Tuesday of the Second Week of Lent

 Lectionary: 231

If you are willing, and obey, you shall eat the good things of the land; but if you refuse and resist, the sword shall consume you for the mouth of the LORD has spoken!


In the Louisville VA, as soon as I appeared fourteen years ago, wearing my Roman collar, I was greeted as "Father Ken." I'd gotten used to the appellation forty years before, and was glad to be recognized in this new assignment. 

Eventually I would learn that my proper title was, "chaplain;" and I should be addressed as "Chaplain Bartsch." 

I was not enchanted by the title; and I made no effort to correct people who called be by the traditional honorific. 

In the past year, there have been some uncomfortable discussions about it with the new supervisor; and, when introducing myself, I have conceded a bit. I am now, "Chaplain Father Ken." It trips off the tongue easily enough; and some find it amusing. 

So far as I can tell, the challenge concerned not my standing in the hospital or the church, but the rules. There's a right way, a wrong way, and the VA way.

I couldn't be bothered, nor could most of the hospital staff and none of the patients. And I'm retiring next week anyway.

But I do not forget that, although the name "Father Ken" is traditional, familiar, and comfortable to nearly everyone, I must be worthy of it. 

The controversy of father did not arise out of someone's idle reading of Matt 23:9. Rather, it was a direct challenge of the authority of priests within the Christian communion. The Protestant Reformation addressed the problem of unworthy priests and corrupt leadership in the Church; but it did not resolve it.  Can priests be trusted? Are they too familiar? What boundaries should be set around their presence? How should we address boundary violations? 

Perhaps, as the Church addresses the scandal that swept the world in the 1990's and first decade of the twenty-first century -- and has not abated -- we should have a ceremony when we welcome a new pastor and his associate. The name of father will be bestowed by a lay person who speaks for the parish and publicly reminds the new priest and the entire congregation of its significance. 

He might say, "We trust you as our father, with our deepest, most private secrets, with the confession of our sins. We trust you to honor our most vulnerable members, the children, the elderly, the gullible, and the intellectually handicapped. We welcome you to lead us and earnestly pray that you are worthy of your name of father." 

And the priest will respond with equal reverence, perhaps bowing as the newly elected Pope Francis bowed before the world. "May God's spirit, alive in me, make me worthy of your trust."