Pope And The Parish Priest

Q-and-A Session With Parish Priests (Part 1) "Let Us Not Lose the Simplicity of the Truth"

VATICAN CITY, MARCH 3, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Following a Lenten tradition, Benedict XVI met last Thursday with parish priests and clergy of the Diocese of Rome for a question-and-answer session. Here is a translation of the first question and the Holy Father's answer. ZENIT will be publishing these transcriptions over the coming days. *** [Father Gianpiero Palmieri:] Holy Father, I am Father Gianpiero Palmieri, pastor of St. Frumenzio ai Prati Fiscali parish. I would like to ask you a question on the evangelizing mission of the Christian community and, in particular, on the role and formation of priests within this evangelizing mission. To explain myself, I will start with a personal experience. When I was a young priest, I began my pastoral service in a parish and school; I felt strong because of the weight of my studies and the formation received, well affirmed in the realm of my convictions of the systems of thought. A believing and wise woman, seeing me in action, shook her head smiling and said to me: "Father Gianpiero, when will you wear long pants, when will you be a man?" It was an incident that remained engraved in my heart. That wise woman was trying to explain to me that life, the real world, God himself, are greater and more surprising than the concepts we elaborate. She was inviting me to listen to the human to try to understand, to comprehend, without being in a hurry to judge. She was asking me to learn how to enter into relationship with reality, without fears, because reality is inhabited by Christ himself who acts mysteriously in his Spirit. In face of the evangelizing mission today, we priests feel unprepared and inadequate, always with short pants. Whether under the cultural aspect -- detailed knowledge of the great guidelines of contemporary thought escapes us, in its positivity and its limits -- or, especially, under the human aspect. We run the risk of being too schematic, incapable of knowing in a wise way the heart of the men of today. Is not the proclamation of salvation in Jesus also the proclamation of the new man Jesus, Son of God, in which our poor humanity is redeemed, made genuine, transformed by God? Therefore, this is my question: do you share these thoughts? Many people wounded by life come to our Christian communities. What venues and ways can we invent to help others' humanity in the encounter with Jesus? And how can we priests construct a beautiful and fruitful humanity? Thank you, Your Holiness. [Benedict XVI:] Thank you! Dear brothers, first of all I would like to express my great joy at being with you, parish priests of Rome: my pastors, we are in family. The cardinal vicar has told me that it is a moment of spiritual rest. And in this sense I am also grateful to be able to begin Lent with a moment of spiritual

rest, of spiritual breath, in contact with you. And he also said: We are together so that you can tell me your experiences, your sufferings, also your successes and joys. Therefore, I wouldn't say that the oracle speaks here, to whom you ask questions. We are, rather, in a family exchange, in which it is very important for me to know, through you, life in the parishes, your experiences with the Word of God in the context of our world today. I also would like to learn, to come close to the reality, of which in the Apostolic Palace one is also a bit removed. And this is also the limit of my answers. You live in direct contact, day by day, with today's world; I live in diversified contacts, which are very useful. For example, I have now had the ad limina visit of the bishops of Nigeria, and I have been able to see, through individuals the life of the Church in an important country of Africa, with 140 million inhabitants, a large number of Catholics, and touch the joys and also the sufferings of the Church. But for me this is obviously a spiritual rest, because it is a Church as we see her in the Acts of the Apostles. A Church where there is a fresh joy of having found Christ, of having found God's Messiah. A Church that lives and grows each day. People are happy that they have found Christ. They have vocations, so they can give fidei donum priests to the different countries of the world. And to see, not a tired Church, as we often find in Europe, but a young Church, full of the joy of the Holy Spirit, is certainly a spiritual refreshment. However, with all these universal experiences, it is also important for me to see my diocese, the problems and all the realities you live in this diocese. In this sense, I am essentially in agreement with you: It is not enough to preach or to do pastoral work with the precious cargo acquired in theology studies. This is important, it is essential, but it must be personalized: from academic knowledge, which we have learned and also reflected upon, in a personal vision of my life, in order to reach other people. In this sense, I would like to say that it is important, on one hand, to make the great word of the faith concrete with our personal experience of faith, in our meeting with our parishioners, but also to not lose its simplicity. Naturally, great words of the tradition -- such as sacrifice of expiation, redemption of Christ's sacrifice, original sin -- are incomprehensible as such today. We cannot simply work with great formulas, [although] truths, without putting them in the context of today's world. Through study and what the masters of theology and our personal experience with God tell us, we must translate these great words, so that they enter into the proclamation of God to the man of today. And, on the other hand, I would say that we must not conceal the simplicity of the Word of God in valuations that are too heavy for human approaches. I remember a friend who, after hearing homilies with long anthropological reflections in order to bring others near the Gospel, said: But I am not interested in these approaches, I want to understand what the Gospel says! And it seems to me that often instead of long summaries of approaches, it would be better to say -- I did so when I was still in my normal life: I don't like this Gospel, we are the opposite of what the Lord says! But what does it mean? If I say sincerely that at first glance I am not in agreement, I already have their attention: It is understood that I would like, as a man of today, to understand what the Lord is saying. Thus we can, without circumlocution, enter fully into the Word. And we must also keep in mind, free of false simplifications, that the Twelve Apostles were fishermen, artisans, of the province of Galilee, without special preparation, without knowledge of the great Greek and Latin worlds. And yet they went to all the places of the Empire, even outside of it, to India, and proclaimed Christ with simplicity, with the force of simplicity of what is true. And this also seems important to me: Let us not lose the simplicity of the truth. God exists and he is not a distant, hypothetical being, rather, he is close, he has spoken to us, he has spoken to me. And so we say simply what it is and how naturally it should be explained and developed. However, we must not lose the awareness that we do not propose reflections, we do not propose a philosophy, but rather the simple

proclamation of the God who has acted, and who has also acted with me. And then, in regard to the Roman cultural context, which is absolutely necessary, I would say that the first assistance is our personal experience. We don't live on the moon. I am a man of this time if I live my faith sincerely in today's culture, being one who lives with today's media, with dialogues, with the realities of the economy, with everything; if I myself take seriously my own experience and try to personalize these realities in myself. Thus we'll be on the way to making ourselves understood also by others. St. Bernard of Clairvaux said in his book of reflections to his disciple, Pope Eugene: "Try to drink from your own fount, that is, from your own humanity." If you are sincere with yourself and you begin to see in yourself what faith is, with your human experience in this time, drinking from your own well, as St. Bernard says, you can also say to others what must be said. And in this sense it seems important to me to be really attentive to today's world, but also to be attentive to the Lord in oneself: to be a man of this time and at the same time a believer in Christ, who in himself transforms the eternal message into a current message. And who knows the men of today better than the parish priest? The sacristy is not in the world, but in the parish. And there, to the pastor, men often come normally, without a mask, without other pretexts, but in situations of suffering, infirmity, death, family issues. They come to the confessional unmasked, with their own being. It seems to me that no other profession gives this possibility of knowing man as he is in his humanity, and not in the role he has in society. In this sense, we can really study man in his depth, far from his roles, and we ourselves also learn about the human being, to be a man in the school of Christ. In this sense, I would say that it is absolutely important to know man, the man of today, in ourselves and in others, but always in attentive listening to the Lord and accepting in myself the seed of the Word, because in me it is transformed into wheat and is able to be communicated to others.

Q-And-A Session With Parish Priests (Part 2) "To Be in the Church … Means to Be in the Prospect of a Great Opening to the Future" [Father Fabio Rosini:] I am Father Fabio Rosini, parish priest of St. Francesca Romana all'Ardeatino. In the face of the present process of secularization and of its evident social and existential consequences, [and] the exhortation to the urgency of the first proclamation -- which on many occasions we have opportunely received from your magisterium, in admirable continuity with your venerable predecessor -- [the exhortation] to pastoral zeal for evangelization or re-evangelization, to the assumption of a missionary mentality, we have understood the importance of the conversion of ordinary pastoral action, no longer presupposing the faith of the masses and contenting ourselves with taking care of that portion of believers that perseveres, thank God, in the Christian life, but becoming involved more decisively and organically with the many lost, or at least disoriented, sheep. In many and with different points of view, we Roman priests have tried to respond to this objective urgency to reignite or even ignite the faith. The experiences of first proclamation are multiplying, and there is no lack of very encouraging experiences. Personally, I can confirm how the Gospel, proclaimed with joy and frankness, takes no time to win the hearts of the men and women of this city, precisely because it is the truth and corresponds to what the human person most profoundly needs. The beauty of the Gospel and of the faith, in fact, if presented with kind authenticity, are evident in themselves. But the numeric result, perhaps surprisingly high, does not in itself guarantee the goodness of an initiative.

There is no lack of examples in the history of the Church, including recently. A pastoral success, paradoxically, might conceal an error, a defect in its approach, which perhaps is not seen immediately. That is why I want to ask you: What must be the indispensable criteria of this urgent action of evangelization? In your view, what are the elements that guarantee that one does not run in vain in the pastoral effort of proclamation to this generation contemporary to us? I ask you humbly to point out to us, in your prudent discernment, the parameters, the elements that must be respected and valued to be able to carry out an evangelizing endeavor that is genuinely Catholic and that bears fruits for the Church. My heartfelt thanks for your illumined magisterium. Bless us. [Benedict XVI:] I am happy to hear that this first proclamation is being made, which goes beyond the limits of the faithful community, of the parish, in search of the so-called lost sheep, that an attempt is being made to go to the man of today who lives without Christ, who has forgotten Christ, to proclaim the Gospel to him. And I am happy to hear that not only is this being done, but that numerically comforting successes also are obtained from this. I see, therefore, that you are able to talk to those people in which the faith must be re-ignited or even ignited. I can give no recipes for this concrete endeavor, because there are different paths to follow, according to the individuals, their professions, the distinct situations. The Catechism points out the essence of what must be proclaimed. But it is he who knows the situations who must apply the indications, find a method to open hearts and invite persons to walk on the path with the Lord and with the Church. You speak of the criteria of discernment so as not to run in vain. I would like to say first of all that the two parts are important. The community of the faithful is something precious that we must not underestimate -- even looking at the many who are far away -- the beautiful and positive reality that these faithful constitute, who say yes to the Lord in the Church, trying to live the faith, trying to follow in the footsteps of the Lord. We must help these faithful, as we said a moment ago responding to the first question, to see the presence of the faith, to understand that it is not something of the past, but that it shows the way today, it teaches how to live as a man. It is very important that these faithful really find in their parish priest a pastor who loves them and helps them to listen today to the Word of God, to understand that it is a Word for them and not only for people of the past or the future, to help them even more, in the sacramental life, in the experience of prayer, in listening to the Word of God, and on the path of justice and charity, because Christians should be the leaven of our society with so many problems, with so many dangers and with as much corruption as there is. In this way I believe that they can also play a missionary role "without words," given that they are people who really live a just life. And thus they offer a testimony of how it is possible to live well on the paths indicated by the Lord. Our society needs precisely these communities that are able to live justice today, not only for themselves but for others. Persons who are able to live, as we heard in the first reading, the life. At the beginning, this reading says: "Choose life;" it's easy to say yes. But then it continues: "Your life is God." Therefore, to choose life is to choose the option for life, because it is the option for God. If there are persons or communities that make this choice of life and make visible the fact that the life they have chosen is really life, they give witness of very great value. And I come to a second reflection. We need two elements for the proclamation: the Word and witness. As we know from the Lord himself, the Word is necessary, which says what he has said to us, which makes the truth of God appear, the presence of God in Christ, the path that opens before us. Hence, it is about proclamation in the present, as you have said, which translates the words of the past into the world of our experience. It is something that is absolutely indispensable, fundamental, with witness to give credibility to this Word, so that it does not appear to be only a pretty philosophy, or a pretty utopia, but rather a reality. A reality with which one can live, but not only this: a reality that makes one live. In

this sense, I think that the witness of the believing community of the proclamation, as background to the Word, is of the greatest importance. With the Word we must open venues of experience of the faith to those who are seeking God. This is what the primitive Church did with the catechumens, which was not simply a catechesis, something doctrinal, but a place of progressive experience of the life of faith, in which the Word also opens, which becomes comprehensible only if it is interpreted by life, carried out in life. Therefore, it seems to me important, together with the Word, that there be a place of hospitality of the faith, a place where there is a progressive experience of the faith. And here I also see one of the tasks of the parish: hospitality toward those who do not know this life that is typical of the parish community. We must not be a circle enclosed in ourselves. We have our customs, but nevertheless we must open ourselves and try to create vestibules, that is, venues of closeness. One who comes from afar cannot enter immediately into the formed life of a parish, which already has its customs. For the former at present everything is very surprising, far from his life. Therefore, we must try to create, with the help of the Word, what the primitive Church created with the catechumens: venues in which to begin to live the Word, to follow the Word, to make it comprehensible and realistic, corresponding to real forms of experience. In this sense, what you have pointed out seems very important to me, namely, the need to unite the Word with the witness of a just life, of being for others, of being open to the poor, to the needy, but also to the rich, who need to be open in their hearts, to feel that their hearts are called. Hence, it's a question of different venues, according to the situation. It seems to me that in theory little can be said, but the concrete experience will show the paths to be followed. And, naturally it is necessary to be always in great communion with the Church -- always an important criterion to follow -- although perhaps still in a somewhat distant interval: that is, in communion with the bishop, with the Pope, thus in communion with the great past and with the great future of the Church. In fact, to be in the Catholic Church does not only imply to be on the great path that precedes us, but it means to be in the prospect of a great opening to the future. A future that opens only in this way. We could perhaps continue talking about the contents, but we can find another occasion for this.

Q-and-A Session With Parish Priests (Part 3) "The Priest as Teacher Must Himself Be Well Formed"

[Father Giuseppe Forlai:] Holy Father, I am Father Giuseppe Forlai, parish vicar of San Giovanni Crisostomo parish, in the northern sector of our diocese. The educational emergency, of which Your Holiness has spoken authoritatively, is also, as we all know, an emergency of teachers, especially, I believe, under two aspects. First of all, it is necessary to have a broader view on the continuity of the presence of the teacher-priest. A young person does not establish a pact of growth with someone who leaves after two or three years, also because he is emotionally involved in managing his relations with parents who leave their home, the father's or mother's new relations, precarious teachers who change every year. One must be present in order to educate. Therefore, I feel that the primary need is that of a certain stability of position of the teacher-priest. The second aspect [is this]: I believe that what is essentially at stake in youth pastoral care is related to culture. Culture understood as emotive-emotional competence and as possession of the words

contained in the concepts. A youth without this culture might be the poor man of tomorrow, a person who runs the risk of failing in the affective [dimension] and of drowning in the world of work. A youth of this culture runs the risk of being a nonbeliever, or worse still, a practicing [Catholic] without faith, because incompetence in relationships deforms one's relationship with God, and the ignorance of words blocks the understanding of the excellence of the Word of the Gospel. It is not enough that young people physically fill the spaces of our parishes to spend some free time. I would like the parish to be a place where they learn to develop relational competencies and where they are heard and given school support. A place that is not the constant refuge of those who do not want to study or make an effort, but a community of people that ask the right questions opening them to religious meaning and where the great work of charity that is helping one to think is practiced. And here a serious reflection should also be initiated on the collaboration between parishes and religion teachers. Your Holiness, give us one more authoritative word on these two aspects of the educational emergency: the necessary stability of the agents and the urgency of having culturally capable teacher-priests. Thank you. [Benedict XVI:] Let us begin with the second point. We can say that it is broader and, in a certain sense, easier. Needless to say, a parish in which only games are played and drinks are shared would be absolutely superfluous. The meaning of a parish should really be the cultural, human and Christian formation of a personality, which must become a mature personality. On this we are in absolute agreement and, it seems to me, today there is a cultural poverty in which many things are known, but without the heart, without an inner unity because there is no common vision of the world. For this reason, a cultural solution inspired in the faith of the Church, in the knowledge that God has given us, is absolutely necessary. I would say that this is precisely the function of the parish: that one not only find possibilities for one's free time, but above all that one can find an integral human formation that completes his personality. And for this reason, naturally, the priest as teacher must himself be well formed and be positioned in today's culture, rich in culture, to also help young people enter into a culture inspired by faith. I would add, of course, that in the end the point of orientation of all culture is God, the God present in Christ. Today we see people who have much knowledge, but no interior orientation. Thus science can also be dangerous for man, because without more profound ethical guidelines, it leaves man to his own free will and, consequently, without the necessary orientation to really become a man. In this sense, the heart of all cultural formation, which is so necessary, must be without a doubt the faith: to know the face of God which has been shown to us in Christ and thus to have the orientation point for the rest of culture, which otherwise is disoriented and becomes disorienting. A culture without personal knowledge of God, and without knowledge of the face of God in Christ, is a culture that could even be destructive, because it does not know the necessary ethical guidelines. In this sense, I believe, we really have a mission of profound cultural and human formation, which opens to all the riches of the culture of our time, but which gives the criterion, the discernment to test what is true culture and what could become anti-cultural. The first question is much harder for me -- the question is also [addressed] to Your Eminence [the vicar, Cardinal Agostino Vallini] -- namely, the permanence of the young priest to give guidance to young people. Undoubtedly, a personal relationship with the teacher is important and must also have the possibility of a certain period to get to know each other. And, in this sense, I can agree that the priest, point of orientation for young people, cannot change every day, because in this way, in fact, he loses this orientation. On the other hand, the young priest must also have different experiences in different cultural contexts, precisely to obtain, in the end, the cultural equipment necessary to be, as pastor, the

point of reference for a long time in the parish. And I would say that in the life of the young person, the dimensions of time are different from those of the life of the adult. The three years, from 16 to 19, are at least as long and as important as the years between 40 and 50. Precisely here is where the personality is formed: It is an interior journey of great importance, of great existential extent. In this sense, I would say that three years for an assistant pastor is a good period of time to form a generation of young people; and in this way, moreover, he can also know other contexts, learn about other situations in other parishes, enrich his human knowledge. The time is not that brief in order to give a certain continuity, an educational path of the common experience, to learn to be a man. On the other hand, as I have said, for youth three years is a decisive and very long time, because the future personality is really being formed. It seems to me, therefore, that both needs can be reconciled: on one hand, that the young priest have the possibility of different experiences to enrich his store of human experience; and on the other, the need to stay for a determined period of time with the young people to really introduce them to life, to teach them to be human persons. In this sense, I think that both aspects can be reconciled: different experiences for a young priest, continuity in the accompaniment of the young people in order to guide them in life. However, I do not know if the cardinal vicar can say something to us in this regard. [Cardinal Vicar for Rome, Agostino Vallini:] Holy Father, of course I share these two needs, the combination between the two needs. It seems to me, from the little I have been able to learn, that in Rome somehow we still have a certain stability of young priests in the parishes, for at least a few years, with exceptions. There can always be exceptions. But the real problem stems, perhaps, from serious needs or concrete situations, above all in the relations between the pastor and the assistant pastor -- and here I touch a raw nerve -- and also in the lack of young priests. I was also able to mention this to you when you received me in audience, one of the grave problems of our diocese is, in fact, the number of vocations to the priesthood. Personally, I am convinced that the Lord calls, that he continues to call. Perhaps we should do more. Rome can give vocations, it will give them, I am certain. But in all this complex matter perhaps many aspects interfere. I surely think that a certain stability already exists and I also will follow, insofar as I can, the lines pointed out to us by the Holy Father. [Translation by ZENIT]