Thursday, December 1, 2016

Burdens of office


Burdens of office 

The Tablet

01 December 2016 | by Megan Cornwell | Comments: 0 Catholic priests are feeling under pressure, and increasing numbers are suffering from depression and anxiety. But support for clergy with mental-health problems is patchy and piecemeal
In September a 65-year-old priest in Essex told his bishop he was unable to take on responsibility for another two parishes, after the elderly clergy looking after those communities had either retired or died. He felt overwhelmed. He was celebrating four Masses every weekend, providing support to local schools, hospitals and hospices, and there was no other priest in the diocese available to assist him.

The problem is not confined to England and Wales. In Ireland, the dwindling clergy numbers and the resulting malaise is so extreme that, according to the Association of Catholic Priests, suicide has claimed the lives of at least five priests in recent years.


Over the past few decades, Catholic priests have come under enormous psychological strain in Britain and Ireland. The fallout from the scandal of child sex abuse has certainly been a big factor, but the decline in church attendance, the collapse in vocations and the Church’s fading influence and prestige – the wearying effects of creeping secularisation common to all the Churches across Europe – have added to the sense of being embattled.
Parish priests are often arranging more funerals than baptisms or weddings; churches are closing; dioceses are being restructured; and bishops are spending more time on administration and less on pastoral care. Change management is difficult at the best of times and, sure enough, the cracks are starting to show.

Fr David Clemens, a parish priest in the Diocese of Brentwood who is also an analytical psychologist, said: “There are lots of stresses which rub away at a priest’s psychological well-being in a way that perhaps doesn’t happen in other lines of work – for example, the expectations that one finds oneself having to live up to.

“There are lots of expectations put upon the priest by other priests, by the parish, by the diocese, by parishioners especially. The parishioners regard the priest as the centre of the parish – it should be Christ, of course, but often it’s the priest.”

Fr Clemens told me how he was once unable to answer a parishioner’s telephone call immediately. When he finally got to the phone, he apologised for the delay, explaining he had been in the bathroom. “Oh, Father!” she exclaimed. It is almost as if, Fr Clemens said, chuckling, there are still some in the parish who think that their parish priest, like the Queen, does not go to the bathroom. Such attitudes are unhealthy, he added. They risk perpetuating any tendencies a priest might have to perfectionism and neurosis.

Fortunately, Fr Clemens said, his diocese has begun to take steps to address such problems. It is trying to reinvent the role of the laity, a crucial antidote to the culture of clericalism that is found in younger members of the clergy, in particular.

“For so long ‘collaborative ministry’ meant some women doing flowers on the sanctuary – which is an insult,” he said. “Now, particularly in this diocese, with the concept of ‘stewards of the Gospel’ – all lay people, who work with clergy and lay across the diocese and across deaneries – there’s a new sense that the Church is people and that people not only have to have their voice, but have to take responsibility.”

According to Fr Jonathan Stewart, a parish priest in the Plymouth diocese, it is not only inevitable but necessary for a functioning body of Christ for the laity to take on more roles within the parish. He experienced personally the need for greater lay involvement, when he was asked by his bishop to run two additional parishes.

One of the pressures he describes was the enormous amount of administration that came with serving three distinct communities. At 55, the relatively young parish priest admits it was a challenge, saying: “Lots of my time was spent thinking about buildings.”

While he appreciates that bricks and mortar are important, taking responsibility for the drains did not play to his strengths as a pastor, as he explained: “The tendency for a lot of priests is to say, ‘I’ll come and do that’, but we must realise that delegation is the key. We have to stop talking about priests ‘running parishes’. I simply couldn’t do what I do in this parish without my parish administrator.”

More priests are finding that the empowerment of the laity can also help address the isolation they sometimes face. It can bring companionship and teamwork to what can otherwise be a lonely job. Fr Stewart pointed out that a priest must always look for answers in God: “Our ultimate investment is in God … he is the person we have to rely on, and a priest should model that.”

But forgoing marriage and children can sometimes be a great sacrifice, and to maintain freshness and commitment to a vocation to the priesthood needs friendship and support as well as a healthy prayer life and ongoing spiritual formation.

As a trained counsellor and the human development coordinator at Oscott College – the seminary of the Archdiocese of Birmingham – Peter Smallwood, a layman, is passionate about clergy formation. He runs one-to-one sessions and group workshops that give seminarians the space to explore concepts of self and identity, as well as issues they will confront after ordination, such as bereavement, loss and sexuality.

He believes that if you train seminarians well in self-care, they will thrive as priests. Under Smallwood’s watch, the programme has grown exponentially over the past eight years, and it is not just seminarians who benefit, as he explained: “We have started to see priests from the archdiocese for counselling. When priests are in crisis, they want to speak to a counsellor and we are a safe bet.”

The gently spoken Smallwood explains that as his diary began to fill up with appointments with priests finding it difficult to cope with the levels of stress they were under, he realised that something more was required. This is how the “John Paul II network” was born – an association of 30 counsellors trained to work with clergy and listed in an online directory for the diocese to access.

The diocese now runs pastoral accompaniment programmes for priests and is about to launch a mentoring scheme, he said, adding: “And there’s a growing interest. Other dioceses are interested in this model.”

Birmingham, Brentwood, Plymouth and Salford are reaching out to clergy in a variety of ways; some dioceses have asked the Jesuits to provide their priests with spiritual directors. But there are also dioceses where little support is provided. A priest from the Menevia diocese who preferred to remain anonymous told me that if he were struggling, he would not know where to turn.

“It’s not that nobody cares. I just don’t think anyone is really thinking about it. If I wanted help with something,” he added quietly, “I would just go and find someone privately, to be honest.”

Meanwhile in Wrexham – itself undergoing an extensive restructure – Fr Charles Ramsay, chair of the diocesan Commission for Ongoing Ministerial Formation, said there are very few resources in his diocese and that it relies on services available in wealthier dioceses. He told me that retired priests are particularly vulnerable and that other dioceses – such as Southwark – have more than twice the retirement provision to support these men.

Although Wrexham has a programme for priestly formation and some one-day events and retreats, priests who are experiencing more complex problems are sent to St Luke’s Centre in Manchester – the facility set up by the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales 10 years ago – where counsellors and clinical psychologists provide professional assessment and treatment for Catholic clergy.

So despite some very positive moves to respond to mental-health issues among the clergy, the provision of appropriate care is something of a postcode lottery, depending on the wealth of the diocese and the initiative of individual bishops.

Bishop Richard Moth, responsible for the Church’s Mental Health Project (which is not specifically focused on clergy), told me he believes “the local model is best”. But some priests are falling through the cracks. When I asked Fr Clemens whether there was a need for a national strategy to address clergy stress, he said he was not sure which side of the fence he was on, but added: “Do I think there should there be some general guidelines that all dioceses throughout the country should follow, whatever their current procedures? Yes, I do.”

Whether it is an annual conference that brings together all who work in this area to discuss and share best practice, or each diocese appointing a full-time person with responsibility for the health and well-being of priests and those in training for the ministry, it seems there is a need for a coherent response. Otherwise, the less well-resourced dioceses will be left behind and some priests will not receive the support they need to flourish in what they do best: serving God and the faithful in whatever context they find themselves.

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