I know hundreds of priests and bishops and am friends with many of them. It is a perk of my job that I have conversations with priests when they let their guard down and know that I can be someone they can be real with. The vast majority of our priests are amazing men who want to serve God and the Church. 

"What do you want your staff (lay Catholic professionals in parishes / dioceses / schools / etc.) to know, but either you have never told them or you don't think you "could" say it?"

Try to better understand the humanity and limitations of priests:

• I’m a lousy communicator; can’t stand conflict; don’t mind “complaints” if you’ve got a plausible solution.

• Every priest has different gifts, but the reason he became a priest is because God wanted him to be a mediator between God and men, to bring His people the sacraments and to love Christ with the priest’s whole heart, mind and strength. Some priests will be gifted in admin and others in preaching and others in teaching,  but most of all he is a priest not for what he can do, but for who he is and what God has called him to do. Sometimes the laity seem to conflate the life of a priest to be purely pragmatic. His worth is valued in his utility. Yes, a priest can grow in gifts/talents like preaching or admin, but first and foremost he must be a holy priest. Do the laity agree? A priest is one who loves God and brings the people to God and God to the people even in his deficiency of gifts or weaknesses. It would help the discernment of future priests as well as current priests to have the laity remember a priest’s value is not measured by his gifts/talents but by his holiness. How do the priests and laity alike measure a good/holy priest? Only the ones that are good at admin and/or preaching are measured as “good”? 

• Priests with accents and from different cultures are providing our people the sacraments in the US, because we have not encouraged our own sons to take on such a life. And yet there is grumbling. 

• Help the priest to live a balanced life. Many priests will combat the lies that they find their worth in their utility or in not disappointing the laity.  Yes a priest should pour out his life for the flock, but is he living a healthy priesthood, filled with prayer, exercise, sleep, recreation, and community among the many other tasks asked of him?

• I encourage lay staff to be patient with us pastors when we fail or appear to not know what we are doing. Many priests did not study to be CEOs, CFOs, COOs, etc.. Some priests were in leadership roles prior to seminary formation where leadership comes naturally and others were not as gifted. 

• We, pastors, are not perfect nor do we have all the answers. We don’t make all the right decisions and sometimes aren’t necessarily very holy, but we try to love and try to do God’s will.

Communication issues in the office / community:

• Even after I've been here a few years, I didn't grow up here. Please don't take for granted that I know the family connections, the road names, or the town history. Please stop using maiden names or descriptions of what "used to be there." Please try to include backstory or relevant connections when you bring up some situation in the parish that needs to be dealt with. You may have to tell me 2 dozen times that so-and-so's maiden name is such-and-such, which means they're related to a family with a different name. Tell me every time it is relevant.

• Your priest doesn't need “yes” employees, he needs partners who are willing to say the hard things and think outside the box.

• Please advocate for yourself! Priests cannot read minds and we can often forget you’re not called to the same life we are and have families. Without a work/life balance and time for prayer you can’t be the best for work. Help us help you!

• Ask for what you need. It’s OK to ask the pastor, “Can I talk to you as a boss now” or “can I talk to you as a priest now?” We wear two hats and sometimes we forget which one we are wearing. Switching can be mentally hard. Tell us who you need in the moment and we will be happy to help you and be that vision of Christ to you.

• A priest must sometimes make 100 decisions in a day. He also receives many texts, emails and phone calls in a day. He is one man, it might take him a week to get back to you. He wants to, but needs a little bit of time. A gentle reminder email after a week of no response, instead of a disgruntled email, might help him finish the pile of emails, texts, phone calls a little more quickly.

• There might be times where the pastor may not respond adequately to a decision because he has many things weighing on his heart, ie, just hearing that a parishioner’s family member passed that morning, someone is in the hospital due to a long term illness, a couple is struggling in their marriage, a young person is contemplating suicide, a staff member is going through a lot, the budget isn’t balancing well, parishioner's aren’t stepping up to serve, there is conflict amongst leaders in ministry, the pastor has to make an expense that was not in the budget due to a deferred maintenance challenge, a lot of miscommunication or mission drifting in a ministry, you get a call from the diocese that someone complained about what you are doing, etc.. Jesus is ultimately our Savior and priests are striving to be Christ to his people even with our weaknesses. 

On boundaries:

• Stop overworking. It is really hard for me to tell you *not* to do the awesome things you're doing when you overwork. It's too easy for me to let you burn yourself out. I won't be mad if you move back to a more human pace of life, but I may never find the time or willpower to *force* you to stop "volunteering" all those extra hours. We're all under a lot of pressure to make due with limited resources and an overworking employee can temporarily make it seem easier, so it's hard to stop them. Put another way, I can respect your boundaries, but it's really hard for me to create and enforce those boundaries for you. Your worth is not based in how much work you can do for as little money as possible.

• The rectory is my home. It is not an extra office or meeting space. It is not yours to enter at will. Especially when the office and rectory are in the same building, please make it clear to yourself and others that there is a boundary. I don't care if you think the food in my fridge has been there too long, do not take it upon yourself to throw it away.

• Do not baby me. You are not my mother. I don't want to be coddled or "taken care of" and I don't want to be pressured into accepting your "help" to avoid offending you. If I say I don't want the leftovers, do not keep insisting. It's hard enough to control my diet without being guilt tripped into eating every greasy, sugary thing you feel like making. If you want to offer something, ask. Then, accept my answer.

• Respect the priest's boundaries. He has his own personal boundaries like everyone else.

On prayer and the spiritual life of those in ministry:

• If you don't love Jesus Christ, passionately care about his church and proclaiming the Gospel then you have no business working in the church. Please resign. I have faced more problems from employees who were there to collect paychecks rather than work for the Kingdom.

• Without prayer you're essentially worthless for the mission.

• Efficiency (getting the task done) and Truth (saying the right thing) are also worthless if the fruits of the Holy Spirit are missing from how you act (especially kindness, gentleness, joy, and love).

• Pray for your priests and thank your pastors. It is always uplifting and affirming to hear from your flock how God is working for them through their priests. A simple “thank you” truly goes a long way. I know I give thanks to  God at the end of the day on Sunday examining the many ways fellow disciples (parishioners) simply say “thank you for bringing me Jesus today”. 

• The holiness of the laity, helps the holiness of the priest. Pray for your priest, everyday and thanks so much when you do! 

• That going to daily Mass is the most productive thing that they can do and the thing that I would want them to do above all other things.

On expectations and mission:

• If you ever say “it's always been this way” or “they just need to change, this is just how it works,” you're wrong and need to evaluate how docile you are to the Holy Spirit and how prideful you are.

• We are no longer “a church of convenience”, in regards to the extreme availability of the sacraments and location. The laity might have to drive 20-25 minutes to go to Mass. Or their parish might have to cancel daily Mass a few times a year for a priest to take time off, if so, there is another parish 20 minutes away. We are no longer in the days of a church on every block and 4 priests within a parish. We have to shift our expectations and demands.

• Sometimes ministry means going into uncomfortable places and others it means making difficult decisions. We bounce from one thing to another celebrating with others with joy in one moment and weeping with those in anguish in the next. It’s a very full life. Sometimes it’s too much and that’s why we need you! We need you to be close to the heart of Jesus and seeking holiness. We need you to want to live the mission of the church. We need you to at times help inspire us. We need you to come up with ideas, plan for them and execute them. We need you to help find solutions to the problems that the parish faces. We need you to be willing to counsel and pray with anyone who comes into the Church. We need you to see yourself on a mission and be responsible for the mission. It doesn’t matter that your job description is maintenance. The Church and I need you to be first a missionary.

• The thing that hurts a pastor more than anything else is when his employees do things that are boneheaded, when they are lazy and take advantage of the church or when they choose to create drama in the Church office. 

On the frustrations priests don’t always voice:

• It seems that priests/parishes are always asking for volunteers for liturgical ministries or teachers/subs for teaching young people or assisting the homebound. Why does the priest sometimes have to beg or twist an arm for the laity to give of their time and talents? Why are mature disciples not stepping up quickly into these needed roles? 

• There is something to Harrison Butker’s “stay in your lane” quote from his Benedictine graduation speech. We think we know what it is like to be the pope or a bishop or a pastor, but we really don’t. 

• Putting priests or bishops or the pope against each other doesn’t help anything. It doesn’t help putting a label on them either (trad or liberal) It just creates more work and headaches for us. 

• For diocesan staff, I encourage them to work together more and not work in “silos”. In other words, it would be helpful if they coordinate by having a Pastoral Center Calendar to make sure that diocesan events do not happen at the same time. Less is truly more and I encourage diocesan staff to always be thinking of mission alignment, ie, does this event, program, initiative, actually make disciples? What are the fruits? Do we see more people growing in their relationship with God and with each other?