Abp. Hughes: Priests called to embody the Gospel

Archbishop Emeritus Alfred Hughes (pictured above, inside the chapel at Notre Dame Seminary) will autograph copies of “Priests in Love with God and Eager to Witness to the Gospel” on Saturday, March 5, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. at The Catholic Bookstore, 3003 South Carrollton Ave. in New Orleans.

By BETH DONZE
Clarion Herald

“Doomsday” thinking about the Catholic Church – and the priesthood that leads it – is nothing new.

Challenges such as theological schisms, plagues, socio-political upheavals and the flawed nature of humanity have tested both over two millennia, yet the ordained have managed to not only pull through, but to rededicate themselves to their calling.

Placing the Catholic priesthood into a broader historical perspective and suggesting a way forward from current threats to its vitality has inspired Archbishop Emeritus Alfred Hughes to write his fifth book, “Priests in Love with God and Eager to Witness to the Gospel.”

Archbishop Hughes argues that although the Church has suffered greatly in the wake of its most recent scandals and setbacks – among them, clerical sexual abuse, COVID-19 and declining numbers of faithful – she can be renewed by priests and bishops who are dedicated to joyfully living out the Gospel and resist the temptation to use their vocation to serve themselves.

“The church has faced very significant challenges in the past, and found ways, by God’s grace, to address them,” Archbishop Hughes said, speaking in his office last month. “That should give us confidence, that should give us hope, that should increase our zeal not just to lament the difficulties we’re facing today, but rather to see them as an opportunity for moving from just trying to keep things maintained, to rediscovering a sense of mission, a sense of evangelizing commitment.”

‘Stumbling’ apostles

Archbishop Hughes devotes the first two-thirds of the book to church luminaries who responded to fissures in the priesthood and helped clarify the role of the ordained.

“Disciples are to love the Lord more than any human relationship, more than any possession and more than life itself. This is a tall order!” Archbishop Hughes writes, noting that the Catholic priesthood, made up of flawed human beings, has been lived out “in an uneven way” from the time of the apostles. He says New Testament accounts show us how Jesus chose “rather ordinary men,” seemingly ill-suited to carrying out the work of evangelization, who were, by turns, self-absorbed, confused, scared, and – in the case of Judas – treacherous.

Yet, just as they seemed to have lost the plot, these “stumbling” disciples – all but one of whom were absent from Calvary in Christ’s greatest time of need – are renewed by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and go on to lay the foundation of the church – to the point of giving their lives to do it, Archbishop Hughes notes.

Priest asked to mirror Christ

Still, God continues to call “imperfect men to serve in his name,” some of whom attained sainthood, others who were “ordinary instruments” of God’s saving mission, and still others who were “great sinners,” Archbishop Hughes writes. For example, in the era of persecution that followed Christ’s crucifixion, some priests and bishops handed over their texts, liturgical items and led pagan worship to save their lives. However, most clergy “offered a powerful witness to faith and fortitude, thus inspiring the laity to persevere,” writes Archbishop Hughes.

As first-century bishop St. Ignatius of Antioch – one of those tenacious priests – was being conveyed in chains to his martyrdom in Rome, he wrote letters to ecclesial communities urging them to never lose hope in Christ. St. Ignatius of Antioch was the first church leader to say that because the destiny of Christian life is being with God for eternity, priests are to lead their flocks in that journey by mirroring the Lord as “priest-victims” – ones who empty themselves of worldly attachments and who bolster themselves in this work of salvation through the Eucharist.

“St. Ignatius was convinced that he came from God and was destined to go back to God – that was the most important journey,” Archbishop Hughes said. “He wanted to be a faithful disciple even to the end. He helps us to see ultimately what is important in life – the journey back to God by the way we live in this world.”

Living faith in the world

As the end of persecution brought Christians out of the shadows in the 4th century, new challenges arose in the lives of the ordained. Being disciples of Christ “out in the open” presented priests with twin spiritual struggles described by St. John Chrysostom: the struggle between God and worldly temptations taking place within the priest himself; and the care he had given his parishioners on their own paths to salvation.

“The priest is called to be a crucible, a person in whom that (spiritual) warfare comes into focus,” Archbishop Hughes said, noting that St. John Chrysostom was the first Catholic figure to state that the priesthood is “not a career, but a sacred vocation for others.”

“Time and again in the history of the church, priests are going to struggle with the temptation to make a false accommodation to the life of the world,” Archbishop Hughes writes, sharing the antidotes to sin offered by St. John Chrysostom to his brother priests – virtues such as gentleness in the correction of others; embracing chastity, to protect the integrity of their charitable works; and practicing sobriety and moderation – over gluttony – to give credibility to their teaching of the Gospel.

Letting God in  

Archbishop Hughes said St. John Chrysostom’s contemporary – St. Augustine of Hippo – gives us an example of someone who despite struggling with lust and promiscuity for decades, converted to Christianity after being moved by excellent preaching of sacred Scripture. St. Augustine, who went on to be ordained a priest and bishop, made it one of his chief aims to help his brother-priests resist the world’s temptations by sharing the story of how God had taken over his own life, and urged the laity not to leave the church because of bad pastors, the author said.

“Shepherds are to feed the flock, not themselves; to seek the good of souls, not clerical privilege,” Archbishop Hughes writes of St. Augustine’s call to priests to make “an ever-fuller self-gift to the Lord for the salvation of others.”

Survived schisms, plagues

Although secularization, encouraged by a feudal system that placed church leaders into positions of power as lords and advisors to kings, continued to seep into the clergy in the Middle Ages, St. Thomas Aquinas offers priests a 13th-century example of anti-clericalism. The great theologian embraced a life of simplicity, refusing every big appointment that came his way, notes Archbishop Hughes. Even Martin Luther, despite the wound he inflicted on the church in the 16th century, left a positive mark on the Catholic priesthood, challenging priests “to take seriously the preaching ministry – the ministry of the word that had been de-emphasized in the centuries before,” Archbishop Hughes said.

With the Black Death of the 14th century (which claimed one-third of Europe’s population) still resonating, and subsequent waves of Protestantism splintering the once monolithic Catholic world, the Council of Trent was convened 1545-63 to heal confessional differences, reform the church and unite against the Ottoman Turks. Although the council failed to heal rifts between Protestants and Catholics, it brought priestly reforms such as requiring the ordained to live near to those they serve, limiting priests to one ministry and re-emphasizing their special care for the poor. The council also exhorted priests to become better preachers and teachers of the sacraments and Christian morality, and spawned the establishment of seminaries to ensure correct priestly formation.

The council, writes Archbishop Hughes, “provides concrete evidence that it is possible to address a serious crisis in the church in a responsible way. Diversity in theological opinions and pastoral practice do not need to paralyze the church.”

A more recent assembly of church leaders – the Second Vatican Council of the mid-1960s – followed two centuries of political upheavals and a 19th-century Enlightenment that substituted human reason for faith, and came at a time of hostility toward the Church and skepticism about her efforts to promote reconciliation and peace, Archbishop Hughes said.

The conciliar document “Lumen gentium” brought a new understanding of the priesthood by reminding Catholics of the “common priesthood” of all the baptized – the laity and the ordained.

“The Second Vatican Council said the priesthood of the (lay) faithful, received at baptism, is the most fundamental sharing of the priesthood of Christ, and that the ordained are ordained to serve that,” Archbishop Hughes said. In short, the main role of the priest is to be “in service to the salvation and sanctification of the people, not to put himself on a pedestal or isolate himself from the people,” he said.

Joyful witnesses needed

With the nearly 60 years since the Second Vatican Council bringing more upheavals, including what Archbishop Hughes calls the “self-inflicted wound” and “moral disaster” of clergy sex abuse, what is the renewal needed by the Church in our own time?

“Simply stated, the Church needs God,” Archbishop Hughes writes.

“Whenever scandal has rocked the Church, God has raised up remarkable men and women to model what it means to take the Gospel seriously and become men and women truly in love with the Lord,” he asserts, noting that the ultimate antidote to scandal must be priests’ recommitment to “holiness of life and Gospel living” – a return to the happiness that God alone can offer.

“Tragedy can either prompt people to seek worldly solace and relief or open the door to God’s saving, sanctifying and elevating action,” he writes. “The Church needs saints who witness to the way, the truth and the life! Saintly priests will become attractive witnesses.”

Archbishop Hughes said priests are called to be this dynamic and evangelizing force in the world at a time marked by “leakage” in the church: one-third of baptized Catholics living today no longer consider themselves Catholic. The number of the lapsed rises to about half of those born in the last 30 years. Studies reveal the average age of this drifting away is 13.

Priests must be willing to listen to the reasons for the attrition, among them, disbelief in the Christian narrative, the view that the Mass, sacraments and church teachings are irrelevant, and the perception that the Church is male dominated and anti-woman. Underlying these and other misunderstandings is a feeling among some of the lapsed of “not experiencing God” in the Church, Archbishop Hughes writes.

“Even though God is there offering himself, more people experience difficulty in finding him there, often because they fail to see him in their priests,” he says.

Fortunately, notes the author, the Church offers three “evangelical virtues” that are important to all people, but especially to the ordained: poverty, chastity and obedience.

“People do not expect perfection. But they do look for concrete evidence that the ordained man is practicing what the Gospel teaches,” Archbishop Hughes writes.

In light of recent challenges besetting the priesthood, Archbishop Hughes wonders if  God is “nudging” priests and bishops to re-embrace a life of simplicity and to reject the “opulent clergy lifestyle” into which some have fallen.

He suggests that the parish priest “cannot exempt himself from some personal engagement with the poor.” Likewise, he writes that “luxury” should have no place in a priest’s life, nor should clericalism, whether it means priests’ vying for a big appointment or using their vocation to extract favors or preferential treatment.

“Christ’s apostles are to travel lightly in this world to give credibility to their preaching about the next,” Archbishop Hughes writes. “They are to serve others rather than expect others to serve them.”

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