This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.
Michael Commane
Jim Roche was an Irish Dominican priest. Soon after priestly ordination in 1969 and a spell studying in Rome he went to Argentina, where there were Irish Dominicans working at the time.
Jim was clever, a scholarship boy. He had a great sense of humour and no time for any sort of clerical nonsense. Shortly after his arrival in Argentina he grew a beard. At the time it was forbidden for priests to grow beards in the diocese where he was working.
On the feast of St Dominic the local bishop came to lunch in the community where Jim was living. During his visit the bishop suggested he shave off his beard. Jim looked at him and said: ‘You might be my bishop but you’re not my barber.’ End of story.
Some years later Jim left the Dominicans and priesthood, moved to the United States where he worked as a lawyer and married a woman from Leipzig. He spent the rest of his professional life helping the cause of the poor and marginalised in California. Jim moved to Leipzig some years ago, where he died, a relatively young man.
Jim was a talented person and a great loss to the Dominicans.
But he was not the only loss during those years. Many fine, good men left the priesthood during that time. I can imagine if those people had remained priests many of them today would be in positions of leadership.
Would it be a different church today? When I hear Pope Francis talk I’m always reminded of the men who left. He has the style of those men about him.
When someone leaves priesthood today it’s seldom they marry a woman, indeed, it looks as if few leave, that is, unless they are expelled for wrongdoing.
It might well be true that there was an element of chaos in the post Vatican II church. But it was a time of great excitement and adventure, and there was a enthusiasm for building relations with other Christian and non-Christian denominations. The church was alive and people were beginning to get involved in a real and meaningful way. Bad things happened during those years but bad things always happen.
I keep feeling the church today is becoming a place for pious and holy-looking people. The make up of parish councils leaves much to be desired and far too often and too easily the parish priest can behave as a bully. And then there can be crass incompetency.
Hopefully the current Synod will edge the church to a more open, honest and real space.
Fr Timothy Radcliffe, former Master of the Dominican Order, has said there is a ‘profound conversion which is taking place at the centre of the Church, as it reaches out to people who have been marginalised and rejected, and says, this is your home. We are incomplete without you.’
It saddens me beyond words that there are so few priests about today the likes of Jim Roche.
‘Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.’ - Archbishop Desmond Tutu
3 comments:
Really excellent piece. Refreshing and goes to the nubs of the problem. But is anybody listening?
but youre also a bully and you were never in a parish. why do you stay when many others who were not bullies left?
Thank you for your comments.
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