Daily life in the priesthood

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hi everyone,

I keep reading in these threads about how busy life in the priesthood is. Does anyone know what daily life for a priest is like. Is it constant work from sunrise into the late night? What kinds of things do priests do outside of mass. Thanks.
 
curlycool89 said:
There’s a bit of a short story on the daily life of a priest on this website.
Click to expand...
Good article, curlycool89! 👍

I heard a program on EWTN radio earlier with a Priest discussing this very thing. He was saying there are some (maybe many) who are celebrating Mass in 2 or 3 parishes. Then there are the hospital visits, funerals, home visits etc. Plus all the administrative type duties. While they may not be “constantly” busy from sunrise to late night, it does seem they are quite busy. I remember reading/hearing stories about 15-20 years ago how “Priest burnout” was becoming a serious problem. There have been quite a few recent stories about admissions to seminaries and Religious Orders going up. IMHO, this is a good thing! 🙂
 
Thanks curlycool,

That was a good article and it answered my question. I wonder how he( or any priest) decides on what to talk about. I know that there are what is considerd to be the relevent topics of the day, but I mean in general from week to week. He seems to put alot of effort into his sermons which is good.
 
it depends on the priest and on his assignment
the typical pastor of a parish in this diocese also has another responsibility or even fulltime job–seminary rector, vicar general, chancellor, head of chaplains, vicar for priests, vicar for religious, communications director etc. are all priest who also have parishes, plus they may be deans (head of a group of parishes organized geographically), hospital or prison chaplains (we have almost as many HS age youth in custody as we do in school here for instance), chaplains for other groups.

Our pastor spends at least 2 full days on diocesan work, plus a communications apostolate assignment involving TV, radio and written newsletters. He also writes books and magazine articles. Daily mass, funerals, weddings, baptisms, we do have a retired deacon who helps when he can. At least half the pastors here also manage 2 to 5 missions and all the pastoral and sacramental needs of those areas. It is not unusual for a priest here to put 50 to 75M miles on a car each year, so a lot of time driving. Our priest listens to instructional or devotional CDs on religious topics when he drives, others conduct business with hands free phone or blackberry or whatever it is called while they drive.

It is common here for all the priests in a given city to rotate sick calls to homes, hospitals, nursing homes etc, so each is on call at least 1-2 days a week.

Ours is one of the best preachers I have ever heard and spends 8 hours preparing his weekend homily. he also offers confession more often than many parishes. He tries to visit each CCD class at least once a year–that means 48 visits, 2 a week during CCD time. There are very few priests here to take over if one is sick so they often have to share duties in a neighboring parish if a pastor gets sick–there are very few parishes with more than one priest.

Several priests her also give retreats, teach classes, help with campus and youth ministry events and help with every lay group you can think of. A pastor running a capital campaign in addition to the business administration of the parish and sometimes the school, has those business affairs to manage.

If you ask most priests they will tell you they spend 2 much time in meetings. If ours went to every one he is invited to that would easily be 3 a night or 15 a week.
 
Hi Puzzleannie,

This is all interesting info for me. I had the impression that priests spent alot of time outside of attending mass by reading church history or letters, basically intellectual tasks to keep up their seminary training. Attending other meeting revolving around theological topics etc. I guess like many jobs you get to spend about 10 percent doing what you enjoy and 90 percent doing other things to keep the ship afloat.
 
Our parish priests are not as busy as Puzzelannie’s since presently we have 4 priests in the rectory and at any one time we have one or two visiting priests as well. Our priests have one mass each on the weekend and maybe 3 during the week. Our don’t go to the hospitals since the two hospitals in our parish have full time priests on duty at the hospital. One of our priests spends a lot of time in the parish school stopping in at classes. The other two don’t do that much as they don’t have parish responsibilities outside of Mass, maybe just funerals and wakes and baptisms, but we don’t have that many.

The pastor keeps busy. He is on several diocesan committees, and is area dean. All our priests seem to have a lot of down time, even though they only have one day off a week, they seem to spend a lot of time off campus.
 
We also have a large rectory. 3 assigned priests,1 in residence, and currently 1 visiting. We also are the largest parish in the diocese (or in the top 3). The visiting priest is a missionary and mostly involved with his mission work. The in-residence priest is an order priest who has responsibilities outside our parish and travels frequently. One of our PVs was recently named an MC for the bishop and so has rotating responsibilities there. Our other PV is also a theologian who has a few responsibilities attached to that.

Our parish has a school, so even though the priests don’t teach, they do spend time in the classrooms, at assemblies, school masses, etc. They do directly teach RCIA which is weekly from September to Easter, lead CCD retreats, marriage prep,and baptism prep. Funerals, weddings, and confession scheduled 3 times a week also. The parish offers 3 daily Masses every weekday, and 7 Sunday Masses.

Our parish territory includes a senior facility and nursing home along with any ill or homebound parishioners who request visits from the priest. All that along with administrative duties and probably plenty of stuff I have no idea about is enough to keep them busy.
 
The busyness of priest varies a great deal, by diocese, order, and secular society. It also varies by parish, and by how many voluntary things a priest does. Many do far more than they need to to “get away with” what they do do, which is good.

Naturally, time management and delegatorial abilities also impact busyness, as does the parish budget and quality of parish employees and volunteers. Here are some examples: one full-time or even part-time music director who is very good can create a music program of an almost unheard of quality at a medium to large parish. One extra parish secretary/general administrator who is very organized can save a parish priest many meetings and suchlike. A couple in the parish or even just one lay volunteer with a good theological background can mastermind a very solid religious ed program.
 
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