Wednesday, November 25, 2009

This is Why Priests Get Moved Every 5 Years

Moving Priests from Parish to Parish every 5 to 7 years seems to be the norm in most Dioceses. There are very good reasons for that. One reason is shown here. See More vague, worthless Catholic labels via Get Religion.

The article as you see is the controversy a more "traditional" priest has caused in a large parish. He has replaced a priest that had been there over 30 years!!!

Bingo !!! As the poster points out that is the problem. We had a similar problem in the Diocese of Shreveport in a major Church. A huge progressive liberal (in all senses of the word) Catholic priest was at a Church for about 25 years. Needless to say it was time for a change and it was not easy.

As Get Religion notes:
The previous priest served the parish for more than three decades?!?!
There’s the story. Clearly, what we have here is an example of what is often called “great pastor” (or rabbi, or priest, or college president) syndrome. After that amount of time the structures of an organization — like the parish committees — truly reflect the beliefs, strengths and, yes, prejudices of the previous leader. Period
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We of course see this dynamic in Protestant Churches and the result is often a whole scale schism in the local church and a founding of a new one.

I expect we shall the above trauma repeat itself a lot more as more younger conservative priests replace more liberal progressive ones. The key for the younger priests is to realize Rome was not built in a day. It requires a Pastoral and Diplomatic touch which I suspect is sometimes lacking because of youth.

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