“Nos morituri....” — Twelth Week of “Ordinary Time,” June 24 to 30, 2012

I missed this blog last week. I was at St. Leo’s University in Florida attending the first assembly of the Association of United States Catholic Priests: the only forum for the communal voice of those in the unique position of having “working ministerial contact” both with the hierarchy and the laity, the governing and the governed. Unlike the bishops, the priests see with their own eyes the effect — good and bad — that Vatican and diocesan decisions have on the people. But, unlike most of the laity, they also see how those decisions are made and where they come from.

For example, there was overwhelming distress over the new “Roman English” translation of the Mass. Typical comments: “We cannot pray it. The people can’t pray it.” To add to their distress, they know the process that produced and imposed this translation. Those interested can google the open letter of Benedictine Father Anthony Ruff in America magazine, Feb. 11, 2011. Father Ruff wrote:

I cannot promote the new missal translation with integrity. ... It has been an honor to serve until recently as chairman of the music committee... that prepared all the chants for the new missal. But my involvement in that process... has gradually opened my eyes to the deep problems in the structures of authority of our church... When I think of how secretive the translation process was, how little consultation was done with priests or laity, how the Holy See allowed a small group to hijack the translation at the final stage, how unsatisfactory the final text is, how this text was imposed on national conferences of bishops in violation of their legitimate episcopal authority, how much deception and mischief have marked this process—and then when I think of Our Lord’s teachings on service and love and unity…I weep.

The priests began their assembly “weeping” over all that afflicts them in their ministry today. Then they put that behind and asked, as a speaker remarked, “constructively, not wallowing in negativity,” what we as a Church can do. The intent of the Association — as quoted in the June 15 Tampa Tribune article, “New priests' group hopes to preserve vision of Vatican II” — is “not to be a controversial voice, but a collaborative one." These are not “rebel priests.” They are concerned priests.

Hence the title of this blog. “Nos morituri salutamus — We who are about to die salute you” — were the words of Roman gladiators condemned to fight each other to the death. I see them as the words of a generation of priests about to die, who are passing on their testimony to the Church.

Most of the 260 priests there were older. Together they offered between six and eight thousand years of combined experience of priestly ministry. In them I saw Christ in the final— and purgatorial — stage of being “brought to full stature.” They have “borne the heat of the day,” and their faces show it. In a few years none of them will be left. But they want to leave their legacy — the legacy of those who lived through the exultation and disappointments of Vatican II and its aftermath, who have seen vocations to priesthood pass “from flourishing to languishing,” who have seen the Church as it was, see it as it is, and hope in what it will be. “Nos morituri declaramus — We who are about to die declare to you" that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” And while he lives in them, they will keep laboring to “build up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12-14).

May their ranks swell.

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