Into Exile We Go

If any one is to be taken captive,

to captivity he goes;

if any one slays with the sword,

with the sword must he be slain.

Here is the endurance and faith of the saints. (Revelation 13:10)

The Sacred Scriptures are full of experiences of exile. The Fall from Paradise is precisely that of an exile. These exilic moments do not only denote physical movements, but also emotional and spiritual transitions from the known to the unknown, from the familiar to the unfamiliar. Arguably no exile is familiar or comfortable. Hence they are referred to as ‘exile’ instead of ‘adventure’, although certainly some forms of exile can carry with them the seeds of newness and future possibilities. Usually, however, an exile’s first response is emotional pain. Exile is also rarely made with planning in mind. It often has to be done in haste. Most of the Biblical examples are so, as are a multitude of examples in history. Exiles may have a chance to grab that which they can carry, and go. There is no time for discussion, and little room for luxury.

Our times have been replete with mass migrations and exiles of people, whether natural or manufactured. Whatever the cause, human misery follows in their wake. We see the broken families, the disturbed communities on the receiving end, the strain and tension of clashing cultures, sociolingustic barriers, and more. The purpose of this essay is to draw attention not to the etiology of exile, much less to resolve any particular one, but rather to draw attention to the spirituality of the inner experience for the exiled. As always, particular attention will be paid to brother Priests, who occupy a special place in my heart.

In the Scriptures, we see many exiles which ‘make sense’, almost like wars that ‘make sense’, in the sense that we know why they occured. The Israelites sinned, and they got civil wars, and a Divided Kingdom. The Jews sinned, and they went to Babylon for 70 years. But what about the slavery of the sons of Jacob, and their descendants, who cried out to God for 430 years in their bondage? What sin did Joseph commit for which he did not atone? Or what about the sinless Holy Family? Surely God could have sent the legions of Angels to protect the sinless Mother of God, St. Joseph, and their precious Son, the Savior of the World? Yet God saw fit to leave himself open to the same overwhelming human cruelties which face children all around the world today. Perhaps the Infant Jesus wanted in some mysterious sense to bind himself to them and their pain. His compassion is beyond our understanding.

It is these ‘senseless exiles’ which are perhaps the most painful for human beings, because for many, they are punishments worse than death. This is especially true if the exile also carries infamy and shame with it. For we are social beings, and we yearn to belong and to experience love, and it is in the experience of love that we discover our sense of human worth and dignity. To be sent away from one’s ‘support base’, from where one finds shelter and sustenance, to a foreign land, in many cases in the ancient world was in fact equivalent to a death sentence. In the contemporary “First World” we may not necessarily have to fear material indigence as a result of having to pick up and move, and although exile may be more moral and emotional than literal, the psychological and emotional pain is definitely real.

We don’t have to look far to find these ‘involuntary exiles’. A lay person who loses his job, or who is ostracized for his religious beliefs, knows what this means. Or perhaps there are those who become the ‘black sheep’ of their family because they have to take a stand for unconfortable positions which are in fashion today. We know what it means to suffer “for the sake of The Name.” In fact, we expect it, because if we are biblicaly and spiritually informed, we know that Jesus told us to expect it (John 15:20).

Where the exile becomes most perverse is when it is wedded to betrayal. Our Lord experienced this the most of course from his Disciple Judas, and from St. Peter. With great bitterness, the reformer Pope Gregory VII said on his deathbed, “I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile,” an ironic twist on the Psalm, “You have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore God has crowned you with the oil of gladness above your fellows.” (Psalm 44:8). In my own counseling experience, few things can compare to the grief of seeing a husband or wife who is divorced by an unfaithful spouse, who then even takes the children, leaving them with nothing. Their feelings, let alone my own sympathetic feelings, range from grief to rage, because you marvel at the perversion of it all.

There is something even more going on, which I am going to call, for lack of a better term, anti-grace. Grace is God’s merciful power, I would argue is his presence itself, which fills the whole universe, permeating it with love and goodness. It is precisely because of this that we can find so much goodness and beauty at the heart of the natural world. But then there is something, that “mystery of iniquity” which is also ‘extra’ or ‘superfluous’, but not in the sense of God’s grace, which is superabundant with sweetness, wisdom and truth. This ‘anti-grace’, utterly parasitic on God’s goodness, is superabundant with cruelty, with banality, but above all, casual apathy. Anti-grace is especially present and troublesome, the playground of demons, when it sees souls who are earnest in their self-offering: seminarians, the engaged, the young in general, the creative and the idealistic. People in these positions are in a place where they are very open to the influence of divine grace, and to bring great goodness into the world they inhabit. But anti-grace is the miasmic air of the perverse. And they twist the very thin relationship between willful self-offering of the pure and their exploitation. Even if these individuals profess a belief in human dignity, they do not actually do so in practice. They are the ultimate ‘use and discard’ consumers of human talent and personality.

Those of us who have a little more worldly wisdom and experience have a duty to protect those who are younger, less experienced, and thus vulnerable to the narcissistic and spiritually parasitic, like these people are. Returning to the theme of exile, many times, exile is the end of the good people they exploit: either because they are thrown away, after having been used, or they have grown to outshine their own ‘patron’, and thus have become a threat. In either case, they must be sent away, and suitably degraded. These stories are as old as humanity, but they never stop being outrageously wrong. It is precisely for this reason that I think Our Lord, in his desire to become one with suffering humanity, bore these particular indignities.

The dreaded chancery phone call, or the knock on the door, with the Vicar of Clergy on the other side; in one moment, a Priest can be sent into an exile, his life turned upside down. Even if the Priest in question did do something wrong, often times the way he is treated is an overreaction grossly out of proportion to the reported misconduct. If a layperson is accused of misconduct at his own place of employment, typically that does not mean they are evicted, on the spot, from their home. They are not sent away from the place or from the people they have come to hopefully love and serve for a period of time.

Many lay people today are becoming aware of the phenomenon of “cancelled clergy”, and I think that is a good thing. There are some dioceses within the United States where dozens, perhaps even up to 10-15% of their presbyterate, are on permanent leave of absence. These men in many cases have been exonerated by both the Holy See and Civil Authorities. Some, even more bizarrely and tragically, have never been accused of a crime or even an immoral act.

Not only are these men on leave without any justifiable reason, a few possess orders from Rome to their Ordinaries specifically to reassign them and to restore their good name, as far as possible. Most Ordinaries refuse. It is true, after all, that Rome has no armies to enforce their decrees. To make matters worse, in recent years, there are several canon lawyers who have collected physical evidence of collusion between various Dicasteries and Ordinaries of how best to ‘process’ Priests whom they perceive to be ‘troublesome’. Some Priests may go through the costly and lengthy process of defending themselves in Rome, and they may even receive a favorable verdict in regard to the matter regarding which they are accused, but they are dismissed from the clerical state because, at one time or another, a cleric or his lawyer, in a moment of understandable anger or frustration, showed ‘disrespect’ or ‘disobedience’ to the Ordinary. Some chanceries even play sophomorphic games like dating letters at different times than when they send them, so as to shorten or lengthen the canonical time for certain responses, so as to invalidate them. Increasingly, lawyers and their clients are stapling envelopes to the letters inside, and taking pictures of postmark dates; and of course, certified mail with tracking is an essential, albeit expensive, tool.

No two pains are the same on this earth, and I certainly am smarter than to try to equivocate anyone’s pain with another’s, but there is something acutely painful about this form of exile. The Priest is ontologically the alter Christus. He is mystically oriented toward the Church, the Bride of Christ, and he is incorporated in a particular way into the person of Christ, as Priest and Victim. If you ask most Priests what happened to them after their Sacred Ordination, most will tell you, (myself included), that something did change inside of them. That Rite does change something inside you, and it is deeper than what can be expressed in words. I was once asked by a newly-ordained what it felt like for me, and the best way I could describe it was, “As if a best friend I had long awaited had suddenly come in the back door of my house and set up his home with me in some suite behind the kitchen I didn’t know I had.” Truly, Jesus has called me friend. Then there is the relationship which I enjoy with the Mother of God, which is likewise ineffable.

There is a perversity, an anti-grace, in the sending away of many of our Priests into effective exile. These men gave themselves readily and generously to Christ and to the Church. Many of them are innocent of any wrong doing. Some of them have done immoral things, but not to the level that they should not be able to repent like normal Christians and be able to reassume the duties of their state. Then there are some who have in fact, done evil things, and may need the penal remedy of dismissal from the clerical state. But this penalty was always meant to be exceptionally rare, simply because of our ontology on the matter.

Mark my words. These men are, in some cases, reduced to poverty as they defend themselves, refusing in some cases to accept even severance packages from their Bishops in exchange for voluntary dismissal from the clerical state. For them, to accept these forty pieces of silver would be to say, the Bishop is right. I am not worthy to exercise the duties of my state. And so some of them, depending on their age and capacities, live as best they can, wanderers in this world. Some live in trailers, having depleted all their savings on legal bills, barely surviving on Social Security and Medicare (if they get that, because in some places, they were told in their youth not to pay into Social Security, because the Church would always take care of them, you see). Some bag your groceries, cook your food, and sell you used cars, too old to go back to school, yet too young to collect social assistance yet. A few are heartcrushingly lonely, forsaken by their family and friends, who cannot and will not believe they are innocent, even if they are.

Some have killed themselves, because there are even some who have been abandoned in prison by their Bishops, refused the Sacraments of Penance and Eucharist, and then a Christian Burial. Octavian Caesar once said that it would be better to be Herod’s pig than his sons, since, as a Jew, Herod would never touch a pig, whereas he killed several of his sons. Better, in some cases, to be a Bishop’s dog than his Priest. I know some Priests in active ministry who have arranged for their burials to take place in secular cemeteries, because there, the Church can never touch them again. Anyone can consecrate a piece of earth; but in a Catholic Cemetery, even after death, a Priest’s name is not safe, but at least his body can rest at peace, along with his tomb.

Some of these men I have encountered in my life, and they are incredibly holy men, having experienced incredible suffering. Like the scapegoat of old, they have “gone outside the camp, carrying the shame”. As profoundly unjust as this situtation is, and as much as there must be a way for us to fix it, or at least make progress toward correcting it, there also seems to be something cosmically redemptive going on as well, that Saint Paul spoke of, that filling up of what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, which will continue until he returns.

As torturous as these sufferings are to the men who undergo them, the effect on morale toward ‘active’ clergy is completely, absolutely fatal. In some cases, I have found them to be more embittered and paranoid than those who are on leave. At least the ones on leave sometimes find time to rest and to recuperate (if they have the health, youth and financial means), while the remaining ones are left with the nagging sense that they all stand over the trap door, and it will open at any moment. Any word of thanks from their Bishop in this environment rings hollow, any convocation feels like a gathering of the gladiatorial damned, who chant like they did of old before Caesar, “We who are about to die, salute you!” The old fear to do anything, because they know they can die in destitution, if they make a wrong step. The young fear to do anything, because in some places in the world, they know they will be the ones to turn the lights off and shut the door when the last elderly parishioner dies. Like Yeats said, “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

The malaise is not as intense in every place, and I think it predominates more in the old, bloated, impacted Metropolitan Sees in America and Europe than it does in the Developing World. But, as I continue to mention, the survey from last year on American Clergy is still the most comprehensive to date, and is presenting the picture of a five alarm fire. Yes, Priests are said to be thriving, but it is all in spite of the Institutional Church. They love their vocation. They hate, or at least strongly dislike, a lot of the other ‘baggage’ of current day Church. If anything, if these men can ever succeed, ever find happiness and a sense of self-worth and dignity, it is before God Almighty in prayer, and before their people who love them. But they will not find it in the Institutional Church. Now, the crisis of trust between Bishops and their Priests, long foreseen since 2002, has reached its apogee. It has become the Star Wormwood, and has poisoned the waters, and it will take Heruclean efforts to heal the paranoia, fear and cynicism which will define several generations of clerics. Strangely, some of the most anti-clerical people to come, may very well be Priests themselves. And this will completely destroy our capacity to nourish vocations for the future.

Until the Bishops, especially the “Teflon Bishops” I mentioned in my last article, decide to awaken from their indolence and fear and actually address this issue, we are doomed as an institution, in terms of brick and mortar. The physical stones of our Churches will only crumble because the spiritual ones have long since vanished. We will continue to bleed clergy and morale, and as fish rots from the head, we will circle the drain until we find our way out of being a Jobs Program or NGO, and start acting like the Mystical Body of Christ again.

Now, as is my custom, I want to end on a positive note. First, to the very men to who are in exile. There are no words in human or angelic language to express the outrage I and many others feel at how you have quite literally been tossed aside like garbage. Your dignity, like your Sacred Priesthood, has been treated as disposible, optional, and non-essential. Depending on where you are on the path to healing, and whether you have a path open to a return to ministry, makes the spiritual journey very different for each one. But there are some common denominators. I would highly recommend, for starters, that you reach out to organizations like Opus Bono Sacerdotii, which runs retreats for Priests who have difficulty. That includes Priests in active ministry, Priests on leave, suspended Priests, laicized Priests, etc. If you want information on them, click “contact us” on this website, and I can put you in touch with the organizations, themselves and those like them, that can help. Their mission really is to try to build up spiritually the men who are downtrodden. They even conduct retreats several times a year across the United States with the objective to bring you together who share a common pain, to celebrate the Mass, to pray the Office together and the Rosary, to share meals, all in a fraternal atmosphere. You may even make a friend. There is nothing like meeting someone else who knows exactly what it is to walk your walk. Opus Bono also accepts to their retreats Priests from abroad.

My second suggestion is for the lay faithful, but also for active Priests, and it may be a tall order. First, if you know any Priests who are out of active ministry, and you feel comfortable speaking with them, it may be good to send them a card to commemorate and celebrate the anniversary of his Ordination. There are several Priests who still celebrate Mass privately at home, while they go about a day job to make ends meet. Maybe you could quietly slip them a Mass Intention with a stipend, to join yourself to the sacrifice, and also to aid them in their necessities, as so many are abandoned by their Dioceses. Remember, by their very nature, Priests are extraordinary intercessors. Their prayers and their sufferings have an intense meaning which is hard to describe. If you unite yourself to one in prayer, and offer yourself and your sufferings with them, you make yourself a lightning rod for grace. But beware; the devil will savagely hate you. At the same time, don’t be afraid of him.

Lastly, a point of realism, and of hope. All of us Christians are in exile. Some exiles have a worse time of it than others, and I think that is because some of us are meant to be a bit more homesick. I think that’s because by virtue of the merit which we acquire by grace, the love and bliss we store up for ourselves, the “weight of glory”, makes us awfully more perceptive of what lies beyond the veil. This insane, cruel world cannot be all that there is; from where does our heart yearn for that world of perfect joy, peace, and mercy, where every tear is wiped away, and the memory of this world is no more? I agree wholeheartedly with Saint Teresa of Jesus. This world is nothing more than a night in a bad hotel. I used to be sad that it was so brief. Not any more. Human mortality is a hard pill to swallow for everyone. I think sometimes that we should pray that we should live just long enough to save our souls, and short enough not to lose them. Alas, we have little choice in the matter. Wait just long enough, and it will happen. All trials, like all joys here, will have their end.

In the meantime, as we all make our journey through the Vale of Tears toward the Great and Terrible Judgment, I fully believe in making it our business to console the sorrowing, to counsel the doubtful, to feed the hungry, to show mercy, and to be Christ’s witnesses in the world. And never forget what Christ said, that if we give even a drop of water to those who believe in him, we will not lose our reward. And to give that drop of water to a Priest, because he is a Priest, we will receive a Priest’s reward. God always “rounds up” his rewards. As painful as this life is, we will truly come home, someday.