A conversation: ‘Where Do We Go From Here?’

By Peter Finney Jr.
Clarion Herald

A priest and a lay Catholic walk into an office and start talking.

Their pain is real. 

Their conversation revolves around Judas, weeds and wheat, betrayal and why it’s important for everyone living 2,000 years after Jesus to listen attentively.

“I’m hearing a lot of hurt, I’m hearing a lot of disappointment,” said Jason Angelette, director of faith and marriage programs for the Willwoods Community, which focuses on enriching Catholic marriages. “I’ve spoken to a lot of friends who are very faithful and very giving of their time and their talents and their treasures to the church, and they’re speaking as if they’re ready to jump ship from the barque of Peter.”

What brought Angelette together Oct. 20 with Father Colm Cahill, who serves as director of vocations for the Archdiocese of New Orleans, was an opportunity to begin a videotaped conversation about the sexual scandals that forced the removal from ministry of two respected pastors, Fathers Pat Wattigny and Travis Clark.

On Oct. 1, Archbishop Gregory Aymond removed Wattigny as pastor of St. Luke the Evangelist Parish in Slidell after he admitted to sexually abusing a minor in 2013. The archbishop also removed Clark following his Sept. 30 arrest on charges of obscenity with women inside Sts. Peter and Paul Church in Pearl River.

As a further step in his oversight of the archdiocese, Archbishop Aymond is seeking to have both priests laicized, a process that would require Vatican approval.

Father Cahill termed the video conversation with Angelette “Where Do We Go From Here?” because he and his brother priests – as well as lay Catholics – have been rocked by what happened.

See videos here: Part 1 of Father Cahill’s and Angelette’s video, “Where Do We Go From Here?” is available at https://bit.ly/3mqXL7w. Part 2 is available at https://bit.ly/2TyHMHW.

“I’m fed up with responding and kind of reacting,” Father Cahill said. “A lot of my frustration right now (is) I have an exhaustion within – trying to put back together stuff and trying to ‘fix’ things. It’s a confusion and a tension that exists.”

While on one level the betrayal of Judas – one of the original 12 apostles – heightens the awareness that sin is always possible because of free will, Father Cahill said, “I don’t want one, single iota of my being to be OK with that.”

Angelette contrasted the righteous anger Martin Luther felt at what he considered were Catholic Church abuses – nailing his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle church and sparking the Protestant Reformation – with a lackadaisical attitude that deep-seated problems in the church will simply blow over given enough time.

Neither response is acceptable at this moment in the church’s history, Angelette said. 

“We cannot just sit there and be like, ‘Well, that’s going to happen and we’re just going to get through this,’” Angelette said. “If someone says to me, ‘I just need to pray’ one more time. … Yes, I’m praying, but what are we doing? Fulton J. Sheen talks about this: It’s the spirit and then action. The Word became flesh.

“In the body of Christ, there are going to be times when the laity need to come to the clergy and say, ‘Something is not right. There is something wrong in the family.’ And it can’t be like, ‘Well, thank you for saying that,’ and then just completely dismiss everything that I’ve said.”

Father Cahill said because all priests can be tainted by the actions of a few, it’s not unusual that they might be feeling “very defensive” when they hear comments or receive emails from parishioners.

“Listening actually leads to a deeper conversation,” Father Cahill said. “If we’re unable, as a family, to talk to each other, why am I wondering why you’re not listening to my homily about morality? … People feel betrayed. People feel very, very let down, and there’s a lot of anger – a very just anger.”

It is difficult to ascribe a reason for a breakdown in a priest’s commitment to his vocation, Father Cahill said, but an older priest friend once told him it often centers on a breakdown in a priest’s relationship with Jesus.

“This is not in a judgmental way, because some people leave ministry for very good reasons after a process of discernment,” he said. “With some of the more problematic ones, (my priest friend) always asks the same question: ‘When did you stop praying? When did that relationship start to break down?’ That’s not across the board, and there are a lot of reasons why some people would have to step away from ministry for their own reasons like health and personal.

“But in the cases where these egregious sins against the bride (of Christ) are committed, it’s like ‘When did that relationship break down?’ Because you can’t give the flock what you don’t have. If I don’t know Jesus, if I’m not working on my personal holiness, how in the world can we even minister anything to the flock?”

Accountability matters among both lay Catholics and priests, said Angelette, who belongs to a small faith group of men. He said if a man is having difficulty making his commitment to some devotion he has agreed to – such as spending an hour in adoration once a week – but then misses two or three times in a row, his faith buddy is there to challenge and help him.

“By the third week,” Angelette said, “my friend should be able to say to me, ‘Hey, Jason, this Saturday at 9 o’clock I’m coming over to your house. I’m going to cut your grass, fold your laundry, whatever you’ve got to do, your honey-do list. I’m going to do it for you.’ You get that holy hour in because the whole thing falls apart if we’re trying to run around this rat race. We have to come to find the source.”

Priests can grow stale in their faith as well, said Father Cahill, and that can lead to many problems.

Priests can convince themselves that since they’ve been through the seminary, they’ve “got a pretty good prayer life.” And now, as a pastor, they can tell themselves they know their parishioners well and “I’m not really on a learning curve anymore.”

“I have stopped being a student,” Father Cahill said. “What that means is I don’t see my bride (the church) as a mystery anymore. I see my bride as a problem. I see my bride as a task.”

Father Cahill said he hoped a conversation could be started in parishes throughout the archdiocese between lay Catholics and their priests.

“We’re not done,” he said. “‘I’m hearing the disciples in the boat saying, ‘Jesus, wake up!’ That’s what we need to hear right now.”

Part 1 of Father Cahill’s and Angelette’s video, “Where Do We Go From Here?” is available at https://bit.ly/3mqXL7w. Part 2 is available at https://bit.ly/2TyHMHW.

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