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Michael L's avatar

I’m probably one of your more progressive subscribers and speaking strictly for myself and no one else, I’m less concerned about the ideological leanings of young priests as I am their humility and their willingness and ability to be pastoral toward parishioners who don’t share their opinions on things that are not essentials of the faith.

One of the biggest problems caused by the priest shortage in many dioceses, in my opinion, is that young priests are often thrust into roles leading entire parishes when they (and us) would be much better served by them working with older, more experienced priests for a while and getting used to the messiness of dealing with the flawed and often difficult people put into their care.

I’ve never had to supervise young priests but I did run the public defender offices in a three county area before I retired and I hired, supervised, and tried to mentor a bunch of young lawyers. The young lawyers I hired at our PD offices were smart and idealistic and really zealous about the work they were doing. But they usually needed some guidance in moving from theory to practice. They often had to be taught how to deal with others that didn’t share their opinions and they often needed help in resolving the inevitable conflicts of the job in ways that didn’t burn bridges. I probably advised every young lawyer I supervised at least once (and some a lot more than once) of the old maxim that you should never attribute to malice that which is more easily explained by incompetence. I suspect a lot of young priests right out of seminary are a lot like my young lawyers fresh out of law school. They are idealistic and on fire for the faith but they need some mentoring and experience. I think bishops do the young priests an injustice by putting them in positions for which they are not yet ready.

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DebraD's avatar

Just thinking out loud that in the modern age I wonder if anyone will be considered "great" again? There is simply so much more information and cynicism and the standards keep changing ... . If St. Pope JPII isn't "great" I don't see much hope for anyone else.

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