Rural parish placement; what to expect?

[RolandThompsonGunner]

And you don’t know, apparently, how carefully I deliberate upon my words before I write them. Perhaps it is best, madam, if we agree to disagree here. Neither you nor I nor anybody will find every person or situation agreeable, and little is likely to change that. That, I dare say, is what is at issue here.

I hope you don’t speak this way in everyday life, because it sounds like you’re channeling a character from Downton Abbey. A bit contrived, my good sir, a bit contrived.

 

[OddBird]

Reformed pastor here, but I’ll answer nonetheless.

My very first assignment was in a very rural parish. I went there not knowing what to expect, but, I’ll admit, not overly enthusiastic.

That parish taught me so much about life, about ministry, about fellowship and community, and yes, also about liturgy. I am honored to have been allowed to spend time in their midst.

My current parish would have been the very last on my list if I had been asked to assign all parishes of my state a preference order. I’m loving it, and it is forcing me to rethink a lot of things I was taking for granted, and making me grow.

Trust in the Holy Spirit. He knows what he’s doing.

 

[BartholomewB]

And you don’t know, apparently, how carefully I deliberate upon my words before I write them.

That makes it worse.

 

[Glennon_P]

To the OP:

If your preference is for an urban setting, perhaps you should contact an urban diocese. Or if your preference is for the EF, perhaps you should consider the FSSP or ICKSP.

I have many priests over the years tell me that the hardest promise they make at ordination to carry out in their priesthood is not celibacy - it’s obedience. Even if you have a Bishop who shares your outlook on the Church, liturgy, etc., he won’t be around forever, and his successor may see things (and you) very differently.

There’s a story about a priest in my diocese who had been assigned by the Bishop to do his theology studies in Rome. Being from a farm, the seminarian really didn’t want to leave the U.S. and wrote the Bishop what he thought was a very well-reasoned letter asking him to not send him to Rome, but to send him instead to the seminary in Denver where the rest of the theology students from this diocese were going at the time.

The Bishop wrote him back and said, “If you want to study for this diocese, you will be in Rome in time for classes to start.” And so the seminarian went to Rome…and was there for all four years of Vatican II. The priest said it was a huge blessing for him to be there to study during the Council and was very grateful to the Bishop for making him go.

Obedience is not always easy, but can be a time of real grace.

 

[1Lord1Faith]

After reading all these posters criticize your manner of speaking, bardegaulois, I would like to say that I don’t find your speach offensive, and I don’t see any sort of high horse either. I think you are just being honest about yourself. That’s commendable IMO. Obviously, your not going to please everyone.

I can remember some priests who weren’t too concerned with being people pleasers. To me, they seemed to be just like everyone else, flaws and all. Some people were just not willing to cut them some slack, and IMO, expected them to be possibly something other than human.

Just be yourself. You seem to be well aware of what may be your shortcomings. That is actually a very good sign. I think you will adjust nicely and will be better off for it.

Just to add, 2 1/2 months sounds like a very short time. I would recommend jumping in head first and talking to as many parishioners for as much time as you can…just to get every bit of it as you can. You won’t regret it, and if you screw up, you won’t be staying there either, so…win - win.

 

[1ke]

Hmmm…

Perhaps talk to your vocations director because from where I’m sitting this is sounding less and less like a vocation to parish priesthood.

 

[27lw]

When I went through RCIA eleven years ago, it was in a rural parish. We were members there for a few years, then switched to a larger parish for school reasons.
I think what you’ll be seeing in a rural parish is a lot of older people. Lots of older ladies. More funerals, fewer baptisms. Or no baptisms. Probably no nursing home visits, due to covid.
Maybe you can help the pastor set up YouTube Mass. Maybe you can chant on the YouTube Mass?
You just might not see much of anyone due to covid.
I think the interesting thing about rural areas of the US is that the “social fabric” still exists there. Generations know each other. People live on roads named after their great great grandparents. All those folks went to school together 50, 60, 70 years ago. And everybody knows everybody and half of them might be cousins too.
It sounds like the environment you grew up in, and didn’t care for, maybe because you are somewhat more cerebral than the average bear. Maybe this will help you to get an appreciation for it, to observe that environment without being one of them?

 

[Mi_Rose]

Maybe you are being sent there to see if you can learn to speak rural.
A priest is sent to a parish that is in need of a priest not always one that is in need of his skill set.

 

[bardegaulois]

I can remember some priests who weren’t too concerned with being people pleasers. To me, they seemed to be just like everyone else, flaws and all. Some people were just not willing to cut them some slack, and IMO, expected them to be possibly something other than human.

Just be yourself. You seem to be well aware of what may be your shortcomings. That is actually a very good sign. I think you will adjust nicely and will be better off for it.

I’ve had the great pleasure of knowing many priests of this type, many of whom remain friends to this day – and I’m much richer for having known them. Likewise with folks in every other walk of life. They’ve always been more difficult to get to know, but also a lot more authentic and friendly than the people-pleasing type. I’ll admit a bias in finding that last type somewhat superficial and inauthentic and making them put in more work in order to gain my trust.

My students have told me that authenticity is one of my strengths in the classroom. I don’t dumb the matter down for them or make cheap attempts to ingratiate myself to them. Many told me that I even seemed somewhat intimidating early on, but I always got stellar evaluations from them. A majority of my students wanted to work with me again in future semesters – even though they also said I was one of the more challenging, yet interesting, teachers they ever had. If I had just forced myself into the model of an academic greysuit, I doubt I’d ever have had the success I did in improving their academic skills, fostering their love of learning, and even helping them out on more personal levels.

So, if this works so well in the classroom to spark a love of learning, why should it not work well in the parish to spark a love of God? The priests I know who have acted in this manner have numerous families from prior parishes drive to their current placements because they find the new pastors there uninspiring company men. I think there’s something to be learned there.

 

[TheLittleLady]

Keeping ideas, opinions, etc concealed from your formators is a very bad idea.

Boundaries weren’t so strict, and I felt like people were walking on mine all the time. When I called people on it, they were taken aback. Eventually, I just personally detached from my neighbours in all but the most utilitarian senses and focused on my small group of friends, my work, and my church life elsewhere. My worry is that I just don’t “speak rural.” It’s a very different way of relating that I sometimes find offputting, and I wouldn’t doubt that they might find my way of relating somewhat offputting as well.

Your formators have likely picked up on this, and I do not mean to sound cruel, pride and want to see if you can overcome it. Humility is key for a priest. A priest is a shepherd, and the shepherd smells like his sheep. Parishioners WILL be insulted if the priest withdrawals from them, they will suffer under such a pastorate. The parish volunteers stop volunteering, the staff needs to be part of pastor’s team, not his less-than underlings.

 

[TomH1]

I must confess to finding this question rather unsettling from someone who may one day be a priest. Perhaps I am naive but I would have thought that wherever you served you went there to serve and not be sent to a place which ‘will play to your strengths’. Perhaps being sent to a place where you have to do things you do not like or want to do will enable you to learn the value of humility.

I think we should pray that if you are ordained your ordinary will not place you in a rural parish. It would be most unfair to have a rural parish served by a priest with your views on rural life.

Let us hope that wherever you are placed your pastoral supervisor is a wise and sensitive man who will steer you on the right track.

I shall pray for you.

 

[bardegaulois]

It sounds like the environment you grew up in, and didn’t care for, maybe because you are somewhat more cerebral than the average bear. Maybe this will help you to get an appreciation for it, to observe that environment without being one of them?

This comment wins the day. It led to a lot of reflection. Thank you.

In my initial disappointment, I didn’t even consider the huge ministerial opportunity that lies before me. One of the maxims that has always governed my life and career has been “do for young people what you wish an elder would have done for you when you were young.” So here I am off to a milieu that seems analogous to that of my own youth. The shadow of anxiety having now passed, I can now discern herein an answered prayer.

Again, please accept my humble gratitude for your kind comment.

 

[billsherman]

The liturgies, in particular, have always struck me as rather banal, as though next to no attention is paid in the least to subjects like liturgical arts and music.

I know this isn’t the point of the thread, but I’m curious about this. A lot of the complaints about the Ordinary Form from people who prefer the Extraordinary Form contain these two elements: boring homilies and music they don’t like. Why is that? Is it because those are two elements of the respective masses that are most at the discretion of the priest?

Perhaps the OP can enlighten me, since he brought them up. I’m genuinely curious, I’m not looking to get into an EF vs. OF fight.

 

[RolandThompsonGunner]

After reading all these posters criticize your manner of speaking, bardegaulois, I would like to say that I don’t find your speach offensive, and I don’t see any sort of high horse either. I think you are just being honest about yourself. That’s commendable IMO. Obviously, your not going to please everyone

It just doesn’t sound like a natural way of speaking. It’s almost like playing a character. It comes across as very insincere, at least to me.

 

[1Lord1Faith]

It just doesn’t sound like a natural way of speaking.

You mean writing, not speaking, right?

Anyway, I’m sure you wouldn’t get hung up on small things like that. Everyone has their own style.

 

[whatistrue]

It just doesn’t sound like a natural way of speaking. It’s almost like playing a character. It comes across as very insincere, at least to me.

Where (and when) I grew up, the word we used for one perceived in that way was “snooty”. There is definitely a place for such patterns of speech and writing, but everyday communication, especially pastoral communication, with Joe and Jane Pewsitter is probably not it. IMHO anyway.

 

[RolandThompsonGunner]

You mean writing, not speaking, right?

Anyway, I’m sure you wouldn’t get hung up on small things like that. Everyone has their own style.

Yeah, I mean, I’m imaging a post on an Internet forum having a more conversational vibe, not so much a 19th century professorial vibe. It’s not a bad thing per se, I guess, but I can see how people might feel that if the OP spoke to them that way he was being less than genuine.

Like the person is consciously aping an archaic style of speech to try to seem smarter or more cultured or something.

 

[bardegaulois]

I’m glad you asked. And though ever since I discovered the EF (which saved my faith, I might add) I’ve been of the mind that it should be offered far more frequently, I would not consider myself a foe of the OF. After all, if I did, I wouldn’t be in the situation I am in today.

Music that I’d consider inappropriate, after all, is not intrinsic to the Ordinary Form of the Mass. Chant can be used, as can polyphony, as can the classic hymnody of past centuries. Yes, the OF allows much more discretion to choir directors (who really seem to have more control over the music than the priests do), but that does not mean the sublime and prayerful music of our tradition should disappear. Alas it has in many areas, and often the resources to hire cantors or organists (if they can even be found) or to train a volunteer choir aren’t there. That said, though, OF shouldn’t necessarily mean a sandwich of four Haugen or Haas ditties; I can’t really bring myself to call them hymns.

As for homilies, they’re at the celebrant’s discretion in both forms of the rite. I’ve heard erudite rhetoric in the homily at an Ordinary Form Mass. I’ve heard tired platitudes at an Extraordinary Form Mass. Now I’ve heard the latter far less often than the former, but homiletics doesn’t necessarily depend on the rite; it depends on the priest.

 

[bardegaulois]

To each his own, I suppose. When I had professors in college who wanted me to write terser, Hemingwayesque sentences on my essays, I did so. I’ve always thought my ideas come across better, though, in sentences whose diagram is somewhat more intricate.

Regarding word choice, the English language has such a large dictionary, with so many words that are nearly synonymous but all having their own connotation. And a poet will tell you that even a word’s sound helps to give it its unique tone! Our language is such a marvellous instrument; why shouldn’t we then use it to its full effect?

 

[OddBird]

Alas it has in many areas, and often the resources to hire cantors or organists (if they can even be found) or to train a volunteer choir aren’t there.

I’m not sure if I should say this. I tend to set high standards for music, and to be honest I dislike Hillsong-style hymns.

Yet, when you come to church on a Sunday morning, and there is a farmer’s wife who is here with her guitar, sacrificing a morning’s work to attend and sing, as best as she can, hymns that speak to her heart – I think there can be beauty in that too, albeit of a different kind.