Inviting the Priest to dinner

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We have a rather large parish, and so we have invited our priest over for dinner but he has been unable to accept an invitation as of yet.

However it’s kind of funny, my parents go to a tiny, tiny rural parish in Montana and the priest invited himself over for BBQ! How funny is that! Anyway they have him over every Sunday, and also have had him and another priest visit at their Arizona home in the winter.
 
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CatQuilt:
Thanks, everyone! Once I get the house a little cleaner, I’ll invite a couple of them over. :o

It would be a nice habit to get into. At our parish, there’s a lady who cooks for them during the week but they’re on their own on the weekends…
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I think here people also bring meals to the rectory on weekends. No house cleaning requried. 😉
 
I have some photographs of my wife’s grandparents entertaining the priest from their parish (my current parish) at Christmas dinner, 1967. My wife’s grandparents only lived one street over from the church, so it was a quick walk for dinner! Father Stack was wearing his short sleeve grey shirt w/ collar, so there was no mistaking him for anything else! I was fascinated that the priest would make it over for Christmas dinner. I’ll bet the priests get many, many invitations for holiday dinners…
 
I have always had the visiting priest over for dinner and try to take our priest out to dinner or over for dinner. We have even watched a few football games together, beer and all.
 
We have invited every pastor we have ever had to dinner in our home at least twice, none of them ever accepted, although one did come to a restaurant with us one time. Maybe they heard about my cooking, or maybe for some reason they don’t feel it is right to fraternize.
 
Our priest came for dinner once, and we plan to invite him again.
Only, I’ll have to clean the house first.

He did drop in unexpectedly on some parish business once, and stayed to bless our house (I forget whose idea that was – it wasn’t mine) – we had just gotten home from work and it looked like a hurricane had hit it! He was very nice, didn’t seem to notice a thing, but I cringed as he went from room to room with holy water.
Still, he’s so accepting and kind that it wasn’t that painful – and now we have a blessed house.
 
Having priests over for dinner is a lot of fun and a great way to present a role model for your children about a possible vocation. I’m not saying that you have to say anything, but the fact that you open your home speaks volumes!

What a great way to learn about a priest, nun, etc. than over dinner, learning if they have siblings, where they lived, etc. Many religious don’t get asked these questions.

Please be prepared in the event that a priest declines your kind offer. Some priests do not go to parishioner’s homes so as not to play favorites (go to one instead of another). Others are just so busy with sick calls, church duites, taking care of elderly parents on the side, that they just can’t make it. Just be understanding a drop some cookies off to the rectory!
 
Great topic for a thread! I have always wondered the same thing. We are very fond of our priest and have thought I would like to invite him over. So now I am emboldened to do so. I figure if he isn’t interested, he will just decline. But I suspect he would welcome a chance to let his hair down (except that he is bald!) Some friends of ours who go to a different parish and have lots of friends who are priests invited us over to a big party at their house last year. There were several priests (two or three) AND the bishop! I nearly flipped. (The only time I had ever met a bishop was at Confirmation ceremonies, decades ago!) They were all totally delightful. They were great with the kids, talked apologetics and Papal elections, and even played the party game with everyone else!
 
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CatQuilt:
Once I get the house a little cleaner, I’ll invite a couple of them over.
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I find there’s nothing like a priest coming for dinner to inspire me to clean the house. But don’t wait until your house is clean to invite him; his schedule might be busy for a few weeks and then you’ll have to clean all over again.
 
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gardenswithkids:
I find there’s nothing like a priest coming for dinner to inspire me to clean the house. But don’t wait until your house is clean to invite him; his schedule might be busy for a few weeks and then you’ll have to clean all over again.
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While you’re at it, you might want to clean the whole house.

We’ve had priests over a couple times, and one of them he went around and blessed the house with Holy Water and stuff. It was really great. When we get back into our house (hopefully this month) we may ask the priest to come over and bless it, whether or not he is able to make it for dinner.

He probably will make it, because he doesn’t cook!

Alan
 
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mercygate:
We gave him raw oysters, green salad with French mustard vinaigrette, baked salmon, roasted asparagus, little bitty red potatoes, and home made apple pie, good German Riesling, brie & green grapes.
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WOW! Wanna invite me for dinner sometime? 😃

Once there was this huge Catholic Congress in my country. We had Priests, Nuns, Seminarists and Missionaries come from all Latin America, the U.S. and Canada. Instead of putting everyone in hotels, the organizers thought it would be a good idea (cheaper too 🙂 ) to have everyone stay with a family.
So we had a very nice priest staying over at our house for a whole week. He would spend almost the entire day attending the Congress, but we would have him back in the house come dinner time.
It was a wonderful and very rewarding experience to have him. We would learn a lot not only about religious topics, but about his country and the way thing work over at his parish.
On the final night of the Congress, they invited us for dinner at the place were they had their conferences for the congress. It was great sharing dinner that night with priests, nuns, etc. from all over the Continent.

God :blessyou: all!
 
We recently had our parish priest over along with the seminary student who has been with the parish this summer. We just talked about things in general including the seminary student’s upcoming trip to Cologne for World Youth Day.

The kids thought it was cool to see our priest dressed in shorts and a casual shirt!

I hope to encourage the possibility of a vocation in my sons by having them get to know these terrific men who minister to us.
 
Michael's Sword:
The kids thought it was cool to see our priest dressed in shorts and a casual shirt!

I hope to encourage the possibility of a vocation in my sons by having them get to know these terrific men who minister to us.
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That’s another great point. In our case, the priests came still dressed in black shirts and collars, but to have them actually in our house was a great experience for the children. They acted like it was a great honor to have these important men around the same table at our own home! 👍

Alan
 
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gardenswithkids:
I find there’s nothing like a priest coming for dinner to inspire me to clean the house. But don’t wait until your house is clean to invite him; his schedule might be busy for a few weeks and then you’ll have to clean all over again.
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:rotfl::rotfl: :rotfl: I thought I was the only person on the planet who thought like that.

Actually, about diffidence in accepting invitations from members of the congregation, as a convert, I was not aware of the former reluctance of priests to be overly available to their flock on a social basis so I issued invitations left and right, and they were never declined.

I have lately been reading the old book, Gospel Priesthood. It discusses at considerable length the inadvisability of over-familiarity and warns of the pitfalls of being overexposed to worldly things and people. Those were the days when a priest’s own mother called him “Father” and his other relatives took pride in the extreme liberty of calling him by his first name – but always “Father”: “Father Jim.” Nowadays, if we call a Priest “Father Mclaughlin,” we are considered rigid and old fashioned.

I think it’s largely a good thing that priests are allowed out of the rectory, especially now that there are so few of them, and many are alone. It gives us an opportunity to minister to them.
 
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mercygate:
Those were the days when a priest’s own mother called him “Father” and his other relatives took pride in the extreme liberty of calling him by his first name – but always “Father”: “Father Jim.” Nowadays, if we call a Priest “Father Mclaughlin,” we are considered rigid and old fashioned.
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I think it’s interesting that you say this, being that you live in NYC and on the east coast. My experience in Philadelphia was that no one DREAMS of calling a priest Father “First Name.” The few priests I know from Boston and NYC are the same, so maybe I only am familiar with the exceptions. However, in Philadelphia, it is most definitely only Father “Last Name!”

The midwest, however, is a different story, and it is ALWAYS Father “first name.” I also notice a much more personable attitude among priests who minister to our parishes out here.
 
La Chiara:
Great topic for a thread! I have always wondered the same thing. We are very fond of our priest and have thought I would like to invite him over. So now I am emboldened to do so. I figure if he isn’t interested, he will just decline. But I suspect he would welcome a chance to let his hair down (except that he is bald!) Some friends of ours who go to a different parish and have lots of friends who are priests invited us over to a big party at their house last year. There were several priests (two or three) AND the bishop! I nearly flipped. (The only time I had ever met a bishop was at Confirmation ceremonies, decades ago!) They were all totally delightful. They were great with the kids, talked apologetics and Papal elections, and even played the party game with everyone else!
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At least one of our priests usually shows up at our choir parties. They generally grab a beer, a plate of food, a chair, and just kick back, relax, and chat with whoever’s around. It’s a lot of fun to have them around because they’re all really friendly and have good senses of humor. The best was watching our former pastor (officially retired, but lives in the rectory and still celebrates Masses and works at the parish) get up at the Christmas party with some of our rowdier choir members and sing “The 12 Days of Christmas”, complete with charades. 😃

We haven’t had them over for dinner yet, but that’s because lately we’re so busy that we don’t eat dinner until late ourselves. It’s a 2000-family parish and all the priests are hometown boys and have immediate family in the area, so I don’t worry that they are alone on weekends or holidays.
 
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katy:
I would feel it would be more of a comedown for the priest to have dinner in my aluminum sided tract house. Why exactly would he want to do that? We are just ordinary, lackluster sheep of the parish.
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Think about what you’re saying. When someone invites you into their home, shows you hospitality and a delightful evening of homemade food, good conversation and a lot of laughs, do you stop on the way out and say “Gee it would have been so much more fun if my friends lived in an estate fit for Donald Trump?!?!” OF COURSE NOT!! And neither would your priest who above most people would recognize and appreciate your efforts to reach out to him and include him in the community of his parish.

A great way to make the evening even easier and fun is to do a pot-luck (which can be as casual or sophisticated as you want) with several familes from the parish. No one loses from having a priest in the midst of their social circle.
 
We entertain priests as often as we can. We even had an auxiliary Bishop over for dinner. He was late, dinner dried out - we had a great time!

For my friends at Assumption Grotto. Never, ever, ever invite Fr. Bustamante when you are serving some sort of organ meat! 😃 He’ll either tell you he’s fasting or he’s a vegetarian - he refuses to set foot in my house if I have any menudo in the freezer. :rotfl:

We are tertiaries of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate. Whenever a priest comes into town for our community, we always have him stay with us.

We have more fun with our priest friends than we do with our own families. The kids like it too. On January 1, we always invite one of my husband’s old professors (a Jesuit) to celebrate the feast of Mary, Mother of God with us. We serve soul food or Mexican food (he’s a Southerner - loves southern cookin’). We round out the day with a cut-throat game of Monopoly & the Rosary.

Be yourself. A lot of times, priests aren’t assigned close to their families, so they get lonely. You’d be surprised how many just sit in the rectory on Sunday afternoon. 😦 They like to kick back and not have to be “on,” just like everyone else.
 
We have the clergy over frequently and they really like to be treated in an ordinary way…
I’ve been involved w/ the Church for so many years now that it is just like having my father or my brother to dinner… of course always maintaining proper decorum fitting a Priest…as if Jesus were coming to dinner…:yup:
 
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