Trading on the attractiveness of Christ

Trading on the attractiveness of Christ

 

 

It was when I was watching the recent documentary about Michael Jackson ‘Leaving Neverland’ that I realised just how engaging a human being can be when his whole persona has become everything and overwhelms the normal criteria of human judgement. In some senses one doesn’t expect a child to have this sense of emotional distance, but their parents and other adults surely should. In the Michael Jackson case, his grooming of the parents was almost more intricate than that of grooming their children. This was also very much the case with Jimmy Saville and his modus operandi; and although one might say that priests are not ‘media personalities’ yet there is an expectation that a priest will use his own set of charismatic gifts in the service of his ministry. There was a phase in ministerial formation in my own seminary at Ushaw in the 1980’s when thebroadcaster Terry Wogan was held up as an example of being a ‘fantastic communicator’. Priests, particularly when they are tempted to play at being ‘larger than life’ characters, tend to attract a kind of ‘cult status’. I am for Paul, I am for Apollos, I am for Cephas; there is nothing new under the sun.

 

 

In an article in Faith magazine in 1992 entitled ‘The Liturgy Vacuum’, criticising some aspects of how our current liturgy is celebrated, Andrew Nash drew parallels between the role of the celebrant in our current liturgies and that of the ‘anchor-man’ in current affairs or news programmes. He pointed out that this person is always ‘on your side’, someone you would always trust, and is above all unfailingly nice. Does this actually place limits on how a priest can then expect to interact with his people? In a recent book God is Not Nice dominance of what I call the culture of “Cosy-God PLC”. This theme was also addressed quite presciently by Arnold Lunn and Garth Lean in their 1965 book The Cult of Softness.

 

 

There seems to have developed a general presumption that priests are expected to be unfailingly warm and compassionate human beings, always revealing the gentleness and mercy of Christ. This is indeed a foundational aspect of priestly ministry, but it can lead to a distorted expectation whereby Father is always going to be ‘lovely’ about anything that is run past him in the everyday business of parish life. Being a ‘good priest’ all too easily becomes a popularity contest. The Father Ted episode with ‘The Golden Cleric’ hit a nerve here. However, even a cursory reading of the Gospels will tell us that the Lord Jesus had a wide variety of responses within his emotional orchestra, and sometimes the bass notes of chastisement and challenge were very much to the fore. Perhaps one shouldn’t even dare mention St. John the Baptist.

 

 

There can be, however, and often are, situations where the priest’s very attractiveness in persona Christi becomes unhealthily dominant, and the ‘loveliness’ of the priest becomes a cover for the initial stages of what we now refer to as grooming. A priest who was very much influential in the formation of my vocation was once criticised for being “Too much of a father-figure…” and his response was to say “I believe in being a Father-figure, God the Father started it all anyway…”. However, I can imagine that today even he would, with sadness, question whether the ‘master-disciple’ relationship is at all possible given the safeguarding principles that we are now bound to implement in parish and pastoral life. The Lord Jesus did indeed form his disciples, but we must be able to discern those elements of forming young people, whether towards religious life and ministry or not, that are acceptable and those that are inherently dangerous.

 

 

Many young people as they struggle to integrate their faith and sexuality are massively ambivalent about their image and their own self-worth. To be thought of as somehow ‘special’ or different by a significant adult can become hugely important and a driver of addictive behaviours and structures. In safeguarding protocols there is consistent advice for priests and teachers to avoid giving signs of favouritism, and this surely is just professional horse-sense that must be generations old. In many parish situations, however, such basic good sense can be conveniently ignored, and now that it is often young girls who stay on as teenagers to be the experienced core of altar servers there can be occasions for dangerous favouritisms to develop. This can be further exacerbated by someone, male or female, being seen as a ‘troubled soul’, often from a broken home, in need of priestly advice and counsel, whether this is within the sacramental forum or not.