If any priests or bishops are reading this post, I suggest contacting appropriate committees and subcommittees and adjunct study groups and ad hoc facilitators, all with relative steering committees requisite approvals, so as to surround your parish and chancery offices with mega-walls of huge speakers (having consulted environmental impact studies), all turned up to maximum volume enough to shatter windows, and then play Blah Blah Blah by Armin van Buuren above, you know, so as to prepare yourselves for the exact same reaction as is going to hit you regarding the redefinition of the priesthood as Blah Blah Management®. That video has 668 million views as of this writing, just on YouTube, never mind all the other social media sites.
I mentioned this phenomenon of the new priesthood as Blah Blah Management® to my parishioners the other day. I informed them that this heresy has been making it’s way around the world as a follow-up, a necessary consequence of the Synod on Synodality. It’s all about the priest administering from on high a dialogue through a complex hierarchy of steering committees, committees, subcommittees, arrays of sub-subcommittees, etc., and so needing multiple scheduling secretaries who can keep up with each committee’s tailored rules and regulations and statutes and meeting times and places and needs, each with rosters and substitutes and car pools, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…
99% of meeting time is given over, of course, to interrupting people to tell them their time is up and then having them reclaiming their time for being interrupted, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah… sigh…
Parishioners said if that would ever come here to our tiny parish, all this making the perfect blah blah blah the enemy of the good, and that enemy being anti-Christ, they would leave the parish and go elsewhere. We have the living and eternal Word of God. He’s not the god of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
The problem is that this is popping up everywhere. Try to escape from one (arch)diocese to the next, from one bishops conference to the next, from one continent to the next… It’s all coming to a parish near you.
Maybe the goal of ten thousand committees is nice in mega parishes with tens of thousands of parishioners. People being busied blah blah blahing themselves to death will keep them out of trouble, but it will probably not get them to heaven either.
If it ever came here… to this tiny parish… I mean… what a joke… There is no one to head up all these committees, no one who wants to blah blah blah. The Lord’s Little Flock wants our Lord Jesus, they want to listen to HIM. They want the sacraments, more of everything Catholic. They do not want boring Rahnerian Hegelianism, dialectical materialism, where all dialogue parks itself at the dialectical, where all that is dialectal rejects the faith. No faith? There is only violence.
At this point in writing I wanted to add a picture of Pope Francis, but instead accidentally hit the button for AI. I got some good sense:
Unfortunately, many modern parishes and church organizations seem to have lost sight of this fundamental truth. They focus so much on managing programs, events, and committees that they forget the true mission of the Church: to share the love of Christ and to bring all people closer to salvation.
Priests should be shepherds of their flocks, guiding and nurturing their spiritual growth. This means being present to their needs, listening to their concerns, and providing pastoral guidance that is rooted in the teachings of the Gospel.
If we want our parishes and church organizations to thrive, we need to recenter our focus on what really matters: faith, prayer, and service to others. This is the essence of true priesthood, and it is what will ultimately lead us all to our eternal home in Heaven. So let us embrace this mission, and leave the “blah blah management” to the world of corporate boardrooms and bureaucracies.
Anyway, here’s that picture:
Who cares if dialectical materialism attempts to kill God, and ends up killing hundreds of millions of people? ///off sarcasm…
I tell you what… I’m sick of all this crap. I just want to be a simple priest, preaching, offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, hearing Confessions, providing Last Rites no matter what, all the sacraments, faith formation… What’s wrong with that?
ARISE! LET US BE GOING! 
ya know if chanceries did what they were suppose to do administration would be a breeze! God so loved the world he didn’t send a committee 🙂
Lol. Thanks for a good laugh!
I can’t help but think of the mega $’s saved in every parish and/or diocese if the priests were allowed to simply do what you have said Father – be a shepherd for the people. Among random things that pop in my mind … the myriads of reams of copy paper and copy services – gone; the high end companies that help you “make money” or sell your programs – gone; the continual (on and on and on) building projects because the parish hall built 15 years ago is not up to date with latest technology (knock it down, form a building committee, let’s build a new one!) – gone; sending burned out priests on sabbatical for months at a time because it’s wearying managing all this stuff – and having worked in a parish office years ago, it is expensive to bring in substitute priests – the need would be way less. Way random thoughts for now. We love you, Father, for the shepherd you are.
That picture of Francis accepting the Communist Crucifix with a bemused smile on his face totally creeps me out- God, bring Francis back to the Church and to Jesus! God, stop this awful Synod stuff!
I hear what you are saying Father George and I agree with you whole heartedly. I’m sorry Father, I feel another rant comine on…
Committees, etc. is nothing but a bunch of people who don’t know what to do with their lives. Secular bureaucracy in the Church is a total distraction from Jesus and worship. Bureaucracy crushes the spirit. If I want bureaucracy, all I have to do is go to the internet and read the governmental news…they have lots of committees that do nothing. I am looking for a relationship with God not a “you should do this and you should do that and forget what Jesus said, we’re making the rules now.” No love in that. All we need to do is go to Adoration daily, pray, go to Mass and we will get the help, healing and direction we need directly from the Lord. We should be saying…”Jesus, you handle it!” Then you will see things begin to happen then! The secular world is trying to destroy the sacredness of the Church and kick God out of our lives. I say to them…stop it!
Sincerely,
catherine
catherine – You said it! I agree 100%.
I wish we had Adoration more often. In my parish we have adoration for one hour a month. (the first Sunday of the month – after the one Sunday mass) If there is any complication with time, weather, etc. it is cancelled.
Granted there is a priest shortage and it’s tough to schedule these wonderful worship times – but I miss weekly adoration and the Rosary after mass.
What’s wrong with your understanding of the priesthood, Father? Nothing at all. How you see the priesthood is how Our Lord means it to be. Our problem is that we have narcissists in top leadership positions, even sitting on the chair of Peter perhaps. Good priests love the Church; our present leadership does not seem to but to be in thrall to the devil (the greatest narcissist of all time) instead whether they know it or not.
Narcissists do not understand love, considering it a weakness they can exploit to achieve their own ends: personal power and adulation.
Projection onto a scapegoat is necessary for a narcissist to hide his /her true self and overcome opposition. Hence, a narcissistic pope or bishop projects that which is wrong in himself (his desire to control and be worshipped) onto others (scapegoats: priests and bishops faithful to Jesus Christ) calling them what he is and they are not (rigid control freaks who lack love and compassion for the flock entrusted to them).
A busy PR team supporting the narcissists false image by making it look real is very helpful (certain articles, books and documentaries come to mind) and so too committees etc, for exercising control over all facets of the life of the Church is a necessity for a narcissist should such a man occupy the Chair of Peter.
It might seem strange that many will fear and obey a narcissist before God but it is not really. Someone who truly loves us is forgiving – and deep down a Catholic knows God truly loves us – but a narcissist does not love us and is not forgiving regardless of his lying image. He is vengeful and we grasp this since those who fall short of his regard are punished for it.
All in all, a powerful narcissist is frightening, and his toadies and those afraid of being tarred as opponents of such a powerful figure fear for their reputations, and in the case of a narcissistic pope, clergy have reason to fear, not only for their reputations but for their future as priests (parishes and even the faculties given can be rescinded) should they not acquiesce.
Eternity seems a long way off and unless we love God more than ourselves and trust in Him more than in man, we will go along with powerful figures in Church and elsewhere who might otherwise mar our happiness here on earth.
Testing testing. >
Thanks be to God for all the wonderful, thoughtful observations and insights made here. I will add this to the mix:
Souls that are dying or dead need to fill the void with something, anything, because of the restlessness. This bureaucratic activity* serves that purpose by providing a sense of “purpose” while displacing service to the Lord – especially worship of the Lord. It is like a re-start of the building of the tower of babel, and will end the same way.
* This activity is like talking about (or worse, “managing”) the Ten Commandments rather than keeping them. Turn the Priests into managers and them the laity will turn into lower managers instead of a pristly people.