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First National Priests Organization Turns 35
Undated Feature for Catholic Press, June 2003
If there’s such a thing as a “youthful” 71-year old, it’s certainly Father Pat O’Malley, a teacher and spiritual director at Mundelein Seminary north of Chicago. Sitting in a modest office over-looking this tranquil campus, he recalls heady days 35 years ago when priests, in anything but a tranquil mood, gathered not far from there to form their first national organization.
“ Right after the close of Vatican II, the Church seemed so expectant and young, so alive and hopeful,” recalls the first president of the National Federation of Priests’ Councils. “There were serious problems in abundance, but somehow we priests felt that, if we persevered, those obstacles could be surmounted,” O’Malley said.
(Regional meeting) Priest in regions throughout the country, such as this group in Spokane in 1972, began to meet frequently to discuss issues ranging from salary and assignments to social concerns such as civil rights and the Vietnam war. |
Frank Bonnike, who succeeded O’Malley, recalls the many issues facing priests back then. “We spoke up and said we have no say in where we are assigned. If the bishop felt he needed a canon lawyer he could pick us even if we weren’t the right person.” Bonnike also remembers that issues like continuing education and retirement that had never been addressed. The idea of priests speaking up for what was in their mind and their heart was just something inconsistent with their idea of the episcopacy, he says. And that was a real struggle in several dioceses.
O’Malley, a priest’s priest if ever there was one, recalls the euphoria of a meeting of priests’ senates, as they were called then, in September of 1967, the first of its kind ever. It was shortly after that historic meeting that the notion of a national federation began to seem possible. Following a lot of work by priests all over the country, 300 priests gathered together in February of 1968, at the Sheraton Hotel near Chicago’s O’Hare Field. “ Did we dare to form such an unheard of federation? After all, what would the bishops say? In those days, you did not make a move without consulting your bishop first, he recalls. And by ‘consulting,’ we meant asking his permission,” adds O’Malley.
The priests agreed unanimously to form the “National Federation of Priests’ Councils. In the following months, councils and associations of priests hammered out an acceptable working model for the fledgling federation. In May of 1968, when the men came together again, they held a constitutional convention and triumphantly announced the start of their organization.
“ I was just 36 years old and, as you might well imagine, totally unprepared to be the first president,” says O’Malley. And then the delegates from over 100 priests’ senates and associations left the building. “There I was, the first president of the NFPC. To be honest, I never felt so alone in my life as I did at that moment in time. I had no one to guide me. No one had ever been in that spot. To say I was uncomfortable is to put it mildly. At the time, I could count on only one full-time staff person, Mary Louise Schneidwind, whose wisdom and experience and know-how would prove essential to everything we did in those early days. Other than Mary Louise and a lot of good will, we were without a clue.”
In his first year in office, O’Malley was on the road constantly. “ I used to tell people that I had the great privilege of meeting some of the most dedicated and brightest—and least known—priests in the country.”
(First president) In its early days, NFPC was very visible in the national media. NFPC’s first president Father Pat O’Malley recalls “Frankly, I could never quite get used to all the attention.” |
The NFPC was national news in those days, especially after the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae was issued in mid-1968. The ensuing rift between the 44 Washington, DC priests and their Archbishop drew wide media attention. The NFPC was asked by those estranged priests to try to reconcile their situation. It was a long difficult healing process that went on for several years afterwards. In the end, The NFPC was instrumental in working with the Canon Law Society to come up with a workable compromise. Unfortunately, it came too late to assuage the anger and the bitterness caused by the struggle and many of those involved left the priesthood.
During that time, O’Malley was invited to be on the Today TV show twice. On one occasion, Hugh Downs, Barbara Walters and Joe Garagiola interviewed him in New York. “Joe wanted to know what he could tell his elderly mother, who went to Mass every day, about the NFPC, who we were and what we priests were up to.”
O’Malley also appeared on many radio interview programs and was featured in local newspaper interviews throughout the country. “Frankly, I could never quite get used to all the attention,” he says.” NFPC gradually faded from the limelight until it found itself in the glare of the media following the sex abuse scandal early in 2002.
Finding himself in the new spotlight was O’Malley’s 11th successor, Father Robert Silva, a parish priest from Stockton California.
“I remember the sheer panic of that situation,” recalls Silva. “What would be our place? What should we do? And early on I decided I had to say something to encourage the priests not to be discouraged and I had to do it in a way that the bishops knew we weren’t separating ourselves from them, but we were affirming the presbyterates….so I wrote a letter early on to priests of the country….to affirm and encourage…that letter proved to be very, very helpful. Silva also called together O’Malley and other former NFPC presidents and board members to help develop a response for the vast majority of priests not in any way connected to the scandals.
Looking at the NFPC’s 35 years of existence, Silva says NFPC exercised courage in taking up the creation of new structures like personnel boards, retirement boards, continuing education programs. At the same time, they continued their advocacy for optional celibacy, inclusion of women and local election of bishops. One can only imagine the resistance of local ordinaries upon hearing of some NFPC resolutions from its early days. Yet, much of the work of the NFPC provided the structures that have affirmed the ministry, not only of priests ,but of lay ministers as well.
Through the eighties and nineties, the NFPC maintained its energetic pursuit of priest’s well-being and the needs of the pastoral mission of the Church. But, something in the Church and in society had changed. NFPC, says Silva, had to change. The style
of confrontation so appropriate and effective in the protest years of the sixties and seventies shifted. Confrontation techniques as a way to get things done now led to paralysis. In order to continue to hold a place at the table, the NFPC moved from confrontation to cooperation, and NFPC began to help priests clarify their priorities, to work to empower people, and to become more theologically and ministerially competent.
 (SILVA) A parish priest from Stockton, California, Father Robert Silva took over as NFPC’s 12th president just as the organization came into the national spotlight again in the wake of the clergy sex abuse scandal. “I remember the sheer panic of that situation,” says Silva. |
Silva believes NFPC is one organization that’s positioned to help the priests make the kind of changes they need to make to address the needs of the future. Given the shortage of priests, given the nature of ministry as it’s evolving, given the entrance of lay people more into ministerial life, it’s the NFPC, he says, that’s going to have to help the priests maintain their identity, understand their mission and then help to enable them to accomplish it.
Always trying to stay slightly ahead, the NFPC has looked at the shortage of priests, laity in ministry, priest-lay relations, priestless parishes, Sunday service without a priest, and formation for ministry, all before these issues became “household words.” It has initiated studies that looked at the early years following ordination, trends among priests of the last forty years and the international priest issue. And it partners well with the Bishops’ Committee on Priestly Life and Ministry.
O’Malley, writing in the most recent issue of the NFPC’s publication, Touchstone, says
“ I like being with these idealistic, hopeful younger men,” he says of the current crop of seminarians. “We keep telling them that they are not being ordained to serve as “lone rangers,” but as part of a presbyterate in the service of God’s people. A corporate diocesan presbyterate united with its bishop in the furtherance of God’s Kingdom.”
But, he says, priests find themselves, partly as a result of the current scandal, moving deeper into the new century, looking for leadership and new energy.
“Could we come together as we did back in 1968 to reassert the moral leadership of the priesthood and put our collective spiritual power behind effective reform in this beloved but beleaguered Church ours?” he asks. “Could the NFPC be an effective instrument for such a gathering? It’s a question. Sounds like déjà vu, all over again.”
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