People Needing Emotional Connection in order to Like their Priest

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I was talking to a lady I know who belongs to another parish, but likes to go to mine often because she loves my priest. I sometimes go to her parish, and her priest seems just fine to me, and very spritual. But she just raves about my priest, who actually has made quite a few enemies in my parish because he’s liberal in some ways, and gets really angry at people sometimes, holds grudges, and really isn’t very skilled at running a parish in many ways.

But she goes to him for ‘spiritual direction’, loves his homilies, and just thinks he’s the holiest man around. She doesn’t have anything in particular against her priest, she says, but complains that he doesn’t know anything about her, doesn’t know her family, and she obviously just can’t stand him. She loves my priest because he’s come to her house for dinner 3 times, her non-Catholic husband likes him, he knows about her, etc and so forth. The other priest doesn’t pay any attention to her and hasn’t noticed her enough.This is what she told me.

So, I’m curious about this because I wonder how common this is, people needing to have a personal relationship with the priest in order to like him. The other priest is in his 40’s and has a bigger parish, is very consistant with daily Mass, is into all the extra devotions, does the morning prayers every morning with those who want to, does a lot more, and seems very spritual to me. He also doesn’t make enemies like my priest does.Yet she never goes to daily Mass at her parish, but will drive 30+minutes to go to mine sometimes, just for a daily Mass. She’s just head of heels over my priest. She’s so unabashed about what seems to me to be blatent hero worship, that I feel a little embarrassed listening to her rattle on about him, although I just smile and nod.
 
Hmmm, I think it’s good if people can like or love their priest, but I think it’s dangerous to invest toooooo much in any one priest. The stand in persona Christi, which is why they deserve our reverence, and usually they are faithful men, which is why they deserve our respect. Affection/love/“liking” is something that happens or that doesn’t, just like in other relationships, of any kind. Some people make priests into gurus or canonize them long before they’re dead. I think we have to guard against that. A Carmelite community I know of had a very charismatic, mystic founder, who everyone treated like a demi-god. It was devastating when he turned out to have very, VERY clay feet, and was put out of the community.
 
She likes him because he has become a personal friend. Some people just want that personal connection, in their faith. I know someone like that in my parish. We’ve had 2 priests over the last 14 years, and she and her husband have been close personal friends with each of them. Then we recently got a new priest, and he is personable but remote. He won’t let anyone become close to him. There really is no “inner circle” like our previous 2 priests had that she was in, and she is at a total loss.
 
Since your priest is your spiritual father, it’s nice to know him on more than just a “nice homily, have a good week” basis. Of course, like the last poster said, some priests are more remote, shy, whatever you want to call it, so that’s not always possible. It’s probably better that a person likes their priest, not necessarily to have over for dinner or be best buds, but at least likes their personality, their homilies. But, not liking the priest shouldn’t be a deterrent from going to Mass. People definitely should not put their priest up on a pedestal.
 
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spiritblows:
I was talking to a lady I know who belongs to another parish, but likes to go to mine often because she loves my priest. I sometimes go to her parish, and her priest seems just fine to me, and very spritual. But she just raves about my priest, who actually has made quite a few enemies in my parish because he’s liberal in some ways, and gets really angry at people sometimes, holds grudges, and really isn’t very skilled at running a parish in many ways.

But she goes to him for ‘spiritual direction’, loves his homilies, and just thinks he’s the holiest man around. She doesn’t have anything in particular against her priest, she says, but complains that he doesn’t know anything about her, doesn’t know her family, and she obviously just can’t stand him. She loves my priest because he’s come to her house for dinner 3 times, her non-Catholic husband likes him, he knows about her, etc and so forth. The other priest doesn’t pay any attention to her and hasn’t noticed her enough.This is what she told me.

So, I’m curious about this because I wonder how common this is, people needing to have a personal relationship with the priest in order to like him. The other priest is in his 40’s and has a bigger parish, is very consistant with daily Mass, is into all the extra devotions, does the morning prayers every morning with those who want to, does a lot more, and seems very spritual to me. He also doesn’t make enemies like my priest does.Yet she never goes to daily Mass at her parish, but will drive 30+minutes to go to mine sometimes, just for a daily Mass. She’s just head of heels over my priest. She’s so unabashed about what seems to me to be blatent hero worship, that I feel a little embarrassed listening to her rattle on about him, although I just smile and nod.
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Spiritual direction can be a very intimate experience … and sometimes the relationship between the director and the person receiving direction can become inappropriately skewed or misunderstood. A GOOD Spiritual Director would not entertain, or would at least dissuade, what you have described. “Head over heels?” “Hero worship?” If what you have observed is true that priest is tempting fate.
 
I don’t think there is any (name removed by moderator)ropriety at all in the relationship, but it does seem to be sort of unrealistic hero worship, and a need to be in, what jpjd calls, the ‘inner circle’. I suppose this is human nature, though. It’s not a good idea to put priests on pedestals I think.

I know that there was one couple who very much liked to be in the inner circle, and had a lot of control over the priest before this one. The new priest, the one my friend is so gaga over, got mad at that couple, and they now go to the parish where my friend doesn’t like the priest, and they are big shots there.

I think my point is that sometimes people will dislike or reject a priest because he doesn’t give them the social standing or personal attention that they crave. I wonder if the seminaries give priests in training any tips for handling the human dynamics of running a parish, and helping priests maintain professionalism, and not encourage some types of situations that might be unhealthy.
 
I don’t think there is any (name removed by moderator)ropriety at all in the relationship, but it does seem to be sort of unrealistic hero worship, and a need to be in, what jpjd calls, the ‘inner circle’. I suppose this is human nature, though. It’s not a good idea to put priests on pedestals I think.
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I think you’re right that this is largely a human nature issue. I’d say more specifically a personality type issue (on the part of the parishioner). There are those people who simply do not relate to the whole theological reality of what a priest isand does for them but they can relate to a specific individual. There have always been idea people and feeling people. Your friend would seem to be one of the those extreme feeling types.

As far as putting priests on pedestals goes… They certainly deserve our respect and honor. But as human beings they are just as subject to their human natures as are the rest of us. I think it must be especially tough for feeling types to differentiate between a priest’s role as one who acts for Christ and his role as just a man. It’s hard enough for anyone.
 
An older preist I know decribes this as a “personality cult”. The topic was that younger priests seem to form these groups of followers, who will often do exactly as you describe and follow these priests from parish to parish when they get re-assigned. We have the problem currently here where one of these types got reassigned to a parish about 50 miles away, and parishoners have gone to his new church to visit him, but comlpain about having to coming to our church less than 3 miles down the road. It is sad. They actually wrote in their description for a new priest that they wanted a “clone” of this guy.😦

I am glad that we have a new preist now, and that he is shaking things up, and breaking up the little “power groups” that had developed over there. We are actually starting to follow the GIRM, can you believe it? Baby steps…
 
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spiritblows:
I was talking to a lady I know who belongs to another parish, but likes to go to mine often because she loves my priest. I sometimes go to her parish, and her priest seems just fine to me, and very spritual. But she just raves about my priest, who actually has made quite a few enemies in my parish because he’s liberal in some ways, and gets really angry at people sometimes, holds grudges, and really isn’t very skilled at running a parish in many ways.

But she goes to him for ‘spiritual direction’, loves his homilies, and just thinks he’s the holiest man around. She doesn’t have anything in particular against her priest, she says, but complains that he doesn’t know anything about her, doesn’t know her family, and she obviously just can’t stand him. She loves my priest because he’s come to her house for dinner 3 times, her non-Catholic husband likes him, he knows about her, etc and so forth. The other priest doesn’t pay any attention to her and hasn’t noticed her enough.This is what she told me.

So, I’m curious about this because I wonder how common this is, people needing to have a personal relationship with the priest in order to like him. The other priest is in his 40’s and has a bigger parish, is very consistant with daily Mass, is into all the extra devotions, does the morning prayers every morning with those who want to, does a lot more, and seems very spritual to me. He also doesn’t make enemies like my priest does.Yet she never goes to daily Mass at her parish, but will drive 30+minutes to go to mine sometimes, just for a daily Mass. She’s just head of heels over my priest. She’s so unabashed about what seems to me to be blatent hero worship, that I feel a little embarrassed listening to her rattle on about him, although I just smile and nod.
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It sounds like her own priest is too busy with the spiritual life of the parish to give her the personal attention she is after. He sounds like a good priest, one who takes the responsibility of people’s souls seriously.
 
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