16/365 The list is long

So this week was Fr. Miguel's birthday and the anniversary of his ordination. I went up to church to look at flowers today and ran into Jack, who reads this blog, and mentioned that maybe he was getting tired of hearing how great Miguel was.

But we both agreed that, of course, he was, and this was due almost as much to past experiences with priests as it was due to something specifically about Miguel. To put it another way: many many priests we have known have been not so great. Not so great. In fact, some encounters have been absolutely miserable experiences. And I don't want to dwell on the negative, especially negatives from long ago that have no influence in my life, but I feel I need to give some of them a sentence or two.

Without going too far back--I don't remember any pastors before 3rd grade, for instance, well, except for the Redemptorists down in South County but they aren't on this list--here are a few bad priests. Here names are absolutely changed. Totally.

Fr. Fritz...an associate pastor who invited boys up to the rectory after school. It's like a miserable cliche. But when Fr. Fritz is one example of the priesthood...

Fr. Cuthbert...a former army chaplain, very charismatic, but thought that before we were confirmed, all the 9th graders needed rebaptism. This is directly opposed to Church teaching. Seriously. And where were the baptisms going to occur? In a friend's swimming pool. Obviously, I did not attend. And I wasn't confirmed. He also banned the use of real candles in church since they were a fire hazard. Real flowers? Forget that.

Fr. Anastasius...who, during a homily, doubted there was an afterlife. This was at a high school mass. He said, "I think that's probably just wishful thinking but you can believe what you want."

Fr. Isidore...was not very inspiring as a preacher but was adequate. His weird quirk is that he never greeted people after mass. The church was modern and there was a hallway connecting it to the rectory. He would disappear, still dressed for mass, down the hallway while we were singing the closing song. Sometimes the associate pastor would take his place. Sometimes not.

Fr. Bell...my boyfriend in high school called him that because he was obsessed with tardy students. My list of complaints about him is long but I look back and I think he was really depressed and out of his element as a principal. He had a definite eating disorder and often talked inappropriately about girls' anatomical features.

After high school, I attended a Jesuit university where, for the most part, the priests were just like the obstetrician I had when I was pregnant with Maeve. Excellent experts in their fields, confident in their abilities and knowledge, and zero bedside manner. Zip. Nada. For instance:

Fr. Newburg...a convert, once pointed to me during a homily in the dorm and said I was no Teresa of Avila. This was in context, but I had never made such a claim. He also didn't go in for all that "feminist mumbo jumbo" of inclusive language.

Fr. Cannoli...who could not keep from laughing when he made the announcement that they were closing one of the dorms and all the residents would be placed elsewhere the following year.

Fr. Howdy...who never really left the fraternity party of his youth and still attended them in his forties.

After graduation, Mike and I got married and started attending St. Henry/Immaculate Conception, a dying parish that has since bit the dust. We could barely drag ourselves there because every single homily dwelt on the topic of "things aren't like they used to be," mostly involving the sad (?) fact that no one in the parish was willing to participate in Eucharistic Adoration. Now, I was a young woman with my own mind and things to do. Nowadays I might like the silence for an hour or so in adoration. But then? Nope. And after a while, listening to someone talk about how the pews used to be filled and people used to come and wah wah wah--it makes you walk away too. I don't even remember his name--we belonged to the parish and he never learned our names either.

Other more recent mediocre priests I've known:
Fr. Jimbo...told me that if Mike and I had gone through marriage prep with him, he never would have allowed us to marry due to our fill-in-the-bubble test scores. He said it was the number one predictor for failed marriage and he bet me (he actually said that: "I bet you any money") that my marriage wasn't going to last.

Fr. Bud...the pastor where Jimbo was the associate, he once decimated a Sunday mass attendance by preaching heresy during the homily (in this case, the divinity of Christ: "Who knows? Maybe he wasn't divine!"). Turned out later, he was just drunk. The bright red flushed face should have been a clue.

Fr. Snore...used to be the pastor at my mother-in-law's parish. He would lose his place during mass. His homilies rivaled the St. Henry pastor's. In his defense, since I actually knew him through Mary Helen better than I knew many of these, he was an order priest living on his own in a tiny aging parish. I would place good money (perhaps "any money" would be stretching it) that he was depressed. He retired and spent some time in Africa although I think he's home again now.

Fr. Viktor...used to give homilies that were centered on depressing poetry. In February. I had several loud arguments with him in parking lots. He had no sense of humor. He didn't seem to understand human relationships very well. I knew him for a while, though, and so my opinions of him are colored by that, but I'm pretty sure getting drunk at a party and making references to things said in the confessional are right out regardless.

Fr. Symmachus...once told the parish that it was due to their lack of prayer for vocations that made him have to be brought there from Nigeria to be their pastor. He had his dying parish give him the funds (besides his salary) to fly home for vacation. There is so much here and I can't give it justice. Just to say that when I visit my inlaws? I don't go to church.

This leaves out the many visiting priests and deacons in training with simply bad speaking skills and limp handshakes. It leaves out priests I know only second-hand. And it leaves out the good ones. I'll talk about them tomorrow. But just to say. There's a reason we like our pastor.