I would be a great married priest

I was one of those irritating kids who wanted to become a priest. That might have been a fairly common ambition for many first graders, but even by sixth grade, when most kids had become too cool to want to be priests, I was still raising my hand when Sister asked which boys (only boys) wanted to be priests. It wasn't long after that that I discovered girls and the Church-mocking albums of George Carlin. My interest in pursuing the priesthood faded for awhile after that.

But it did not disappear.

During high school, I travelled with a priest all over eastern Canada and the USA. I figured that he would have noted my interest in Church matters (even if it was couched in critical adolescent terms) and would have asked if I had an interest. No luck. College was a spiritual wasteland, so no need to delve into that period.Though that is when I read the gospels for the first time from end to end. An eye-opener -- the strange, nun-told tales were nowhere to be found!

But I still had the bug, even after I was newly engaged to my now wife. She was driving me to work as a math teacher at a Catholic school when I sprang on her a comment that I wanted to become a priest. She made it pretty clear, with the wedding just a few montsh away, that I had better make a decision soon! And I did, in her favor. Now thirty-five years later, I have not given up the dream, though I am highly doubtful that my Church will allow married men (certainly not of the progressive persuasion) to be priests anytime soon.

But why not?

My marriage and fatherood are the two critical components that made me a better human being. The ups and downs of being a husband and Dad have forced me to recognize my own shortcomings and strengths in a way that being a single man never would have. When you are the first  line of support and defense for a child for 18 years or more -- changing diapers, being a playmate, drying tears, helping with homework, counseling and protecting from bullies and letting them go out on their own -- it changes you in ways that are hard to describe. Helping a kid througn a romantic breakup becomes a 24-hour-a-day responsibility until it's over, weeks or months later. You worry and carry the burden, in way that seeing a kid for an hour-long Saturday afternoon counseling session would not. When you atre a husband trying to undertand why you can't get through to your wife on some seemingly insignificant matter, you have to deal with the frustration, rage and temptations to violence that come with an inability to communicate to someone you want to love, but can't. Similar to doctors who bury their mistakes, you have to sleep with yours. Thre's no walking away without enormous personal costs to yourself, your wife and your kids. The decisions you make -- whether to scold or to hold, to stay or to stray -- teach you about the limits and possibilities of love, in a way that no seminar or retreat could hope to.

I am a stronger and better man for having married and raised children than I would have been had I remained single. I feel good that I spared the world another vain, rageful, entitled priest, which I surely would have been had I not married. But I regret that my Church is missing out on the services of the more empathic and genuinely wise person I have become. It's not enough to offer me RCIA classes to teach or church suppers to cook. I want the entire sacramental package -- Mass, confessions, anointing the sick -- that goes with being a priest. Though frankly, the collars and vestments are not longer an attraction.

I suspect that there are many Catholic men who would become excellent priests if the Church realized that marriage is a path to self-control, self-understanding and self-acceptance, servant-leadership and humility -- in short, holiness. I wonder whether the abysmal experience of immature, pedophilic priests (and the morally-myopic bishops who managed them) would have been tempered, or even eliminated, if the Church recognized that God had it correct right from the beginning when he said (Genesis 2:8), "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suited to him."

I can't speak for all men, and there are certainly some fine men who have chosen the single life and have made fine priests. But for me, there is no question that the path to formation that I needed to become a priest led not through a seminary or rectory, but through the nursery, marriage bed, playgrounds, parent-teacher meetings, late-night car rides, school auditoriums, pediatrician's offices, romantic restaurant and college tours. I found my manhood and my priesthood in the embraces of my children, and in the arms of my dear wife. I pray that my Church beats my Lord to tellling me, "Well done, my good and faithful servant."

A crack in the iceberg

Stupendous news from the Synod on the Family -- a draft document on dealing with gays and those in "irregular" (non-Church-sanctioned) marriages:

"Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer the Christian community: are we capable of welcoming these people, guaranteeing to them a further space in our communities? Often they wish to encounter a Church that offers them a welcoming home," said the document, known by its Latin name "relatio".

"Are our communities capable of proving that, accepting and valuing their sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony?" it asked.

While Church marriages clearly were "the ideal" for Catholics, it said, there were "constructive elements in those situations that do not yet or no longer correspond to that ideal".

Catholics used to call such cohabitation arrangements "living in sin", another phrase that bishops at the synod were urged not to use when speaking about these couples.

The very fact that this discussion is being held at all is encouraging. The main threat that faces the Church is from careerists who are bankrupt morally and who use adherence to Church law as a way to advance in rank and influence. Now, Pope Francis has as opened another path -- one that is line with God's boundless love to all his creatures and that admits the complexities and seeming contradictions of the human person. The injury that has been done in the name of Christ to homosexuals is disgusting, blasphemous and an everlasting stain on the history of the Church. Clearly, the example of loving, committed gay and "irregular" relationships "even to the point of sacrifice" has broken through to the highest levels. Perhaps the Church, that whorish bride of Christ, has allowed herself to be raised out of the gutter of phariseeism and false piety to walk a new road with her Spouse. I am glad that I have lived to see the day. I sometimes think the only reason I remain in the Church is to hold it accountable for its crimes.

And it's not just the ordained who get ahead by crapping on gays and those in unsanctioned relationships. Anyone who feels morally superior -- just because they follow all the Church's petty rules -- is implicated in these sacrileges. We are called to love as Christ loved us. He who came into the world to save it, and  not to condemn it, is "honored" by those who judge and condemn in his name. This has got to stop, and it has got to stop now.

Bravo to all, whether in or out of the institution, who have so bravely opposed its unloving, unmerciful and biologically backwards teachings. As I told a gay friend, "you may never be able to forgive the Old Girl for her sins. But I am personally in communion with you, whether we express that in sharing Eucharist or a sacramental meal at a restaurant."

Lord, let us find a way to stop finding personal profit in the needless infliction of pain on our sons and daughters.

The passive-aggressive wedding guest

In yesterday's gospel, Matthew has Jesus talking about weddings. We get a story about a king inviting people to his son's wedding. But every invitee refuses to come, and some actually kill the messengers. The king ends up in a fury and wipes out the ingrates. Then he sends his servants to the highways and byways, inviting the "good and the bad" until the wedding hall is filled.

Brutal, but easy enough to understand. Those who were "worthy" rejected the invitation, but the lowlifes accepted. It's easy enough to read the king as God, the original invitees as the leaders and self-appointed worthies of Israel, the messengers as the prophets and the eventual banquet guests as the lowly who accept an invitation in spite of their unworthiness.

But in Matthew, unlike in Luke who also includes this parable, the story continues, telling about a man who shows up at the banquet without the appropriate wedding garment. He ends up getting challenged by the king and then thrown out of the celebration "where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth."

The homilist rightly noted that these are two different stories -- that Matthew and Luke both had access to the story about the king trying to fill his banquet hall, But only Matthew had (or was willing to use) the tale of  the guy wearing the wrong clothes. Matthew, with two wedding parables to tell, connected them rather than leaving one out or telling it separately. They're both about worthiness to attend wedding, n'est-ce pas? And so the homilist homilized. But I think that's going a bit too far.

It's long been a staple of Christianity thought that we can never be worthy of God's love. God is infinitely and perfectly good. We are...well, you know, less so. What can we do to buy ourselves into heaven? It's a question that bedeviled Martin Luther and led to a breach with the Church, which at the time was willing to countenance certain acts (donations, prayers, good deeds) as winning God's favor. But, as Luther and others concluded, what act could a sinful and limited human perform that would allow entry into the company of the perfectly holy and good God? To God, our feeble actions actions are beside the point. God invites us in spite of, not because of our worth or our charitable deeds.

So does this perspective appear in the parables? The key to the first lies in the way the king's servants "gathered all they found, bad and good alike" for inclusion in the banquet.  Their entry was neither due to their virtue nor to their lack thereof. But then how did they get in when others did not? It was simply because they did not refuse the king's offer. The original invitees, those thought worthy of an invitation, resisted the offer to attend the banquet, with dishonesty and with violence. So the king turned to those who would be more open to his offer.

The probable meaning? God has invited the pious and observant to the wedding feast, whether you construe the banquet as a life of fullness in this world or in the next. They refused to attend, intent on continuing business as usual, resistant to God's call to a communion beyond the confines of their social and religious mores. They were asked to leave their comfort zones, and resisted to the point of murdering those (like the prophets) sent to extend God's invitation to a banquet of true goodness. What choice did God have, in his love of humanity, than to turn to those whom society judged unworthy? It was these who ultimately entered the banquet hall to celebrate with their king.

So now let's turn to the second parable. Our homilist suggested that his appearance at the wedding without the proper garment was a case of him not having  made himself worthy through prayers and right action. But that flies in the face of the first parable, with its invitation to gather the "bad and good alike." It also raises the ugly possibility that the man could not afford the proper garment. It be like poor man showing up at a modern wedding in a dirty T-shirt and jeans because he couldn't afford better. But there is no indication in the story that man could not afford the proper garment. He just shows up that way. The point is that he dressed the way he did when he could have dressed better. What would make a person show up at an event, where there is a dress code, but dress inappropriately anyway? I suggest that the strongest reason is a passive-aggressive slap at the host, or the host's values. The man, unlike those who openly refused the king's invitation, does show up at the wedding, true. But his choice of garment showed that he was actually not doing so to honor the host. And that attitude earned him a trip out of the banquet hall and into the dark.

It's not enough just to show up for the Kingdom, Jesus teaches, not if you do so with reservations or hostility to the invitation that God provides. Even "the bad and the good alike" can enter the banquet, when their desires align with the graciousness of the host who has invited them. You cannot include yourself among the elect while harboring secret hatred of God's desire to save the lowly and the unworthy. You will be found out and cast out until your heart softens and your view widens. The kingdom is a place (or even a state of mind) in which one accepts God's invitation gladly, as one accepts God's invitation of others.