What Makes a Good Priest?
Last weekend our team worked with a retreat group of gay Christians. The Vatican’s recent instruction on criteria of admission to priestly training was an unavoidable topic of conversation. In the course of the weekend we did an exercise asking the group to surface the kinds of consideration they felt were applicable to choosing ministers. What qualities and values and talents fit someone for Christian ministry?
The answers weren’t surprising, ranging from practical financial acumen through the capacity to communicate well, affective maturity, etc. to living, prayerful faith. All in all, the kind of recipe for a super-minister that puts actual ministers to shame. The exercise got me thinking about something I was given to pray with when I was a Jesuit novice praying through my 30-day retreat. The context was the Last Supper. My director gave me something written by another Jesuit, Michael Buckley, for some guys about to be ordained. I’ll quote a bit:
3 comments December 10th, 2005