left active ministry demonstrated some very clear characteristics: they stopped praying, they isolated from brother priests, they stopped engaging in priestly ministry except as absolutely required.  In other words, they became secularized.

And this gets to the heart of my point.  What is weighing on priests more than anything today is not the amount of work we have to do, but the secular world and church in which we do it.  Let me make my point:

I do not know any priests who have become burnt out because they had so many people in RCIA that they had to teach and prepare.  I do not know any priests who are stressed and overwhelmed because they cannot figure out how they are going to baptize all the babies each week and pay for all those baptismal candles.  I do not know any priests who are stressed because they can’t figure out where to put all the sacred art being created or what venues to use for all the sacred music being performed.  I do not know any priests who are overwhelmed and frustrated by their chancery’s mandates about care in the celebration of Mass and the administration of sacraments and wish they would just focus on finances.  I do not know any priests who have so many people banging down their doors to have them over for dinner or to their organization's event or to some other important social occasion that they are overwhelmed. 

Let me give you a metaphor for priestly ministry today:
Let’s consider a man who spends his whole young adult life studying medicine.  He specializes in the field of cancer treatment.  Why?  Because he has a deep personal commitment to ending the scourge of lung cancer.  He grew up in a community known for great marathon runners, some going on to win international races.  Yet he also watched how some of them became addicted to smoking and saw those dreams melt away and eventually descend into the horror of lung disease.  He knows the incredible capability of the healthy human body, and he also knows how that health can be destroyed.  For this reason, he has chosen to dedicate his life to studying and treating lung cancer. 

Now this doctor grew up in a community where smoking was not particularly common, and certainly not common at all in the medical community.  It was openly discouraged and quite a scandal, in fact, if a health care worker was known to smoke.  Everyone knew and respected the dangers.   And this was pretty much the case everywhere across the country and even generally in the world.  The danger of smoking to your health was known, accepted, and promoted.

But then something began to change.  There were a number of very influential medical “experts,” with questionable motives, who began in various ways to cast doubts on the harm of smoking, and specifically on its causal link to lung cancer.  They were well funded by the tobacco industry, and they were very smart and calculating.  They were able to get into the major influential sectors of society: public education, the media, colleges and universities, and the legal community.  They portrayed those doctors and medical professionals opposed to smoking as old men who practiced medieval medicine and were just trying to hold onto their positions of control and power.  They began to make converts within the medical community itself.  Suddenly, it almost seemed like overnight, even medical professionals were advocating for the right to smoke and getting on talk shows to speak about the harm of smoker shaming.  Signs were going up everywhere talking about the incredible health benefits of smoking, and about how smoking brings people and society together. 

When this doctor went out for a walk, smoke was always in the air.  He was offered a cigarette in almost every social setting, even at conferences for medical professionals.  When he refused, he was looked at as judgmental and old fashioned.  And if he asked about or brought up the horrific spike in deaths due to lung cancer or other smoking related illnesses, he was either directly told that he was being an alarmist or he was quietly pushed to the side and ignored.  Even in his own family, his own close friendships, he was constantly surrounded by smoke.

Now there were some people who, like the doctor, were entirely opposed to smoking.  Many of them had lost loved ones to lung cancer or had emphysema themselves.  They personally knew that all the propaganda, even if embraced by the vast majority of society, could not be true.  Yet they had a very difficult time organizing and gaining any momentum because of their lack of funding and access to social influence.  They would get together at various times for support and to advocate for an end to smoking, but the doctor also found these gatherings difficult because so much of what brought them together was pain: the pain of losing a loved one to cancer or living with a horribly debilitating disease.  It was very challenging for their gatherings not to descend into a tirade about the horrific tobacco industry or a litany of social ills caused by smoking.  So many of those who came together were wounded and suffering and not in a position to really advocate for real reform or to be a living example of physical health.  Each week the doctor would speak about the joy of running marathons and being in good physical health, but he found that so many non-smoking advocates were more united by their hatred of smoking than by their desire for healthy lungs.  He realized that they hardly remembered what healthy lungs felt like, and that he himself was losing his memory of healthy living.  The second-hand smoke they were inhaling each day was having a tremendous impact.

Now, at the same time, there was a huge medical malpractice revelation about doctors who had been harvesting lungs from healthy patients to use for lung transplants into smokers and making huge profits from the sale.  This doctor knew that all of these so-called “doctors” had really been frauds who were smokers themselves and were bought and paid for by the industry, but they wore the same white jacket that he did.  And so the doctor found himself now suspect in many social settings, as front pages constantly carried stories about doctors who were being arrested and hospitals being sued for vast sums of money.  Ironically, no one seemed to connect the dots between the smoking culture and the scandal.  Instead, there was a gradual lessening of trust and confidence in the medical profession, and people started to favor very questionable smoking wellness centers and other forms of alternative medicine.  These institutions were often bought and paid for by the tobacco industry and either encouraged smoking or enabled it, focusing on cosmetics and plastic surgery. 

The lack of patients and constant lawsuits caused significant budgetary constraints in the hospitals.  In addition, fewer and fewer people entered medical school, favoring instead the easier and more esteemed path to certification in alternative medicine.  The doctor found himself with more and more patients and with fewer and fewer resources.  All the while, the number of patients with lung cancer and other lung diseases continued to climb.

Alright – I think I’ve pressed the analogy as far as I can.  A priest is a doctor of the soul.  His life is dedicated to the spiritual well-being of his people.  Today, that spiritual well-being is under threat.  All one needs to do is look at the numbers surrounding mental health and addiction.  They are skyrocketing.  Suicide and other “deaths of despair,” such as overdose and deaths due to addiction or psychological crisis, have caused the mortality rate in the United States to decline for the first time that we know of.  The smoke of secularism is everywhere, hard for priests themselves not to breathe in and absorb.  And the credibility of the Church as a whole and of priests in particular has taken an enormous hit due to scandal. 

What stresses priests and makes them unhealthy is an unhealthy, secular world.  A world that doesn’t care about God or about walking in his ways.  A world that does not understand or appreciate lives dedicated to God, particularly vowed to God in celibacy and obedience.  A world that is more obsessed with sports events than Mass, more interested in the fictional lives of Netflix characters than the lives of the saints.  A world where even in the Church there is far too much concern with money and fitting in to secular social norms than with spreading the gospel and ministering to those in need. 

This is what stresses out priests.  It is not burnout from too much work, but a kind of rusting out from the lack of constructive work.  I wish we had more baptisms, more weddings, more funerals, more classes.  I would love to build a church or a school or a homeless shelter or a soup kitchen.  I would love to have so many men banging down the door, begging to be priests that I was just running from one appointment to the next, swamped with paperwork while trying to get them all into the seminary.  Constructive work is life-giving.  Growth is life-giving.  It is hopeful and joyful. 

What weighs on me, and what I believe is weighing on just about every Catholic at this point to greater and lesser degrees, is the decline of faith and rise of secularity.  It is the struggle to be faithful to Jesus Christ when that very faith is being consistently undermined around you and even in the very institutions that are supposed to be strong. 

Making this point, my goal is not to make everyone depressed or to elicit a wave of compassion for priests.  It is only to give clarity to what I think is actually going on so that we don’t mis-diagnose the situation and end up making things worse. 

My case has been that priests and Catholics as a whole are struggling, not because of earthly limitations or burdens, but because of a spiritual poverty in our time.  When we understand this, it is clear that our response cannot be to change the earthly structures or try to gain additional earthly resources.  We have tried this for the last number of decades and it does not work.  Secularism is a spiritual problem, a spiritual poverty.  And so it must be fought with spiritual weapons.  We know what these are because they are the most ancient weapons of the Church, given to us by Christ, who instructed us that in the most difficult of cases what is especially needed is prayer and fasting.

And so what do I propose instead of the changing of structures and disciplines and other earthly approaches?  First of all, the response cannot be limited to the hierarchy and hierarchical structures.  It must involve us all, because the smoke of secularism has entered into the whole Church from top to bottom.  And what do we all need?  1: to be diligent in prayer.  2: to study the faith.  3: to go on retreat or pilgrimage.  4. to find other people to pray, study, and go on retreat or pilgrimage with.  5. to make small and great sacrifices for Christ.  These practices might seem like an abdication or flight from the world.  After all, there is so much work that must be done.  But the problem is that there will be no work done if we are all secular.  There will be no one left to do the work.  If all the doctors are sick, what happens?  The Church needs to get well.

I think it is fairly clear that the Church is drastically underestimating the power of secularism on our world and on herself.  She does not seem to understand that her children are being secularized right out from under her bosom – millions and millions each year.  Bishops and priests as well – we are all so preoccupied with the secular world and secular things.  We must admit that, for being Christ’s followers, we have horribly neglected a focus on real and authentic prayer, study of sacred things, and direct service to the poor and needy.  There are a handful of dedicated people that are carrying an awful lot, but the vast majority of clergy and laity are simply not focused on Christ and living out his will each day.  We have become secular, worldly people in a secular, worldly Church.  That is why baptisms are tanking, sacramental marriages are tanking, and Mass attendance is tanking.  We just don’t care enough about Jesus Christ and following him. 

Administrative restructuring will not fix a problem of stony hearts.  Lessening the responsibilities and obligations on the priest will certainly not help, particularly any undermining of celibacy.  Celibacy points to heaven in a way that few things do.  That is precisely why we need it all the more today.  We need anything that points us to heaven.  Because we are living in a world that barely knows it exists.  What is required today is repentance, prayer and sacrifice: from top to bottom.  Only this repentance and a renewed taking up of the cross of Christ will allow us to regain the vitality and joy that come from the Gospel fully alive.