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Not Impressed

Local priest reports on the annual assembly of priests

BY ROBERT KUMPEL

On Monday, February 23, Bishop Brom hosted his annual Lenten assembly of priests entitled "Choosing Life: Restoring Passion, Health, and Hope in the Midst of Disillusionment" at the diocesan pastoral center. The featured speaker was Father Ray Dlugos, chief executive officer and psychologist with the Southdown Institute in Aurora, Ontario. The Southdown Institute is a treatment center for Catholic clergy with substance abuse and psychological problems.

The choice of Father Dlugos may point to an ongoing concern in the chancery, as last year's speaker was Father Stephen Rosetti, president of Saint Luke's Institute, another treatment center for priests with substance and sexual abuse problems.

The presentation began with Father Dlugos, who prepared the audience for Bishop Brom's report. After a break, Bishop Brom read his report, took a few questions, and left the rest of the presentation to Father Dlugos. Father Ecks (not his real name) attended the program and was not impressed. "It was mainly about priest's psychological and emotional reaction to the publicity and scandals surrounding the sexual abusers in the priesthood. The thing I found most interesting about this whole thing was that Dlugos seems to think that what we really need to do is further deconstruct, if that were possible, what's left of the traditional clerical culture. His response to reforming his identity at mid-life was all in terms of social justice which seems a total identification with the hard left."

Bishop Brom's report included a restatement of his carefully worded phrase: "The Diocese of San Diego is committed to prevent sexual abuse and to maintain a safe environment for children and young people." The report made no mention of the continuing problems of homosexuality and lack of chastity among priests -- a concern one priest shared with a News Notes reporter after last year's assembly.

"The bishop just read the facts as they were laid out in his report," Ecks says, "and discussed the status of current lawsuits. There was no sense of 'All right boys, we have to swallow hard and deal with it. The main thing now is to be good priests and take care of our people.' There was no call to deeper prayer, faithfulness to daily Mass and the divine office, frequent use of the sacrament of confession, having a good spiritual director, or reading solid theology. Even more surprising was the absence of encouragements for fraternal support among priests. There was nothing like that.

"Dlugos made it sound like we were all crushed and humiliated and beaten down by this crisis that is just sapping us of all our joy in our ministry. I remember thinking, My God, is this all news to someone? Were all the people in this room completely ignorant that this was going on around them?"

Father Ecks described Father Dlugos' as "a middle-aged, rotund guy, very dapperly dressed in his blue blazer and Dockers. I would say that about two-thirds of the priests were in some form of clerical dress, including the Bishop and chancery types. Dlugos exuded a certain sexual ambiguity. But then he is a psychologist, so he has to have that sort of professional, empathetic aura about him."

The handouts from Dlugos' presentation reveal the psychology-heavy focus of his talk. The outline bore headings such as, "Burnout," "Steps Toward More Authentic, Passionate Lives," "Illusion and Disillusionment," "Primary Illusions," "Toward Honest Self-Awareness" and "The Connection Between Feelings and Needs". While Father Ecks doesn't discount the appropriate use of psychology, he thought that it was overemphasized. "Dlugos said that we all must embrace our responsibility for the crisis and acknowledge the shadows within us. It sounds like a cliché, but he seemed to suggest that we get in touch with our 'inner abuser', as if to say, 'We're all potential abusers and we all have to repent of this.' I thought, okay but when he described what repentance meant, it was clear that he meant we needed to go into deep psychoanalysis as if repentance has nothing to do with fasting or prayer or self-denial or growth in virtue. There was no mention of the spiritual warfare against the forces of evil. All of this only calls us to a deeper subjectivism, and it's subjectivism that got us in to this mess."

Father Ecks was disappointed by Dlugos' vision of the priesthood. "There was not one word about prayer," he recalled. "When he talked about the priesthood, it was exclusively in terms of ministry and preaching. Not once did he give a hint that there might be something to do with sacraments. Nor did he really talk about vocation. I never got the sense that we were talking about a divine call. It was all about personal identity and things like that. He made some very valid points on the psychological level -- I don't want to take away from that, but he just stayed there. For instance, he told us to look at why we were priests and ask ourselves, 'Am I here to have people falling at my feet, or am I here to serve people?' That's a very valid point, but he spoke about it all in terms of good mental health and not in terms of what one would ordinarily understand as the Catholic priesthood.

"There are many good priests," Father Ecks continued, "even though they are getting no support from the top. On the other hand, for every pedophile and homosexual priest, there are another ten who are preaching not just heresy but idiocy, and the bishops know about it and do nothing."

As cynical as Father Ecks might sound, he also exudes indefatigable optimism. "The fact that people are still attending Mass," he said, "is proof positive that it's the Holy Spirit and not the bishops that keeps the Church together. Nothing else could possibly explain the fact that we have people coming to church on Sunday morning if this is the mainstay of how our priests are formed. And this problem isn't exclusive to San Diego. The scandals were not news to me. Quite the contrary, I'm immensely relieved that it's finally out in the open."

Father Ecks' left the convocation disappointed. "I went in thinking, 'Thanks be to God. Maybe we'll face reality and deal with this,'" he explained. "But afterward it all struck me as business as usual."

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