Man of God

     My family and I were out driving shortly after Mass on Sunday, when all at once we noticed that we were in danger of getting ourselves stuck in a parade route for the annual festival of one of the French Canadian villages where we spend the summer. Coming down the driveway to the community center was a pleasant, shambling man, in his mid-fifties, wearing a casual shirt and pants. He was a newcomer to the village; probably didn’t know more than a few dozen people, and there would certainly be plenty of folks lining the streets who would not recognize him. He was the newly assigned pastor.

     Now I’m hardly one to talk about keeping the formalities. Years ago, when I was younger and looked younger still, I used to fool my students for the first day of class by sitting at one of their desks and waiting for them to file in, talking about the new term, whether the professor was a tough grader, and so forth. It was a way of showing off, or a dumb joke. I can’t do that anymore, but I still don’t dress as a professor exactly, and this, I see, is a fault, not a virtue, as is my calling the students by their first names, as everyone now does, and as is my growing softheartedness in grading what only with a mingling of Christian indulgence and utter irresponsibility I can call their “writing”.

     Why that priest was in his civvies, I can’t tell. The first time he appeared on the island, at a parish council meeting, he was also collarless, so it seems to be a conscious decision of his to go among the people looking like one of them. Maybe that way he can surprise them into conversation. Maybe he doesn’t enjoy being stared at. Maybe he feels that it would be immodest to wear a sign of his spiritual authority over them.

     There may be mitigating excuses. They’re not enough. Two stories:

     A young fellow just out of college was traveling through Europe alone, on a shoestring. He spent all his money a day or two early, and camped out at the airport in Germany, lonely and hungry. A priest came by -- of course, he could tell that the man was a priest, because he was wearing his uniform. They had a friendly chat, and the priest offered him half of the ham sandwich he was carrying in a lunch bag. My friend took it.

     That’s a thin lifeline for a drowning soul, you’d think. But that same fall he ended up at a picnic for the graduate students at my college. He was new, and shy, and I’d been there for several years already, and knew everyone. His way of meeting people was odd: he accused Saint Paul of being a bigot. I couldn’t let that one rest. I was a leftish Catholic in those days, but even I knew that Paul was no bigot; in fact, there’s a certain quasi-orthodox way to tweak the letters of Paul so as to soothe the heart of a liberal. That’s what I did, and we got into a long verbal tussle about it. Not long after that, I found out that he’d been snooping around in Catholic doctrine. To sum it up, a year later, on the Vigil of Easter, he became a Christian and a Catholic, baptized and confirmed on the same night. My godson -- morose no longer, but a man of deep and cheerful faith. When I asked him what first pointed him towards Saint Paul, he said it was that priest in the airport, and the sandwich, no more and no less than that.

     Another story. An actor on location in France walked off the set for a long break, and went for a walk in the countryside. He was playing a priest, and was dressed still in his stage robes. Suddenly a small boy came running to him over the fields, smiling and gesturing and jabbering away at him in French. He called him “Pere” -- “Father” -- but beyond that, the actor could hardly make out a word of it. Then the boy ran off again. And the man wondered, “What is it that so inspires confidence in these people? The boy didn’t know who I was, but just because I was dressed this way, he trusted me and talked to me.” The actor hadn’t been a devout sort, but that was the beginning of his own journey into the Christian faith. He and his wife, some years later, did enter the Church. When death came to part them -- I am not certain whether he or his wife died first -- they took their leave of one another in peace, saying that they would meet again soon. That actor was Sir Alec Guinness.

     Ministers who want to be jus’ folks should take heed. God has singled you out, you men of God. I accept the priesthood of all believers; but I think that God has marked you with the sign of Melchizedek in a way that he has not marked me. Then do not try to efface that sign. I suppose it is a burden to you. Does it leave splinters in your shoulder? Does it bow your back and make your legs tremble for weariness? You cannot have expected otherwise. But it does not matter whether you would prefer to be my pal, the buddy at the card table, somebody just like me. You are no longer just like me. Pals I already have, and plenty. I don’t need any more of them. I need you: the spiritual father, the minister, the man of God.

Comments

[GL]

Tony,

Off the topic, I listened to your radio talks about Dante's Inferno. They were fantastic and I highly recommend them to others.

[Hannah]

Hi,

I also thorougly enjoyed all the lectures on Dante.

Do you have any other lectures online?

Thanks,
Hannah

[Philippa Alan]

This is so true Mr. Esolen. While it is a heavy burden to be a priest/pastor, it is one so desparately needed. thanks for writing this.

[Bobby Winters]

It has been a recent discovery of mine that dress is important. I'd spent an extended period of my life believing it was who was in the clothing that mattered and nothing else. This is incomplete.

We have jobs and how people perceive us matters often in how we may accomplish them. When I was younger, and there was no hope that my students would perceive me as an authority figure, then trying to bridge the gap over the abyss of mathematics by being relaxed was the option. Now my hair is gray (in spite of my scant 43.9 years of age) and being a peer is not a option, so I play the uncle/father. In my case, the point is to make a connection to the students

Now I've taken on administrative duties and the students need someone whom they can size up as an authority quickly. Clothing helps.

I think a lot of ministers are humbled before that authoritarian role. There are more burdens with it than simply the one of dress.

[Tony Esolen]

GL, Hannah:

Thanks for the thumbs-up. I have to say that it was very odd, staring into a blank camera, pretending to talk to people who weren't there. I'd prefer a crowd of two hundred, three hundred ... Anyway, there are four on Inferno, four on Purgatory, and four on Paradise. The other eight should be up soon (first they are broadcast over the local Catholic TV network, then they are put on line).

[Mark]

What a great post. I honestly had not thought about this before, but I am persuaded by your short essay. Food for much more thought. Mark

[Jack]

Dear Mr. Esolen,

Thank you for a thoughtful word on the calling of pastors and priests. I have recently left the pastorate, after serving 20 years. While I pastored, I consciously - (self-consciously?)- asked people not to call me “Reverend” or “Dr.” or anything that I thought would take away from the understanding that THEY were the ministers in the church. I was called to equip and pastor them, but I was just like them- a sinner saved by grace.

I now realize what seeds of trouble I sowed with that shallow ecclesiology. While it fit well with my leadership style and the personality of the local congregation, it lowered me from the high calling God had given me as a pastor. I was singled out, I was the man of God in our small town, and I had not accepted the authority and the responsibility of that calling. It weakened the call of God in my life.

So, when agendas, personalities, and territories became points of contention in our growing (spiritually and maturing) congregation, I was just one among 5 in our little leadership group. I was not even a “first among equals”, but was treated just as a guy that the others saw as inferior to their own spiritual state. The lack of standing that I nurtured became the void in my ministry when I needed to have pastoral authority in my leadership.

The abrupt ending of that ministry was one of the most painful things that my family and the congregation went through. (Althought it was a "bloodless coup",the wounds have been slow to heal for many in our town).

I wonder- Had I had lived and taught a more biblical view of the pastoral call, would I still be a pastor today? . . .

Thank you for your ministry of teaching and discernment through Touchstone.

In Christ,

JPN

[Pr. Dave Poedel]

As a Lutheran cleric, I wear my collar every day and while traveling. I have all sorts of wonderful stories, and none of them involve "freebies" as courtesies.

I taught college for 30 years, and for 16 or so of those I was a worker-priest. I wore my collar to work most days there as well. When students asked my preferred title, it was "Pastor" rather than Doctor or Professor.

I am humbly available to my Lord and His Church all of the time, and my wife respects that part of our marriage with joy.

[Tony Esolen]

Jack, that is a poignant story. In a way, it reminds me of King Lear: give away your fatherly authority, and soon enough your own daughters will be telling you to drop your britches for a spanking. I made the same mistakes when I was a younger professor, and they really were as you describe them -- mistakes that hurt not myself so much as they hurt the young people I was charged to teach.

[Fr. Bill]

Tony,

After reading your comments above, I've had this nagging feeling that it's somehow related to your earlier essay in the pages of Touchstone on friendship among men, wherein you explained how the current laissez faire attitude toward homosexuality makes it virtually impossible for men to thrive on the close friendships with other men that sustained their ancestors. After reading Pastor Jack's sad report, I think I can put my finger on the connection. Or, perhaps, it's a parallel dynamic. It runs like this: normalization of homosexuality kills the possibility of close and authentic friendship between men; and egalitarian social dynamics kill the possibility of authentic leadership, particularly by those on whom general and special revelation lay the responsibility for that leadership: men.

I ministered for many years in broadly evangelical Protestantism, probably very typical of the environs in which Pastor Jack labored for 20 years. I know whereof he speaks as far as the way in which pastors are viewed primarily as administrators and facilitators, perhaps technicians on the level of plumbers and carpenters (very useful chaps, but otherwise just common folk). Certainly pastors in those climes fare about as well as NFL coaches: applauded when the team is winning, fired when the fans are unhappy.

Moving in mid-life into a church that had kept the trappings of catholic Christianity, I was amused and embarrassed by my own fascination with clergy who wore clericals and vested for worship. At my confirmation, and later the confirmation of my children, the Bishops were simply splendid, both in their attire and their deportment. And, I was grateful for both on those occasions.

ECUSA's shenanigans eventually drove me out the door into the Anglican Continuum, and from there into a church plant with myself a candidate for Holy Orders. On the day of my ordination to the diaconate, I began wearing standard catholic clericals. And, I was amazed once again at the change in all my relationships!

I found nothing overtly hostile, but a noticeable “reserve” suddenly appeared in those who knew me as a mere layman. And, I'm convinced that the reserve attaches to the deeply embedded egalitarianism of the local ecclesial culture (a jungle of congregationalism). I don't get more “respect.” It's more like “well, the old gent's putting on churchly airs, huh?” It probably helps defuse my encounters with strangers that I'm short, white haired and bearded, and closely resemble Santa Claus. In fact, the beard usually hides the clerical collar.

But still, when people recognize the uniform for what it is, I've been amazed at how much effort they put into ignoring it.

[Tony Esolen]

Fr. Bill:

I think you are right; the two tendencies cry out for recognition together. Your own story reminds me, by contrast, of a scene from a pretty decent old movie, Going My Way. Now, the tendency towards desacralizing the ministry is already underway in that movie, with Father O'Malley (Bing) "converting" a young couple who are shacking up by playing a schmaltzy song on the piano -- the title tune, kind of an early version of Christian pop. Still, he is called Father, and looks the part. In any case, one evening he attends the operatic performance of a woman he once loved, and who clearly once loved him. She hasn't seen his collar, and while she is getting changed behind the screen in the dressing room she refers to him by his first name and asks him why, after a certain time, he stopped writing to her. Apparently THE letter in which Bing tells her of his decision to enter the priesthood never arrived -- but she doesn't know that until she comes out from behind the screen. He's taken off his overcoat, and now she sees the collar. Her eyes light up with recognition, a warm smile comes to her face, and she says, "Father!" And that is what she calls him from then on.

[DGP]

Fr. Bill,

The fact that so many people read so deeply into your choice of clerical clothing itself betokens the the distinctive, public quality of ministry. After all, if the egalitarians really believed what they said, then they wouldn't care what you wear. "Churchly airs" wouldn't intimidate them.

But the truth is, Christ established his Church, and provided leadership for it. Through the particularities of history, a Roman collar has come to signify a share in Christ's governance of his Church. When people take offense at the collar, it is ultimately because they are offended by Jesus' Lordship.

[James A. Altena]

Dear Fr. Bill,

I can't speak to the newly apparent reserve you encounter. But in my "Continuing Anglican" parish, there is reserve by parishioners in relation to our priest, albeit for perhaps different (and better) reasons. First, he is personally reserved and introverted by nature, having something about him of the aura often recorded regarding George Washington and Robert E. Lee. (He also inspires a similar extraordinary loyalty, and is particularly sought out by people from within and without the parish for spiritual direction.) Second, he is personally highly ascetical in his life of prayer and fleshly discipline (something on which his wife and children sometimes humorously remark). Third, perhaps because the parish is traditionally Anglo-Catholic, its parishioners have a keen sense of him as a man truly set apart in a special way, in this world but not of it in a special manner. (While he does have a few very close friends, they are not members of the parish, which also means that no-one can ever have grounds to suspect him of playing favorites.) Perhaps even more than his sacramental ministrations and sermons, his living is provided to him so that he has the freedom to devote himself to a life of prayer on behalf of his flock, and we who belong to it are keenly aware of how often he has silently and quietly borne our crosses for us at his prie-dieu. Perhaps there is some loneliness involved for him, but it is a sacrifice he offers up for the sake of the Gospel.

I have two friends locally who are Anglican priests. One is a newly ordained ardent Anglo-Catholic, who I knew when he was yet a layman. (He was sub-deacon for my wedding last year and has just honored me by asking me to stand as godfather to his sixth child.) The other is my age and just as ardently low church evangelical. (He was one of my groomsmen, and his wife was one of my wife's bridesmaids). In both cases my wife and I are like family to them. And yet there is no question but that I call them both "Father." Neither has asked for it (and the second would probably prefer I not do it -- his own parishioners call him "Ken"). I do it because it is good for me to do so -- to be humilited in a small way by being reminded that their vocation to holy orders is vastly more important than any to which I could lay claim, and that I am not entitled to the self-assertion of easy famialirity with someone set apart to handle the awe-inspiring mysteries of the altar. (The same of course applies to those formally consecrated to a life of prayer, such as my dear friend the Sr. Elaine.)

So, Fr. Bill, take heart, and use the occasion to cultivate a proper reserve here, to the advancement of holiness for the spiritual benefit of your flock. (Might I suggest that, when opportunity allows, you also go from being "Fr. Bill" to "Fr. William", as the Christian name given you at your baptism? I think the use of familiar nicknames by and for clergy tends to feed into the problem noted in this blog. I personally address clergy by title and last name when possible, though I know that e.g. the Orthodox commonly address their clergy by title and christmation or ordination first name.)

Some time ago it became a fad to criticize "clericalism." I personally have come to the conclusion that we would all be better off with a stronger dose of it instead.

[Gene Godbold]

One of my colleagues died two weeks ago at the age of 60. I had worked with him for the last four years. He had been my manager for a time and was my supervisor on several tasks. He was an accomplished neuroscientist, gentle, good humored, devoted to his wife and two (grown) children, a lay elder in his Missouri Synod Lutheran church (both here in Virginia and in Alabama where he had lived for 20 years). He was a father-figure in the office and a stabilizing presence.

Anyway, he had been in Alabama with his wife, working on selling his house when he had to have an emergency operation. Over three weeks it looked like he was getting better. His children and grandchildren were visiting him when he suffered a sudden, fatal heart attack.

When we were told on Monday morning, a bunch of us drove in two cars the 13 hours to Alabama to be at the visitation and funeral. Before I left I asked my rector if I should wear clericals (I'm a deacon in a continuing Anglican church). He said yes, that some people consider it comforting.

He was right. My colleages treated my, frankly, differently. It seemed like it made it easier for them to talk about the whole situation of death (and life). The young woman who presently sits in the cube across from mine says she was glad I was there because I was "comforting". (I had never been described as comforting in my entire life.) On the ride home, I had a good conversation with three young (less than 30) young women about their fathers and "dating". One opened up and described her experience in various churches.

I'm not going to start wearing clericals to work, but if a situation like that arises again, I'm not going to be nervous about wearing them (as I had been).

[Dcn. Michael D. Harmon]

I'm bivocational too, and wearing clericals to my day job would be highly inappropriate, and yet I wear them often outside the office, and travel in them when on vacation. I have yet to take a trip, either alone or with my wife, that I am not stopped and asked for prayer or a blessing. (Sometimes the blessing is in action, not verbal -- my wife and I were returning from Florida on the day before Passover, and were asked for help by two different Jewish women who approached us deliberately as people who would be willing to put ourselves out a bit for them. One of them even said, 'I feel safer traveling with you on the plane.') God is amazing, isn't He? Anyway, it makes a difference to "make visible a void" -- God is Spirit, but we are both body and spirit, and we do represent Him to those who might not otherwise see Him around them.

There is a passage in Michael O'Brien's "Father Elijah" in which the priest is summoned to Rome but advised -- the times are perilous -- that he might wish to travel in mufti for his own safety. He replies, "But what if someone I encounter needs to confess and I am the only priest he will see?" You don't deny who you are, in other words, no matter what the world thinks or what it will do to you.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I'm bivocational too<<<

Sounds kinky. Almost as kinky as "bi-ritual".

[Gene Godbold]

You're weird, Stuart :-)

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>There is a passage in Michael O'Brien's "Father Elijah" in which the priest is summoned to Rome but advised -- the times are perilous -- that he might wish to travel in mufti for his own safety. He replies, "But what if someone I encounter needs to confess and I am the only priest he will see?" You don't deny who you are, in other words, no matter what the world thinks or what it will do to you.<<<

Now a story from my own particular Church, whose roots lie in Eastern Europe, in the Carpathian Mountains, where Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine come together.

On 24 April (my birthday!) in 1646, a number of Orthodox priests got together in the castle of Uzherod to enter into communion with the Church of Rome. They did so to gain protection from aggressive Rackoczy Protestant nobles who were oppressing them in lands that belonged to the Roman Catholic King of Hungary (there's an obscure period of history for you).

From that Union of Uzherod grew the Carpatho-Rusyn Greek Catholic Church, with three eparchies (dioceses) and several million adherents, mainly peasants living in small villages strewn across the mountains. They were mostly ignored, being so far out in the sticks, and like it that way.

In 1944, the Soviet Army rolled through and "liberated" them. The territory in question was taken from Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and annexed to Ukraine, putting the Rusyn Catholics inside the Soviet empire.

In 1946, a kanagroo synod was convened by the NKVD to "abolish" the Greek Catholic Church, and transfer all of its property and members to the Russian Orthodox Church (at the time, a wholly owned subsidiary of the NKVD).

Despite being displaced, the bishops of the Greek Catholic Church continued to maintain their posts and perform their sacramental and pastoral duties, assisted by most of the priests and monastics of the Church. All efforts to quietly abolish the Church failed, and the NKVD began more overt measures, imprisoning, torturing and executing most of the clergy and the most intransigent or influential of the laity.

Finally, only one bishop remained at large, Bishop Theodore Romzha, who drove from village to village to help the people keep up their faith. His prestige was so great that the Soviets were afraid to move against him. So they took his car. He switched to a donkey cart. Finally, it became too much for them to bear.

According to Soviet archives, the Kommisar for the Ukraine, one Nikita Sergeivitch Khrushchev, ordered that Bishop Theodore be eliminated. There was a car accident, but His Grace just did not die. He lingered in hospital for several days, and then fell asleep in the Lord. It was believed at the time that the accident was indeed accidental, and that Bishop Theodore died of his injuries. With the opening of the Soviet archives, we now know that the accident was an assassination attempt, and that Bishop Theodore was poisoned in hospital on the orders of Khrushchev (who no doubt knew whose head would be on a platter of the turbulent priest did not die). Bishop Theodore was beatified as a martyr three years ago, and his feast entered into the Ruthenian Typicon.

From this, we can see the influence, indeed, the power that a holy priest can have, even in the face of the most tyrannical of oppresors. Bishop Theodore and his fellow martyrs and confessors worked openly until killed or imprisoned, and never broke faith.

But the more interesting story comes later. For the Church refused to die. It just went underground. Priests took off their cassocks and crosses, dressed in civvies, and continued to teach, preach, administer the sacraments and celebrate the Eucharist. They did it in houses in the dead of night, in barns, in root cellars and sometimes in open fields, always risking detection which in turn would mean prison at best, torture and death at worst. They baptized infants, administered the Rite of Annointing to the dying, and strengthened the people to remember their faith and resist the evil communist regime. They were never betrayed by the people, though there were many incentives to do so.

Finally, in 1989, truth overpowered deceit. Gorbachev was forced by world opinion to grant freedom of religion in the USSR, and the Church came out from underground (a similar phenomenon also occured with the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church). Reclaiming their churches, the people simply picked up where they had left off, worshiping the God of their fathers in accordance with the Tradition they refused to abandon. I have a recording of a Divine Liturgy made in a parish Church in the Podkarpatsko region in 1989. An ordinary Liturgy in an ordinary Church. It was quite moving to realize that the people of the congregation singing the Liturgy in the Prostopinje chant had not done so openly for nearly forty years. During that time, they had no books, no schools in which they could teach these things to their children. They were passed on orally, learned at Grandma's knee, or in these furtive, underground celebrations of the Eucharist conducted by courageous priests, for an equally courageous people.

The image of the priest in his clerical garb can be a powerful reminder of his vocation and of his role in the Church. But the priest is not the vestments, he is the man beneath the vestments. The right man is marked as a priest, whether he is vested or not.

[Judy Warner]

I think this is the most wonderful collection of comments I have yet read on this blog. For some reason, it is making me cry.

[Startled Saint]

I heard an Anglican priest say that he now felt uncomfortable wearing his priest's collar in public because of the obvious distrust people showed him, due to the pedophilia scandal in the Catholic church. That may be one reason: priests don't want to be considered pedophiles.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>That may be one reason: priests don't want to be considered pedophiles. <<<

No, the phenomenon began long before that (nonetheless, priests should stay out of little boys' knickers!). It began perhaps around the middle sixties with the "worker priests" who disdained clerical garb and wanted to look like grubby proles. Then it spread to the pseudo-intellectual priests, who affected the academic uniform of rolled turtleneck pullover, chinos and tweed jacket (met lots of those at Georgetown in the 70s); a lot of nuns went that route, and dropped their habits for the startlingly unattractive mid-calf kilt, turtleneck blouse, and cardigan sweather, set off with a pageboy cut and wire-rim glasses (Velma from Scooby-doo could easily pass for a contemporary nun, except that her sex life isn't as exciting).

All this was supposed to make them look "authentic" and "relevant". In reality, it made them look silly, and now it makes them look dated and almost as out of place as if they were actually wearing their clerical collars. In almost any gathering of "progressive" Christians, you can pick them out by sight without much effort. Dropping the "uniform", they inadvertantly adopted a new, de facto uniform that marks them as unfortunate survivors of the sixties.

[James A. Altena]

Dear Stuart,

Re: the martyrdom of the Eastern churches under communism --

I assume that you are familiar with the recent books on Fr. Arseny, and his long years of witness and martyrdom without clericals in the Soviet gulag. Your post brings them to mind.

To all here who are not familiar with these books, I highly recommend them. They are astonishingly moving, particularly Fr. Arseny's miraculous deliverance from death in a stunning parallel to Daniel and the lion's den, and the three friends of Daniel in the fiery furnace (the lion and/or furnace in this case being the brutal Siberian sub-zero winter night).

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I assume that you are familiar with the recent books on Fr. Arseny, and his long years of witness and martyrdom without clericals in the Soviet gulag. Your post brings them to mind.<<<

Indeed, I am. I also recommend the works of Fr. Alexander Men, a Jew who converted to Orthodoxy and became a highly charismatic priest; he was murdered by unknown assailants with an axe, shortly before the end of the Soviet Union.

The long martyrdom of the Russian Church is one of the most stirring, inspirational and heartbreaking stories of our time. Literally hundreds of bishops, thousands of priests, tens of thosands of nuns and monks, and hundreds of thousands if not millions of ordinary believers were consigned to the GULAG, whence many of them never emerged. Through it all, a hard kernel of men and women kept the true faith, so that the Church emerged at the far end of a dark tunnel into the light again.

Against this must be put the plain fact that there were also many within the Orthodox Church who conspired or collaborated with the Communist Party (including the current Patriarch Alexei II, who held a commission as a colonel in the KGB). To become a priest, let alone a bishop, one had to have the approval of the Organs of State Security, and for many the temptation to get along to go along was too great.

The same thing happened in other countries. In Romania, for instance, Patriarch Teoctist confessed that he had been a collaborator, resigned his position and retired to a monastery--only to be brought back from his self-imposed exile by popular approbation.

Unfortunately, the Russian Church has never honestly faced up to the sins of its past, but continues in a denial that severely damages its credibility and hinders its ability to reevangelize Russia after seventy years of state atheism.

Worse still, at least from the perspective of my own Church, is the failure of the Russian Orthodox Church to admit its own complicity in the suppression of the Eastern Catholic Churches in Ukraine and elsewhere. Even if Russian Church officials did not actively participate in the suppression, they were only too willing to benefit from it (through an increase in influence and the accession of confiscated property). This situation continues to complicate Catholic-Orthodox relations to this day. It has also inadvertantly boosted the prestige and influence of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church within Ukraine, because alone of all the Churches, it is perceived as never having bowed to Communist (and Russian) oppression. Throughout Ukraine, a majority of Ukrainians including Orthodox, acknowledge the moral leadership of Patriarch Lyubmir of Kyiv, de facto head of the Kyivan Church.

[Tony Esolen]

Stuart's comments about the dress of nuns brings to mind -- I must be on a rare Hollywood kick this week -- that for about 20 years, American films evinced a subtle fascination with the sisterhood, or, to extend the boundaries a little, with woman missionaries. We have that other Bing movie, The Bells of Saint Mary's, wherein Ingrid Bergman plays a stern but kindly and radiantly beautiful principal at a grade school in the midwest. Bing can't stay on the same stage with her. Then some years later, in The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, she played a woman missionary who travels alone to rural China; her quiet determination, courage, and kindness succeed in converting the local mandarin and ruler, played by Robert Donat. Hollywood hardly ever staged a better sequence than when Ingrid Bergman leads a large troop of bedraggled children, fleeing the Communists, across the mountains to safety.

Then you have The Song of Bernadette, and my own favorite of all the nun-movies, Lilies of the Field -- with Sidney Poitier ("Schmidt!", as the German mother superior calls him) teaching a table full of nuns some down home Baptist revival singing -- "A-a-a-men! A-a-a-men! A-a-men, amen, amen!" Even The Sound of Music (a great movie, despite what I'm going to say) doesn't botch the idea of the sisterhood entirely -- despite the fact that Rogers and Hammerstein flunked their Intro to Christian Theology: "Somewhere in my youth or childhood," sings Maria in the song that vies with "Climb Every Mountain" and that thing about confidence for worst song in the movie, "I must have done something good!"

Then all at once nuns were, though certainly pure and good, also silly, or hip, or both: we had The Flying Nun, at around the same time that every Catholic family I knew was watching and cheering the twaddle of The Singing Nun. Which nun, Soeur Sourir, ended by losing her habit, then her faith, and her reason, leaving the church to shack up with another woman. Then came the silly Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows, pitting the old fashioned nuns against chick hipsters; and then Elvis fell in love with Mary Tyler Moore and didn't know she was a nun, because she wasn't wearing her habit. Downhill from there, with the exception of the recent movie on Therese of Lisieux.

So here is a question: What is the strange power of the witness of virginity? Not celibacy; not abstinence; but virginity ...

[DGP]

One may begin a sexual life, grow dissatisfied with it, and so resort to a kind of celibacy. Many women do this, and so simple abstinence holds less fascination. Committed virginity, on the other hand, suggests that Something Better Than Sex is going on. For those seeking to live the good life (in the philosophical sense), virginity is a potential window into that life. For those who have already committed themselves to the principle, "I copulate, therefore I am," virginity is an intolerable offense to humanity, explained away only by insanity or inanity.

[Dcn. Michael D. Harmon]

A few emendations to previous comments: It certainly is true that wearing clericals can get you funny looks and the occasional "How many children have you molested today" sort of insult, but why should you care?

And it is also true that in societies where being identified as a cleric is an automatic prison (or death) sentence, concealing that status may be the only way that clerics can continue to serve their people. There are many martyrs and saints known only to God who fell afoul of such hatred and oppression.

But in our culture, in this time, clerics need to be out in uniform, to let people know that the ancient verities have not been abandoned and that Godly counsel and the sacraments are still theirs if they want them (they certainly need them, whether they know it or not).

Indeed, I feel sorry for those members of communions that do not maintain a tradition of clerical garb. How do they announce their presence to the world? If you needed a pastor, could you pick him out down the block or across a busy street or in a crowded airport? How many such pastors get asked for prayer in train stations or airports, or by seatmates on airplanes (as has happened to me)? A clerical collar may be a little white piece of celluoid, but it speaks volumes to a world where the Gospel needs proclaiming.

[Maclin Horton]

Walker Percy's Lancelot says something about the then-contemporary (early '70s) rejection of the habit by nuns (quoting or maybe paraphrasing from memory): "Don't they realize they look better in nun clothes than in J.C. Penney's pants suits?"

Alec Guinness tells that story in a memoir called Blessings In Disguise which is very enjoyable.

[David Palmer]

Dear Tony,

I have come late to this post and haven’t read all the comments.

I grew up in a home where driving thro the city in our family car, the observation of a man in clerical dress would draw from my father’s lips a stream of invective. In mid life when ordained in the Presbyterian Church, tie and jacket, or even in the warmer weather open neck shirt, was de rigueur and with childhood memories seared into my conscientiousness I fell into line with this style of dress. What made me question our practice was an African colleague who joined me several years ago and my denomination’s recent exposure to fellow Presbyterians from places like Malawi, Zambia, Sudan who most definitely dress up and so now I’ve got to wearing a prominent cross in my lapel (!) but if I do go to Africa I shall have to acquire a clerical collar at the very least, and you would say, "continue with it David!"

Thank you for another provocative and thoughtful post. Thank you too for your “Ten arguments for Sanity” which I have collated and today posted on the email net work for my colleagues.