Is personal contact with the parish priests important for you?

[weepixie71]

Yes, contact with the parish priest is very important as I often have questions which aren’t appropriate to ask in the confessional. I must say, however, that I don’t feel able to approach a priest from an entirely different culture or one whose English is poor. My diocese has too many imported priests (Canada has become a mission country) and I feel alienated.
As an aside, I also have problems with lectors who have a heavy accent–I end up missing have the readings.

i know what you mean veronica. when i go to st louis, mo they had a priest from germany. he spoke english well but i could only understand him if he really took his time. but what i could understand i liked .

 

[Doni]

Churches built past 1962 don’t even have confessionals anymore.

I suppose if you are referring to “confessionals” (booths) as opposed to “reconciliation rooms” then possibly so. But if you are implying that there are no designated areas for the rite of reconciliation, then you’re a bit off the mark.

In my case, I have five Catholic churches within about 20 minutes of me (all are “novus ordo”). One is about 40 years old, while the others are much newer (the newest built in the last ten years). Every one of them have reconciliation rooms – complete with a screen/grill for those who prefer not seeing the priest face to face. All of them have weekly times of confession, most on Saturday, one on Wednesday. All will schedule confessions by appointment at other times.

I don’t see the rite of reconcilation being put aside in these churches at all – although perhaps it would be good if more people took advantage of this wonderful sacrament. And, truth is, you don’t actually need a confessional at all, just the priest and the penitent.

 

[stringbeanduck]

For me it is. I like to be able to know my priests so when personal matter comes up I can feel more confortable talking with them.

 

[JReducation]

There are too many assumptions in the original post. The Belgian situation, if this is true of all of Belgium, is not the situation of the universal Church. The assumption that priests don’t pray is just that. Who goes out and takes a poll of what priests pray the Liturgy of the Hours and which ones do not? As to the priest standing around for a chit chat after mass, that’s going to depend on the size of your parish.

Our parish has seven masses every Sunday. We have three priests and about 1,000 at each mass. The parish has over 3,500 families. There is no way that any priest can stand around and have a chit chat without having other parishioners wanting to wish him a good morning at the end of mass. Every one of our priests stands outside the Church, after mass, to shake people’s hands as they are leaving the Church.

As to spending a lot of time with the faithful, that’s going to depend on the parish and the kind of priests that you have. Our parish is staffed by a contemplative religious community. Our Brothers do not spend a great deal of time outside of the community house. There are seven brothers in the house. Three are ordained. But the seven brothers must pray five hours of the Liturgy of the Hours and they must do so in community. They eat two meals a day in community. They spend one hour a day in front of the Blessed Sacrament in community. They spend an hour a day in community recreation. Every brother has chores to do around the house: cooking, cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping and other domestic chores. Every six months the parish closes down to allow the brothers to go on a one week retreat. Local priests from the hospital and the university cover sick calls, Sunday mass and confessions. Every evening, after Night Prayer, which is at 7:30 we begin Grand Silence. They go to bed when they want to, but they do not engage in any activity that requires conversation. Therefore, all evening ministries are run by secular deacons and the laity and by the brothers from my community, because we don’t have the Grand Silence until later in the evening. There is an office schedule for the week, including Saturday. The brothers have scheduled hours to be in the parish office, all seven, the three clerical brothers and the three lay brothers.

Thus far, our parishioners are very edified by the joy, the charity, and the austerity of the brothers’ life, including the fact that seven brothers share three automobiles, have only one TV in the house, never take a day off, visit family only five days per year, do not carry cell phones, share three computers, find time to meet with people and families and spend time with the youth on Saturdays when the office is less busy. There are always two brothers hearing confessions every Saturday from 4:00 to 5:00. Confessions have to stop at 5:00 because the brothers must return to the community house for Evening Prayer; but our people are very understanding of that. Yes, we do have a reconciliation room that has a partition for those who prefer to use the screen.

Our ordained brothers do have a sense of their priesthood, but they see it within the context of a call to the consecrated life to live the Gospel in the manner of St. Francis, always working to reach the perfection of charity and to be witnesses to the Kingdom of God.

Every parish has different circumstances. In the USA most parishes are staffed not by religious, but by secular priests. There is a shortage of secular priests. Therefore, most dioceses can only assign one or two priests to a parish and a deacon. There are other parishes that are staffed by religious. These religious do not own the parishes. They are on loan to the diocese by the religious community. The condition of the loan is always the same. The religious will staff the parish as long as parish ministry does not interfere with the religious vocation. This is a reasonable arrangement, because religious communities were not founded to run parishes. Those religious communities that are communities of priests, also known as clerical institutes, such as the Carmelites, were not founded to run parishes. Their priests have a primary vocation to live and pray as hermits. When they take on parishes they try to protect that life as much as possible.

These generalizations are not fair or applicable to all parishes, either diocesan or FSSP. As to the real Holy Mass, that does not deserve a response. This has already been addressed by His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[kristie_m]

i didnt get that at all from what the person was originally asking. i dont know if you have ever attended a tridentine mass. often when a tridentine mass is over the priest goes back behind the sanctuary to change out of his heavey chausible and alb. so running an idea passed your priest unless its donut day in the auditorium can seem a little challenging. not to mention there are not nearly as many traditional priests as novus ordo priests because the “moto proprio” is still very new.
i dont think that anyone in here is saying that a novus ordo priest is hard to talk to or doesnt make himself available. i think they are exactly the opposite.

What I found insulting was the comments about priests who celebrate the NO not being aware of their priesthood, praying or hearing confessions, etc. I was trying to point out that while our priests do make themselves available for hospitality, they are also very holy men of God. The OP stated that NO priests are little more than “social assistants”, and insinuated that the NO was not a “real” mass.