Priest/Minister as Spiritual Friend

(Article published in Corpus Reports, Sept.-Oct., 1996)

Eugene C. Bianchi

I would like to present a view of the priest/minister of tomorrow, man or woman, as a spiritual friend or companion. This vision does not negate the traditional definition of the Christian priest as minister of word and sacrament or as the one who is charged by the church with the "care of souls". But priest as spiritual friend will profoundly modify how we understand the traditional language. Such a minister will be primarily a catalyst for enabling people to find their own deeper spiritualities. He or she, in the idea of friend or companion, will also be learning from mostly lay partners on the spiritual journey how to find his/her own true spirituality. This ministry will have both contemplative and ecological aspects. My reading of the signs of the times and my own personal experience lead me to see this new vision of the minister as the best way for the future.

A few autobiographical reflections will set the stage for our discussion, because in truth I am telling you how I see myself in late life. My lifetime straddles the pre- and post-Vatican II eras. I grew up in a world of a male-dominant, hierarchical priesthood. Of course, this wasn't all bad; I owe much of my religious sensitivity to priests and nuns of that earlier period. My formative years as a Jesuit were set in the older mold: we were training to replicate the patriarchal priesthood. We were to become the answer-givers, the commanders who knew the right and safe road that would lead the faithful to the kingdom. Vatican II began to crack this image and make us question its roots. Many of us left the clergy, married and regrouped in organizations like SPFM now FCM and Corpus. We wanted to change the church's priesthood and experiment with new ways of ministering. But we may have only cloaked over our desire for power and control, hallmarks of the clerical system, with a new rhetoric of "people of God". My personal awareness of this owes more to the ups and downs of my closest relationships than it does to theology. The drive to boost the self and dominate others dies hard; it often takes subtle new forms in the church. The vision of priest as spiritual friend is meant to recognize those controlling subtleties and shape a truly different ideal.

Corpus and FCM have had two main goals: to bring about a married priesthood open to women and to experiment with new forms of ministry. Corpus, in the last two decades, has spearheaded direct, institutional change in the Catholic priesthood; FCM concentrated mainly on small community ministries and certifying ministers. I honor and affirm this long effort. Institutional change is very important and it rarely happens without an organized, loyal opposition. But a bigger question needs to be asked: are these goals meeting the spiritual needs of people as we approach the 21st century? Another way of asking this question is to suppose that within twenty years the Catholic Church establishes a married priesthood and allows women priests. Will that in itself take care of deeper spiritual needs, even if more men and women enter seminaries? Surely, such an event will usher in major change. CITI will not have to "rent a priest." Parishes will have more eucharistic ministers. There may be a democratizing trend in church decision-making. But without a truly spiritual revolution in approach to ministry, we may soon find that we have created yet another clerical fortress now peopled by married and women priests. Power and control can creep right back in as these new priests insist on right doctrines and saving observances.

But what do I mean by a spiritual revolution that might avoid these quagmires by seeing the minister as friend and sometimes guide? It may help if I distinguish in a general way between spirituality and religion. Spirituality is basic to humans. It consists in asking fundamental questions about the meaning of life and death, of suffering and evil, of hope and relationships and community. Some people are frightened to pursue these issues; they escape into busyness and consumption and distraction. Other people feel insecure about pursuing the great existential questions as they impinge on daily life. They want answers, religious security and rituals that seem to give them certainty and comfort. But spirituality, though neglected, is within all of us; we are all potentially mystics. This aptitude for the spiritual has already been "revealed" in the evolutionary process that eventuated in creatures like us. In this sense, we already are saved. Religion and religions, as institutionalized structures, on the other hand, try to provide answers to the questions of human spirituality. They do this through doctrines, rituals and moral injunctions. Religions establish hierarchies of authority that claim to have answers from God. It is also normal for humans to form such religion groupings as history attests.

But the problem with religions is that they tend to insist on answers to questions that people may not be asking. Or they demand under severe sanctions that people not look within themselves for their own answers, but rather accept inadequate answers. Moreover, religions seem to quickly lose the more open spirit of their founders, as institutionalization of charisma results in orthodoxy, bureaucracy and hierarchy. Jesus didn't say to the Samaritan woman: "Get that man out of your bed, you sinner." Rather he asked the lady for a drink because he was thirsty. For some time he became a spiritual companion along his and her way. He became a catalyst for her to reappropriate her own spirituality from within. In the end, she had to struggle with her own existential questions. Jesus didn't say to Zachaeus: "I'm a liberation theologian who hates money-grubbing, capitalist, tax collectors." Rather he asked Zachaeus if he had time for lunch. He invited the guy down from the tree for human conviviality. Have you ever wondered what Jesus learned from those two conversations for the benefit of his own spirituality? Maybe the Samaritan woman made Jesus feel better about his relationship with Mary Magdalen. And perhaps Zachaeus helped Jesus with his income tax or at least taught him something about the things that belong to Caesar. At the end of the Buddha's life, his disciples were distraught that he was about to leave them. But he told them not to worry, because the dharma and the buddha-nature were already within each of them and within the sangha. Both Buddha and Jesus understood that the kingdom was already within us, that we each one and together had to walk our own paths.

I'm concerned, therefore, that religion, newly minted in the form of married and women priests, will consciously or unconsciously trample on spirituality. Of course, religion, like poetry and art, in its deepest reaches can enhance inner spirituality. But religion carries so much hierarchical baggage, such a need to control, such a lust to be right or righteous that it can quickly crush the tender reeds of true renewal. Ordination leads to professionalism, not a bad condition in itself, but one so easily given to class superiority, to having special powers, to knowing how the laity should live. It is over against all this that I summon us to think about the priest as spiritual companion or friend, sometimes guide. If he or she is deeply imbued with such an ethos, the eucharist will be enacted differently (sometimes by the laity), sermons will have a new tone and direction (sometimes given by the laity), and spiritual direction will be a mutual endeavor, as Christians share with one another their developing faith about life's deeper existential problems.

But what are some traits and tasks of the priest/minister as spiritual friend? Aristotle told us that friendship requires equality. He didn't think true friendship could exist in a master-slave or parent-child relationship. Our older image of priest as answer-man or as one ladened by ordination with special sacramental powers placed him far above ordinary Christians. If the relationship was not one of master-slave, it was often that of parent-child. The priest was seen as having awesome eucharistic powers, and he held the keys to joy or suffering in the afterlife through the power of the confessional. Add to this image his celibate status which set him apart from the ordinary as one who was above carnal relationships. In this mold, the priest could not really operate as spiritual friend, as companion on a mutual journey of religious discovery. He couldn't be Socrates; he had to be Zeus. Nor could he be Jesus as friend and sometimes guru who walked along the road to Emmaus conversing, letting things stir up within his traveling companions.

A second quality of friendship is an acceptance of the friend as he or she is in a non-judgmental way. Of course, friends disagree on things, but at a deeper level they embrace one another, foibles and all. They like to be in each others company because it enriches both of them. The priest or minister has often been the delegate of a non-accepting Christianity. Think of the rejecting mentality toward those who practice birth control, who are gay, who are divorced, who live together outside marriage, who are women desiring equal roles in the church, who decide in conscience for an abortion, or who harbor dissenting theological views. The drive to convert others to our religion, still strong in many Christian circles, basically rejects the intrinsic spirituality of other traditions. The priest of the past and even of the present represents a church of rejection. Such a one cannot be a spiritual friend. It seems that the earliest portrayals of Jesus in scripture depict him as an accepting, spiritual friend. I have already noted the Samaritan woman and Zachaeus. In other gospel scenes we notice an accepting Jesus with sinners, the disreputable, enemies, as well as with the downtrodden and outcasts.

A third trait of friendship is to be there for the other, to support the best inner longings of one's friends. From what I have just said on the first two points regarding friendship, it is very hard for the priest to be a truly spiritual friend. The same may be true for future married and women priests unless a more profound spiritual revolution takes place during this transition periodin the church. Can the priest or minister really be there for the other in a non-judgmental, accepting way? Can he or she support the insights and longings of the other even when these stand against church policy? Can the new priest present him/herself as a spiritual friend, ready to help when asked, but as an equal, as a co-searcher on the spiritual path? When we conceive of being there for the other, we think of service to the poor and oppressed. Social service ministries are vital to church life, but I am talking about an equally valuable kind of support that sustains friends in the depths of their souls.

How do we develop these traits of priest as spiritual friend? The first and most important need is to rediscover Christianity's contemplative tradition. Most Christian churches have neglected teaching people how to journey inward in solitude and contemplation. Going to church or being religious is usually equated with participating in eucharists, studying the bible, hearing sermons, singing hymns and trying to live according to certain moral dictates. All of these activities can be enriched by contemplative prayer. Our services tend to be very wordy; people don't know what to do with prolonged silence in church. But the ability to meditate and contemplate can be a spiritual route for all Christians, not only for a few members of religious orders. This neglected dimension of religious living underscores the point that all of us are potential mystics, that peace and insight-giving resources are within each of us and these can be accessed. The kingdom of God is within and we can enter it if we know how to dispose ourselves for that journey. To some extent Christianity has been pushed to rediscover its own contemplative heritage by the arrival in the west of eastern spiritual movements since the 1960s.

The priest as spiritual friend, as catalyst for encouraging the inward spiritual life of others, will first need to emphasize prayerful contemplation in his or her life. If we are not personally and experientially convinced of the value of the mystic path, we will not communicate it authentically to others. If we are to teach others how to walk the contemplative road, we need to study in some depth the theories and techniques of meditational traditions. We must become aware from our own practice that religion at its best draws us toward deeper experience of God or Great Spirit or Tao. It is in that still point of existential contact that our root anxieties and questions truly peaceful resolution. Such a positive outcome is not something we can force or demand; rather in the process of contemplative prayer we gradually move beyond our thoughts, schemes, desires and worries to let the Spirit preside in our souls. The Cistercian Thomas Keating puts it this way: "To know God in this way is to perceive a new dimension to all reality. The ripe fruit of contemplative prayer is to bring back into the humdrum routines of daily life not just the thought of God, but the spontaneous awareness of His abiding Presence in....everything." (Open Mind, Open Heart, p. 115). Methods of centering prayer, like other classical means of meditating, eastern and western, teach us techniques for moving beyond ego-centeredness to a unitive experience with reality. The Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, more adapted today to lay life, also help the practitioner open up to new ways of discerning the presence of the divine in all things. Contemplation de-centers our desire-ridden false self and opens a person to a gradual inner transformaton. We learn to live from our authentic centers, so that we not only find greater personal peace, but we become able to serve others with real altruism.

My purpose in emphasizing contemplative prayer here is not to give an adequate account of how it relates to other forms of prayer and to discursive meditation. Nor am I attempting to explain the interesting methods by which we move beyond our scattered "monkey mind" to sit quietly before the great mystery. Also I am not saying that we must abandon critical thinking (that would hardly be consistent with this talk) about theology and religious institutions. Nor am I saying that all other forms of prayer, ritual and observance are to be replaced by contemplation. But all aspects of religious practice will be imbued with a new spiritual tone through deepening of the mystical potential in all of us. Nor is this stress on contemplation a new form of quietism that would jeopardize social apostolates. On the contrary, the de-centering of the self through such meditation opens one to a sense of interconnectedness, compassion and justice. Moreover, there are many ways of incorporating the spirit of contemplation into the ordinary activities of one's day.

I emphasize the importance of the contemplative life as the soul of spirituality because it helps us understand the place of a priest as friend or companion. The latter may also act as guide at times in teaching methods of contemplation, but the priest in this context is not in a dominating post. In the realm of prayer, he or she doesn't have sacramental or theological or ecclesiastical control over other Christians. (The church has historically been leery of mysticism because it bypasses ecclesiastical control.) In the contemplative sphere, hierarchy disappears; bishop, pope and layman are on equal footing. Priest and laity must approach the gate of light in their own ways. Although the priest may act as mentor on the spiritual path, the purpose of guidance is to free the other to find his or her own inner light. The Tao Te Ching notes that the true master leads to the master within each of us. The end result, awareness of the presence, doesn't depend ultimately on priest or lay person. It is a gift for which we can only dispose ourselves. Contemplative prayer is wonderfully democratic. As companion and guide, the priest who has practiced the contemplative life will be able to instruct those new to it its methods, disillusionments, trials and stages. Some of this could be done in liturgical and other settings. The experienced layman can also become guide and companion to the priest, as actually happens today in a number of retreat settings. Getting to this special place of union with God, this ultimate goal of the spiritual sojourn, doesn't depend on ordination, but rather on the Spirit pervading minds and hearts.

It may be that so little of the contemplative tradition has reached the pews because seminary formation has turned priests off to deeper prayer. They were taught that theology, preaching and sacraments were the apex of ministry. Moreover, the early prayer experience of priests was often confined to formal, oral prayer or to intellectualist types of meditation. I know that significant corrections have been made recently in priestly formation. But many priests ended up putting in the time or struggling through deadly dry meditation periods, waiting for the breakfast bell. This kind of rote training also warns us against imposing any templates for contemplation (as if one could) as though they were universal panaceas for all in the same way. While all meditation masters prescribe a few disciplines on the road to contemplation, one needs to come to these practices out of personalized awareness and choice at the right time of one's life. Life stages have their own compelling agendas. Youth, mid-life, and later years generate different questions for spirituality. The contemplative life also needs to be adapted to different personal temperments.

My own return to the contemplative tradition has probably been generated by a number of factors: earlier training as a Jesuit, contact with Buddhist teachers and Taoist readings in recent years and a yen for greater personal integration in late life. Wasn't it Teilhard who said, "il faut mourir bien"? From my own experiences, I am convinced that the priest as spiritual friend will need to tap into the contemplative resources of many wisdom traditions. An ecumenical and pluralistic age also urges us to draw on the creativity of other spiritual traditions. Even when traditions differ in doctrine, it is interesting to see how similar the meditation experiences are across different religions. I think not only of other Christian movements such as Eastern Orthodoxy, not only ofAsian and Amerindian spiritualities, but also of the contemplative potential in literature, art, music and nature.

A major task of the priest of the future will be to adapt Christianity to the emerging age of ecology. Exploding human populations will put vast strains on resources. Global warming, deforestation and other forms of pollution will continue to expand as the ethos of capitalist technology takes over all continents. But here I want to focus briefly on a single key issue underlying the environmental crisis, that of spiritual ecology. Spiritual ecology, sometimes referred to as deep ecology, sees the root of the problem in human alienation from the natural world, called anthropocentrism. We no longer understand or appreciate our true place on earth as part of a vast, living ecosystem. The topic of how Christianity has contributed to our split from nature is very complex. A number of Christian intellectuals are working on the problem and possible remedies, but on the whole an ecological spirituality has hardly begun to influence doctrine, liturgy, scriptural interpretation and other dimensions of Christian life.

To gain a new respect and understanding of our place in nature is fundamentally a spiritual or mystical task. The renown sociobiologist, E.O. Wilson appreciates this when he writes about the crucial need for humans to recapture "biophilia". If we don't return to a relationship of love with our natural kin, we will continue to manipulate, dominate and destroy the world around us. The priest as spiritual friend will, through his own meditation and study, come to find the divine in rocks, rivers and animals. He or she will become a spiritual friend not only to humans but like Francis Assisi to brothers and sisters in nature. The natural realm will cease to be just objects for our manipulation and become subjects for intercommunion. The earth will become for the spiritual leader the body of God in a very profound sense. As theologian Sallie McFague (The Body of God) shows us, to see nature as the body of God will have tremendous implications for Christian doctrine, ethics and practice. I think it will also affect how we understand church structures. Although there are hierarchies in nature, there are also patterns of cooperation and mutuality....shall we say collegiality?

The greening of Christianity, which has just begun, is not only a spiritual task, in the sense of a philosophical and ethical one. It is also a mystical calling, because it implies that at the deepest level the Spirit will be experienced in our own flesh and in the living earth around us. The Spirit will also be known in human works in as much as these are creative and earth-respecting extensions of our brains and hands. The priest as friend of earth, and therefore of humans who evolved from it, will find old and new sources for his or her lectio divina. Spiritual resources for liturgies and meditations will extend beyond traditional scriptures to modern writers from many fields and heritages beyond Christianity. Even a very short list of nature writers and mystics would include St. Francis, Henry Thoreau, John Muir, Annie Dillard, Rachel Carson, Wendell Berry, Pierre Teihard de Chardin, Thich Nhat Hanh, Thomas Berry, Albert Einstein and Gary Snyder.

Church reformers today need to rethink the nature and functions of the priest/minister. But this work of renewal must push beyond the intermediate goals of bringing about a priesthood open to women and to married people. This alone will not be enough to respond to the signs of the times. It seems to me that people in our time are looking for spiritual friends and guides on a mutual journey toward the mystery of the divine within the universe. More and more people want to become aware of their own spiritual potential and how to walk the spiritual path. They expect to learn about this journey from a plurality of traditions, not just those of Christianity. For a growing number of these persons the edicts of religious institutions are not meaningful. They want to experience a deeper, personalized spirituality adapted to the everyday events of life and to its stages. They want to grow in spiritual freedom, to know God even as they are known. They look for priests/ministers to be spiritual friends and guides on the journey. The men and women who will be religious leaders tomorrow will have to re-vision themselves in keeping with the signs of the times. In this perspective, the priest/minister of the future will no longer be mainly a cultic, sometimes moralizing figure. Rather he or she will be a spiritual friend immersed in the contemplative and ecological spirituality that is both old and new.

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