Saving our Souls

I am worried that there aren't enough priests.

That is a sentiment I never thought I would utter. But here I am.

Here, people have stopped choosing to join the priesthood. Churches aren't closing yet, but it seems clear that they will soon.

Time was, I would have been quite happy about that. I don't go to church. I grew up in a school system that attempted to force Catholicism upon me, in a society that felt betrayed by what the Catholic Church allowed some priests to do to our children.

I remember being sat in front of my year class for the Penitentiary service. I didn't want to attend, and when I said so, several other people joined me. So they sat us facing everyone to mark us out.

How small do you have to be to do that to a schoolchild? How threatened?

But here I am.

I stole some money once, when I was a teenager. Afterwards, I wanted to put it right again, and I didn't know how.

We had a school chaplain, a woman I didn't like a great deal. But she had a tiny office, a cushioned space, the only space in my life to go and ask what the right thing to do might be.

She listened. And she didn't think I was terrible. And we found an answer that seemed right.

Priests, or chaplains, are people who don't judge. They don't dismiss someone because they are too busy, or. They don't balk at the challenge of forgiveness, or love for their feelow person. They don't forget that people are the most important part of life.

Or rather, they do all of these things. But they are people who are reminded, every day, to try not to. And they are people whose purpose is to remind us.

I am worried. Because who are those people now? Where now do we put aside a little space to ask about right and wrong, to struggle with forgiveness, to remind us that we are small and imperfect and that we can try to be better.

We don't train anyone to remind us any more. We don't seem to remember that we need to be reminded. Over and over again.