I’m sorry you had that experience as a teacher. It is apparent that that colors your viewpoints about a very different venue.
The difference between the authority of a priest and the authority of a teacher is night and day. I would know, I am a teacher, so be careful what you assume I do and do not know. Frankly you overreacted to my post that you quoted.
#1 - charity was put in quotes because it was repeated over and over on the thread, as if that was all that was required. Wrong. In the situation of which I spoke in one parish, the priest was considered certifiably psychotic (seriously). Possibly his bizarre behavior and extreme aggression stood out so much because the other priests were so normal and so sane.
#2 - it’s important not to take people’s quotes from other threads out of context. You did that to me, which was unfair, uncharitable without quotes, and inaccurate. It’s particularly important not to personalize what someone says on another thread, in another context, to yourself, and then accuse the poster of all kinds of attitudes you ascribe to me that I do not have. I think you need to calm down a little and separate your unrelated situation to what I described on a very different thread.
#3 - It is patently obvious that priests who violate the oft-repeated, oft-published regulations on lay preaching are not in the dark about what they are doing. They don’t you or me to “inform” them – whether neutrally, whether in six layers of kid gloves, whether submissively, whatever – what the regulations are. That’s why it’s a silly exercise. This is not a gray issue – unlike many other things one could bring to a priest’s attention, and which rightly he should have the right to hear firsthand from a questioner or a complainer. (“Gee, I wonder why you said ___ in the homily, Father? Could you clarify? I had read the opposite from some Vatican documents; maybe I don’t understand them sufficiently, or maybe I misinterpreted your comment.”) Lay preaching hardly comes under that category.
If I were to engage in unlawful corporal punishment against a student, or to hurl verbal abuse at the student – something I clearly know is illicit and is stated in black & white – I shouldn’t expect that an offended student or parent should tiptoe over to me and “inform me charitably” that I’m in the wrong. I would be lucky to still have my job tomorrow. That is very different from questioning my teaching style (i.e., a parent requesting a conference about my approach, my assignments, etc.)
The breaking of an infraction is obvious on its face. Ambiguous actions, or actions subject to various interpretations, are something else entirely, and one can reasonably expect to be approached on the latter, but not on the former.
So I will repeat again, unapologetically, and I urge those who are truthfully, sincerely looking for the context of my opinion, to search the threads for yourself and not rely on a distortion by someone who lifted out of context and misrepresented its content:
There is a chasm of difference between the relationship between a priest and a parishioner, vs. a teacher and a student. Both are dependent relationships, but the former is far more emotionally charged, and is unique in that it is spiritually charged as well. I know exactly what would happen if I approached the priests in this parish. I would be treated like an unwelcome outcast.
There’s nothing to “discuss” with the priest. The regulations have been violated. Benedictgal and others have posted those regulations. The priests in that parish are literate and not blind. And no priest there is even vaguely a new, untrained priest. Their ages range from 40-ish to 80-ish. They know exactly what they are doing.
I do have another idea, though, about what I might do that might encourage action without reprisal, either to me or to any specific priest. I.m.o., that would be preferable than just putting up with it or going through some phony pretense of “approaching the priest” when both he and I would know exactly what’s going on.
