Prof. Dr. Paul Parathazham
Director, St. John’s National Academy of Health Sciences

Prof. Dr. Paul Parathazham

It is indeed a privilege and honour to be the Chief Guest at the Convocation of a premier Institution like the Dharmaram VidyaKshetram. At the outset, I wish to place on record my heartfelt gratitude to the President and authorities of DVK for conferring this honour on me. Participating in the convocation ceremony of a national Institute of priestly training like DVK makes me feel nostalgic. It evokes the fond memories of the many years spent in similar setting at the Jnana Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pontifical Athenaeum, Pune. I spent four decades of my life on that Campus, first as a student, then as a faculty member. I am very grateful for this opportunity to reminisce and relish the memories of the many years I spent in Pune accompanying the students of philosophy and theology as they pursued their vocation to priesthood and religious life.

Graduation Day is a significant milestone in the life-journey of an individual. This day is a dream come true not only for the graduates, but also their parents, teachers, well-wishers, and indeed, for all those who walked with them and enabled them in one way or other to reach this momentous moment. Dear graduates, as you cross this important milestone in your life-journey, it gives me immense pleasure to extend to you, and to all those who celebrate this day with you, my heartiest congratulations and prayerful good wishes.

I have been a student of sociology most of my adult life; and empirical research has been my second calling. Over the last four decades or so, I have, with the assistance of my colleagues and students conducted a number of sociological surveys on topics related to Church and society in India at the national level and regional levels, including scientific evaluation studies of several dioceses, religious congregations and major seminaries across the country. Priesthood and priestly formation were a recurring theme of many of these studies. Since most of you are priests or going to be priests, I thought that some of the major findings of these surveys on issues related to priestly life and ministry in India would be of interest to you. Because of time constraints, I will be able to present to you only a few of the major findings and their implications, and that too without the methodological and statistical details.

First, what kind of a person a priest ought to be? What are qualities expected in a priest? This question was posed to the laity, religious sisters, seminarians and priests themselves in several surveys. About twenty different spiritual, human, and interpersonal qualities and aptitudes were listed in the survey questionnaire, and the respondents were asked to indicate how important each of these qualities is for a priest in India today.

There were large variations in the respondent’s views on the relative importance of the qualities and aptitudes expected in priests. Not surprisingly, personal holiness was rated the most important quality for a priest. But there appears to be significant difference in the perceptions of the laity and the clergy on what constitutes personal holiness. The laity and the religious sisters tend to define priestly holiness primarily in terms of faithfulness to celibacy. The priests and seminarians, on the other hand, underscored that honesty and integrity are central to priestly holiness. The top rating the laity and the religious sisters accorded to celibacy as the most important quality for a priest is rather intriguing when one considers the fact that neither historically nor theologically celibacy is deemed essential for priesthood.

A second trend that emerged from the responses to the questions about the qualities expected in priests is that the items that represented the vertical dimension of spirituality like intimacy with God, faithfulness to prayer, and doing the will of God were accorded greater importance than those that highlighted the horizontal dimension of spirituality such as justice and fairness in dealings, willingness to forgive the failures of others, dedication to selfless service, and concern for the weaker sections of society. The emphasis on the vertical dimension or God-oriented spirituality and relative neglect of the horizontal dimension seem to suggest that the traditional otherworldly spirituality still dominates the consciousness not only of the laity, but also of the priests and the women religious. Amore integrated view of priestly spirituality with better balance of the vertical and horizontal dimensions would certainly help make priestly ministry more people-oriented and pastorally sensitive.

Priestly ministry involves performing multiple roles, all of which may not be of equal importance. To ascertain the relative importance of these priestly roles in people’s minds, the survey questionnaire listed the different priestly functions or roles, and asked the respondents to rate the importance of each of these functions for priestly ministry.

Functions listed the questionnaire include: faith formation, community building, celebration of Eucharist and sacraments, preparing people to participate actively in liturgy, preaching the word of God, empowerment of the powerless, conscientizing and giving leadership to fight against social evils, guidance of youth, promoting the spiritual welfare of the faithful, family visits, parish administration, ensuring transparency in financial management, and animating parish organizations.

“If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail
If you can’t be the sun, be a star
It isn’t by size that you win or fail.
Be the best of whatever you are.”

Unlike in the case of priestly qualities, with respect to the relative importance of the different functions of a priest there was virtual consensus among the different groups.

All agree that by far the most important function of a priest is: celebrating liturgy and sacraments with devotion and unction, and the second was also related to worship,namely, encouraging and enabling the community to participate in Eucharist and Sacraments. The next in order of importance is the teaching function like preaching the Word of God and faith-formation, followed by administration and organization functions. The lowest in importance were empowering the powerless, and standing up and speaking up against social evils and structures of injustice.

In sum, by far the greatest importance is attached to the cultic role of the priest; 80% marked this as of utmost importance. The teaching function, like preaching the word of God and faith formation, too, is emphasized, but far less than the cultic role. The next in order of importance is the administrative and managerial functions of the priest like looking after properties and finances, and animation of church organizations like parish councils and pious organizations. Empowering the powerless and standing up and speaking up against social evils and structures of injustice was rated the lowest in importance. Only 15% felt that this is integral to the ministry of the priest.

These findings point to the skewed priorities in priestly ministry today. The sacramental and liturgical roles, or cultic priesthood, received the highest priority, whereas the challenging and empowering roles, or prophetic priesthood, received the lowest priority.

It is important to note that the image of a priest engrained in the minds of the people seems quite different from the concept of priesthood elaborated in theological books and class rooms. In people’s minds, a priest a Celibate who celebrates!

Priestly ministry is generally understood as the continuation of the ministry of Jesus Christ. Jesus’ ministry had two constitutive dimensions: a therapeutic dimension and a prophetic dimension. The therapeutic function involved comforting the afflicted by healing the sick, feeding the hungry, exorcising the possessed, etc. The other prophetic aspect consisted of condemning the hypocrites, confronting the exploiters, and indicting the oppressors, be they leaders of society or religion. In fact, if Jesus confined his ministry only to the therapeutic function and went about merely feeding the hungry and healing the sick, he would probably have lived a long and happy life. His life was brutally cut short on the Cross on Calvary because he confronted and condemned the systems and structures that institutionalized man’s inhumanity to man!

In so far as priestly ministry is a continuation of the Jesus’ ministry, it entails doing justice to both these dimensions: the therapeutic and the prophetic, the comforting and confronting functions. The famous Dooley saying about the journalists is equally applicable to priests. The job of the priest is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Priests are called to be custodians of the conscience of society who stand up and speak up against social evils and structures of dehumanization. A priest’s calling is to continue the mission of Jesus. However, if we look at priestly ministry today, it is evident that it is severely one-sided. Today it is largely confined to ritualistic liturgical celebrations, chanting halleluiahs in the comfortable confines of churches and Cathedrals, and serving in the secure institutionalized ministries like education, healthcare and social work. Jesus’ movement was essentially a protest movement. But one hardly hears an echo of Jesus’ protest in our churches today. Instead cult has become a substitute for socially relevant praxis; solemn celebrations have replaced scathing criticisms; halleluiahs reverberate where the muted cries of the oppressed should find resounding voice! Silence is acquiescence! Why do we confine ourselves to comforting and desist from confronting? The answer is obvious: It is comfortable to comfort, it is risky and dangerous to confront. The plight of Fr. Stan Lourduswamy S.J. is a case in point. He is now languishing in jail because he dared to raise his voice against the exploitation of the tribals!

Yahweh’s stinging indictment of the Israelites through the Prophet Isiah is a warning for all of us:
Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates;
They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them;
When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you

Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood Make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes
Cease to do evil, learn to do good
Seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow (Is. 1: 14-17).

Dear graduates, I am sure that all of you have opted to become priests and religious because, when your days done, you wish to leave this world a better place than you found it. In this context, a recurrent finding of the several surveys of priests and religious is illumining as it is instructive. All the surveys conducted among priests and religious had, among other things, two interrelated sections. In one section the priests and religious are asked to evaluate their fellow-priests/religious in their Diocese/Province on a number qualities and aptitudes like prayerfulness, honesty and integrity, justice and fairness, service mindedness, concern for the poor, willingness to forgive, etc. And across all surveys, the answers to these questions are clear and consistent: extremely negative. Very few of the priests and religious think that the majority of their fellow priests and religious are prayerful, honest, just, forgiving and concerned about the poor, etc. In other words, the evaluation of the priests and religious of their fellow priests and religious tend to be extremely negative, bordering on the cynical.

This is in sharp contrast to the answers to a set of questions in another section where the priests and religious are asked to evaluate themselves on the same parameters they were asked to evaluate their fellow priests and religious. In their self-assessment, almost all gave themselves very high marks on almost everything. In other words, there is glaring disparity between their self-evaluation and their evaluation of fellow priests and religious. At the personal level, everything is portrayed as fine, even rosy. “I am prayerful, effective, simple, optimistic, service-minded, detached, fulfilled, etc. I am perfect; nothing more to be desired on the personal front. But the other priests and religious in the diocese and province, they are horrible. Only very few of them are honest, just, service-minded, prayerful, obedient, etc. In short, I am OK; but you are not OK, and therefore we are not OK. Glowing self-reports and dismal reports of others. Overly positive self-image at the individual level and poor collective self-image at the Province and Diocese level. Is this glaring disconnect between self-perception and perception of others a result of exaggerated negativism towards others, or a symptom of the absence of honest self-criticism? Probably both! Be that-as it-may, this “I am OK, but You are not OK; therefore, We are not OK” syndrome might, in the final analysis, be the biggest challenge to change and growth. Mahatma Gandhi’s oft repeated aphorism: “Be the change you wish to see in the world” seems very salient especially to the priests and religious.

Dear graduates, as you are setting out on a mission to change the world, please don’t forget the Mahatma’s admonition that if you wish to change the world, the only logical place to begin that process is yourself.

Towards the end of his life, a reporter asked the great English playwright George Bernard Shaw this question. “Mr. Shaw, you have visited with some of the most famous people in the world. You have known royalty, world-renowned authors, artists, teachers of the world. If you could live your life all over again, and be any person you know from human history, who would you choose to be?” Bernard Shaw paused and replied, “I would choose to be the man George Bernard Shaw could have been, but never was.”

Elie Wiesel, the human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize-winning author, in his book “Souls on Fire” says: “When you die and go to meet your maker, you are not going to be asked why you didn’t become a messiah or find a cure for cancer. All you are going to be asked is, why you didn’t become you? Why didn’t you become all that you could be?

In this context, the words of Douglas Mallock are inspiring and instructive:
If you can’t be the pine on the top of the hill, Be a shrub in the valley
But be the best little shrub by the side of rill If you can’t be a tree, be a bush
If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail If you can’t be the sun, be a star
It isn’t by size that you win or fail.
Be the best of whatever you are.

Dear Graduates, you have possibilities that you dare not imagine, and with God’s help, you can realize them, if only you dare to dream. For as Eleanor Roosevelt put it: “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”There is only one life to live; there is only one life to love. Dare to dream! It isn’t by size that you win or fail! Be the best of whatever you are!

(Convocation Address in Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram, Bangalore on 24 February 2021)