FAITHFUL KIWI PRIESTS FORCED TO FLEE

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Ten Australian days and ten Australian churches have proved to me the utter awfulness of New Zealand's liturgical landscape.

In Melbourne in his fine church of St Philip's, Blackburn North, I met a Kiwi refugee, Fr Nicholas Dillon, who told me our late lamented Fr Brian Buenger is merely the tip of a clerical iceberg of orthodox seminarians and priests frozen out of their homeland by what we agreed is in essence a lack of Eucharistic faith. 

Fr Dillon is young, intelligent, a celebrated organist - and orthodox, like at least ten others he could name who have fled overseas to the FSSP (Priestly Fraternity of St Peter), Opus Dei and the Legion of Christ.

He knew I 'organdize' (my term for my bumbling efforts on the organ at my church - remember Winnie the Pooh?) and because I'd spent half an hour praying, instead of rubber-necking, in St Philip's before knocking on his presbytery door, he offered to show me the organ. And I could tell, simply by the way he slipped onto the seat, that he was an accomplished organist; and 'im indoors, 'umbly waiting in the car while we talked, was informed by his smartphone that Fr Dillon is actually celebrated internationally. 

I could have wept. Not only because Fr Dillon demonstrated a giftedness which is lost, perhaps forever, to the Church in New Zealand, but because I realized how I've squandered my own meagre talent, preferring to crawl on my hands and knees past Sister's door out of the music cells at Sacred Heart Wanganui, rather than practise the piano. 

We can only imagine the gifts that other Kiwi men called to the priesthood have taken with them overseas. Partly they've fled because of our seminaries' reputation for persecuting men who pray the Rosary, and for having books which had been banned and were spotted in the '80s on the library shelves by Sir Raymond de Souza, Knight of the Order of Malta. And partly it's our Kiwi egalitarianism, which bows down to the idol of community instead of Communion. 

Fr Dillon ( I do not call him Nicholas, not even Father Nicholas, or - heaven forfend - Nick) wears a cassock and a collar. He says young NZ men are put off the priesthood by "effeminate liturgies, the dreadful music, the folksy style, and the 'look at me' attitude of so many priests celebrating Mass". 

As an illustration, a Rad Trad friend tells me how after the notices at Mass in Taupo the Monsignor told a joke:

Two friends, one a Catholic the other a Jew, bought new cars and asked their holy men to bless them. The priest said a prayer and sprinkled holy water; the rabbi produced a hacksaw and cut off a short section of the exhaust pipe. 

The congregation, according to the Rad Trad, "went nuts". He didn't get it, but a lady in the pew behind explained. I didn't get it either, but a Proddy friend - not a churchgoer but educated at a Catholic school in Zimbabwe - did, and was not amused. She said it was "inappropriate. A priest told that joke in church?" 

I didn't think it was a particularly funny joke either, and I explained to the good Proddy that jokes, good bad or indifferent, have no place in the liturgy, especially not after the notices when, unless they were extraordinarily long, Jesus was still a guest in the souls of the congregation - and their Monsignor, who I myself have heard cracking jokes at Mass. 

The Mass is the unbloody re-enactment of Christ's unimaginable suffering, on our account, on Calvary. It's not funny. If Father wants to entertain, let him go to the pub and do karaoke.

To get back to priests and the lack of, you know how grateful lay people are, or should be, for the priests imported mostly from Asia by bishops who haven't managed to elicit indigenous (you can tell I've been in Orstrylia) vocations. But what our bishops are grateful for is their cultural, inbuilt deference to authority, which I guess must pretty well cancel out their equally inbuilt devotional piety. 

It suggests that importing deferential Asian priests is easier than inculcating vocations at home, in men who might buck the liberal 'progressive' line and take to Gregorian chant and wear the collar and cassock, and "say the black and do the red", and consequently are denied study opportunities overseas, or get buried in little country parishes - and even there, subjected by parishioners to the "we don't like the way you say Mass" line, like Fr Bryan Buenger, in at least one part of his rural parish.

The same priest has been Vocations Director for Dunedin Diocese, for example, for 20 years. It suggests he might be an example of the peter principle (by which people get promoted to their level of incompetence). 

Of course, orthodoxy, to be real, has to be inner faithfulness to Christ and the Magisterium of His Church, as well as outer adherence to rubrics and to traditional dress. But I have to wonder what our liberal Cardinal and Bishops - Palmerston North's, for instance, favours very open-neck shirts - are thinking about when they read the Scripture in the Divine Office for Pastors, which all priests are obliged to pray:

"Your light must shine in the sight of men, so that, seeing your good works, they may give the praise to your Father in heaven." 

Bob Gill says:

On retiring from working at one of New Zealand’s largest companies some four years ago and constantly wondering while there how such a large organisation could be so disorganized, promoting so many incompetent managers, I thought on retirement that I would never again encounter the Peter Principle you make reference to. I was so wrong.

It’s been such a different story since retiring to my wife’s home town of Dannevirke in the Palmerston North diocese, just over three years ago. I have been very disappointed at the liberal practices that are allowed in this diocese - for example, priests' blessings involving much touching for those coming forward in the Communion queue; lay persons giving blessings at the same time as the celebrant in adjoining Communion queues.

Hopefully, St Joseph's Dannevirke will shine forth at least in this from now on, as during Father Bryan’s recent visit he introduced a new method of blessing without touching which he learned from his orthodox Bishop, Thomas Olmsted. Philippa O'Neill says: So very, very true: I could name a few more that are treated like shite! ...

Bob

Julia

Anonymous (not him again!) says:

Its no use complaining about losing good priests.  If we don't fight for them effectively, we will continue to lose them. 

The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men (and Women) Do Nothing.

I say:

That line of Edmund Burke's was my mother's catch-cry. The trouble is, most Catholic laity don't recognize evil when it stares them in the face.

T

Moya says:

Loved your article on fleeing priests. I can add to that. The Catholic Church is lucky to have the few traditional priests we have, and not just those who celebrate the Latin Mass. A very good priest friend of mine in Dunedin has found it a closed shop, when you spoke about priests being sent to country parishes you could have been describing him … at the other end of the spectrum is a YouTube video, a parish apart, describing a priest who seems to run an alternative liturgy. Where is our leadership? Good on you for your blog.