Working clergy

There was some interesting discussion on the last post about clergy working and the negative effects this might have.

This isn't a response to that but rather a leap away from it onto an odd tangent.

I knew an old Monsignor  who was very much beloved. One of those guys who should have been a Bishop only his politics were wrong or something like that and who nevertheless devoted himself to the church with a mission. Towards the end of his life they sent him to the Basilica to be in residence as a sort of reward.

People he had helped (and he had helped hundreds if not thousands of people) would come to mass and see him and then they'd come up afterward and ask if they could see their old friend the Monsignor. And I'd go back to the sacristy and ask him. He always said yes. He was that sort of guy. Even at the very end of his life when he had so little strength that a visit might be bad for him, he always said yes. We started having to refuse for him.

Anyway, that's not the point of my story. The point is that I realized watching him deal with these people that came to see him that he didn't have a clue who they were. He'd been at so many parishes, and helped so many people that he couldn't possibly keep them straight. he'd developed techniques for dealing with this. He never brought up the names of people, always called them "dear" or "sir". He never mentioned the parish he might have been serving at when he'd helped them because he couldn't be sure he'd guess the right one.

Sometimes they'd figure it out and they'd be so hurt. He was their special friend as they saw it. He was the guy who'd taken their confession and looked into their very souls. He was the guy who'd counseled the couple back to happiness after one of them had had an affair. He was the one who talked to them when they were terrified, scared and alone. And now he didn't have a clue who they were.

Sometimes they'd ask me if Monsignor's memory was going and I'd vaguely say he was getting older and feel guilty about it because I knew his memory wasn't going and I didn't like lying about him.

The week he died, he snuck out of the rectory and took a cab to visit a dying man because the man's wife had phoned him and said that her parish priest hadn't come even though she'd asked him. Two days later he was gone.

 He always said yes but, you know, I don't think he ever made more than superficial contact with anyone. The way he saw it, God did the work. As a priest, his job was to say the black, do the red and he never went much further than that.

He had real friends, of course. I wasn't one of them. I read for him at mass. Everyone loved him and they started to think that he ought to love them in return but he couldn't. He couldn't even know them because there were thousands of people depending on him.