Forty Blessed Years a Priest

The Catholic Thing

By Fr. Gerald E. Murray.
But first a note from Robert Royal: Our colleague Fr. Gerald Murray tells a story today that we hear all too rarely: the decades of satisfaction and enjoyment that priests, religious, and laypeople experience by living lives faithful to Catholic truth. There are many challenges to such lives today, both outside and inside the Church. But it's by persisting in the hope of better days that we will keep the Faith alive in our time - and beyond. At The Catholic Thing, we're committed to staying in that fight and not growing weary despite the struggles. I'm quite sure that you, our readers, come here regularly because you share that perspective. Which is why I feel confident in asking you to show that commitment by supporting our work. The harvest could be great if the workers can stay in the field. Please, don't delay. Support The Catholic Thing today.
Now for today's column...
I was ordained a priest on December 1, 1984, by the late Archbishop John J. O'Connor at New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral. Forty years later, I am moved to thank God for all that He has done for me in my life. I entered the seminary with a desire to serve as a Catholic priest, and that was granted to me. I had excellent teachers at St. Joseph's Seminary, Dunwoodie, NY. In Rome, Pope John Paul II was leading the Church in the path of true renewal in fidelity to Catholic doctrine amidst the various crises that had arisen in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council. That effort would continue under one of the greatest theologians ever to become pope, Benedict XVI.
No newly ordained priest knows what the future holds for him beyond his first assignment. I was sent to serve at St. Athanasius Church in the Bronx under a holy pastor, Monsignor Raul del Valle, a Cuban priest exiled by Fidel Castro. It was a short but instructive assignment. I then served in three other city parishes before being sent to Rome to study canon law. My gratitude to Cardinal O'Connor for this assignment is heartfelt: knowing canon law has proven immensely useful in my analyzing and commenting upon what is happening in the Church - on television, radio, and at The Catholic Thing.
The life of the Church these past forty years has been marked by devastating revelations of passivity and cover-ups by bishops regarding horrific crimes of sexual abuse of minors (and adults) by priests, bishops, and cardinals. A cowardly refusal to confront evil was standard operating procedure until the veil was ripped off and the harm caused to innocent victims by unchaste clergy - and their protectors - became known.
Catholic moral teaching has been subject to a relentless assault by prominent theologians. The repudiation of reverence in the sacred liturgy in favor of self-expression (in reality, self-worship) has become widespread and is by now almost expected. This was abetted in the past by ineffective Vatican interventions - and now by the outright indulgence of the perennial temptation to reduce worship of God to self-congratulatory affirmations of human genius and accomplishments.
Catholic unity in faith, morals, worship, and discipline depends, in large measure, upon the willingness of those in authority to reverently and gratefully acknowledge and conform to Catholic teaching and practice, which are blessings of Divine providence. The defense of that unity, which is a fruit of fidelity to what has been handed on to us by the Church, is now treated cavalierly as unhealthy, retrograde, and rigid. It's regarded as an infantile clinging to the familiar, a fearful refusal to break out of an obsolete form of Christianity, a prideful claim of unattainable certainty. Believers are, instead, being called to embrace ambiguities and nuance, as if the world didn't already have enough of those.
The motto "To restore all things in Christ" has been stunningly replaced by a coercive demand that we submit ourselves to a seemingly never-ending "synodal" re-education, an amorphous categor...