How well do you know your priest?

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Adamek said:
Is it that the priests have no need of support from the parish (other than money), or are the parishoners not interested in what their clergy do?
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I don’t think it is either of these. I am not sure you realize how busy priests lives are. It’s not like they say mass once a day and then they are off for the rest of the day. The priests at my parish, there are 3 of them, are busy all day with administrative things, visiting the home bound and sick, going to funeral homes and visiting with grieving families, setting up and saying mass for funerals, and appointments with parishioners or any parish activities going on with different parish groups.

They don’t have a lot of time for family dinners or getting together for coffee. So if you don’t stop on the way out of mass and say hello, I don’t know how you would get to know your priest at all.
 
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I’ve known all our priests well. Very well. The good and the bad ones, the strong and weak. Because I’m a parent. A parent has an absolute duty to know the parish priest well. His family, his formation his beliefs and his style. Not just because of abuse issues but also because this is what we hold up as a source of authority, and spiritual direction for our kids. I work closely with priests in our parish even if they are bad priests or I don’t particularly “like”them. And some I love! But if you don’t know your priest well you aren’t catholicing right.
 
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I see so much truth in your post. It is so sad how the vocation has been overrun by administrative issues. A priest can’t smell like his flock in his office.
 
A few years ago I had a conversation with a relatively new priest whom we had known for a while. I wanted to talk to him about something. I called, I was told to schedule a meeting during his office hours. It was three weeks out. I did. Three weeks later I went in his “office” and we had a discussion about vocation, his “job” and if the collar had business hours. How when he worked part time at a grocery store people had more access to him than when he became their father. And we talked about fatherhood. From that day forward all business terms were removed from the parish. Father didn’t have office hours, he didn’t attend “meetings” he still had the same demands (if not more) but it wasn’t by a banks hours but by his vocation, not his job. He is one of the busiest yet most accessible priests I know now.
 
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1Lord1Faith said:
I’ve never felt like having to invite my parish priest over to dinner just because they are my parish priest. That’s always seemed to me like it would be something that some priests may not enjoy. But if after getting to know a priest and you get along with them then that could be something to consider. So, in that respect I would treat a priest in a similar way to other people. I hear that they are just like people. 😀
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Not only are they just like people, they ARE people.

This reminds me of when I was attending Catechism classes on weekends, and on one special weekend we were all treated to ice cream bars. One of my classmates asked the sister, “Do nuns like ice cream?” She replied, “Of course we like ice cream. Just because we’re nuns doesn’t mean we also aren’t people.”, or words to that effect.

I somehow had an image of chocolate-covered ice cream bars. But when we got them, they had orange coverings on the outside, which I thought was rather strange. But, the ice cream was still good.
 
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Irishmom2 said:
So if you don’t stop on the way out of mass and say hello, I don’t know how you would get to know your priest at all.
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And further to this I would note that coming out of Mass, even in non-COVID times, there are always people monopolizing the priest for 5 minutes or more while 25 others, me included, pass on by because we would have to wait in line to get a word in.

The priests I know I have generally met or interacted with outside of Mass.
 
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That is quite true, but I sometimes just wait in my pew for a bit and wait for him to be free.
 
Nope never spoken to either of the priests in the parish I go to other than to say thanks on the way out of Mass. I’m confident they wouldn’t know me if they fell over me 😂

It’s a big parish with two churches, in a big city with lots of parishioners and lots of visitors so the priests will be super busy.

Having said that, the deacons are pretty chatty. I’ve gotten to know one of them over the past year or so. They seem more approachable because they straddle two worlds - ordained clergy but also working more in the everyday world too.
 
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