Today marks the first day of the Year for Priests which Pope Benedict has proclaimed "to deepen the commitment of all priests to interior renewal for the sake of a more forceful and incisive witness to the Gospel in today’s world" As a blogger who does a lot of complaining, it is often suggested that I do not have a lot of respect for priests. After all, I often complain about priests and accuse some of them of doing things they shouldn't. If I had respect for the priesthood, surely I would never criticise a priest? No matter how they behaved I would be silent and respectful.

I think it is a big mistake to think that hushed silence is a sign of respect. Quietly pretending that somebody did something right when they did it wrong is the sort of behaviour due to tyrannical kings, not priests. It is degrading to the priesthood itself that people feel the need to behave in this way, as if a priest is the Wizard of Oz and nothing more than a fraud hiding behind a facade. In other words, we do not disrespect priests when we say that a particular priest did something wrong, but we do disrespect priests when we say that the priesthood depends on every individual priest never making a mistake and on our covering their mistakes and pretending they don't exist.

To say otherwise is as ludicrous as saying that respect for the divine Kingship of Christ depends on pretending that Henry VIII was a nice guy because otherwise, you obviously don't respect kings. The priest is not of great importance because he never makes mistakes, the priest is of great importance because he is a priest! He is of great importance by virtue of his ordination, not by virtue of his virtue.

It seems to me that when we knowingly hide the negative aspects of a priests behaviour we essentially deny his priesthood because what we are doing is saying that his priesthood is merely a product of his actions. We are saying that we do not respect a priest because he is a priest but because he is a good man. Worse than that though, is that we base even this falsehood on a lie. We do not respect him because he is a good man, we pretend he is a good man so that we can respect him. What sort of respect is that? Think how that looks to the world at large: We value priests because they are good only they aren't always good so we pretend they are...

We value priests because they are priests!

The only possible way to do that, is to freely and openly acknowledge that some priests are very good, some priests are very bad and most priests are somewhere in between. In his letter proclaiming the Year for Priests, Pope Benedict writes...

There are also, sad to say, situations which can never be sufficiently deplored where the Church herself suffers as a consequence of infidelity on the part of some of her ministers. Then it is the world which finds grounds for scandal and rejection. What is most helpful to the Church in such cases is not only a frank and complete acknowledgment of the weaknesses of her ministers, but also a joyful and renewed realization of the greatness of God’s gift, embodied in the splendid example of generous pastors, religious afire with love for God and for souls, and insightful, patient spiritual guides.

[link]

Did you get that? Pope Benedict says that what is "most helpful to the Church" is "a frank and complete acknowledgment of the weaknesses of her ministers" and the "renewed realization of the greatness of God’s gift, embodied in the splendid example of generous pastors". In other words, when Fr Fun gets up to his usual tricks, what is "most helpful to the Church" is a frank and complete acknowledgement of what he is doing wrong and the renewed realization of how wonderful things are when Fr Faithful does them right.

So should Catholics criticise priests? It looks like the answer is that we should frankly and completely acknowledge their weaknesses with renewed realization of the greatness of God's gift embodied in the splendid example of generous pastors.

I think that might be Latin for "Yes".

On the way home from Durham we saw a veritable convoy of Yorkie vans:

Which reminded me...

T-shirts available on request.

Fr. Anthony Storey's requiem mass is already some weeks in the past but I know I am not the only one who was impressed with Fr. Peter Keeling's homily/obituary/appreciation of Fr. Storey.

It has come to my attention that it has been published on the Middlesbrough Diocese website (see here).

Just in case that link fails to stay put, I have reproduced the text of the thing below...

Given by Fr. Peter Keeling at Fr Storey's requiem Mass - 9 May 2007, St. Charles, Hull

It was only last Friday in our parish hall in Middlesbrough that a woman I thought I did not know said to me "Do you recognise me?" A dangerous question. Before I could think of a tactful answer, she rescued me by saying "We sat next to each other in the primary school of St. Joseph's Middlesbrough". Then we quickly reminisced about the teachers, Miss McElhatton, Miss Hardy and Sister Mary Baptist. She then added "and there was the curate Father Tony Storey who visited the school regularly and taught us religion. " Sixty years ago I sat at Tony's feet in the primary school.

Fast forward now sixty years to the monks' cemetery at Ampleforth, last year in June. On a beautiful day Tony and I are sitting on a bench. We are on retreat with our brother priests. The speaker during the retreat was the impressive Bishop Willie Walsh of the diocese of Killaloe in Ireland. He had given each of us an abridged version of the current Pope Benedict's letter 'Deus Caritas Est- God is Love.' Tony had asked me to read it to him, because the onset of his macula degeneration, his increasing blindness, meant that he couldn't read. After I finished reading to him, I looked up and there were tears in his eyes. But the reason why I was sitting next to him in 2006 was because I sat in front of him in St Joseph's Primary School sixty years previously in 1946. He is a major reason why I am a priest.

So back to 1946 and Tony arrived in the parish of St Joseph, Middlesbrough. He'd been ordained in 1943, was then sent to Cambridge University and arrived to his first parish appointment armed with a History degree to my family parish. At the same time there arrived an Irish priest Patrick McEnroe who had just graduated from Oxford University and was also taking up his first appointment. Later in life he was to be prominent in BBC religious broadcasting. The parish priest was a Scotsman called James McMullen. An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman. Have you heard the one about the Englishman, the Irishman and the Scotsman? The Scotsman said to the Englishman, Tony Storey, "So you have a degree from Cambridge? "To the Irishman, Paddy McEnroe" and you have a degree from Oxford? "Yes, Father, they formally replied. Then said the Scotsman "well you'll have no difficulty selling these raffle tickets..."

Though amusing in many ways it is an instructive story, a parable, because the institutional Church never really took Tony's intellectual prowess seriously. It was never given the recognition, the honour and respect it deserved. The institution was frightened of it.

So he is in his first parish. Mainly working class and council estate. Plenty of unemployment and poverty, just after the war. He set about visiting families in their homes and found a warm welcome. He recounts that they used to say "why are you knocking on the door, it's always open." You would be taken into the front parlour and when they warmed to you would be invited into the kitchen where the real life was and you'd be offered a jam sandwich. It was a world of dripping sandwiches and cocoa. And he loved it.

At that time my father was an out of work steel worker. He told me of a time Tony came round and said "Mr. Keeling you haven't put your name down for the Men's weekend Retreat I've organised with the Jesuits at Sunderland.
"No", said my father and then with some embarrassment added, "I'm not working at the moment so I can't afford it. " "Yes, I know" replied Tony "that's why I've paid for you." He became a legend not only in my family but far and wide for this sort of generosity, compassion and sensitivity. My mother told me that when Mrs.Savage, a neighbour living opposite, was ill he used to go round early in the morning and put her fire on, clean out the ashes, assemble the sticks and paper, fetch the coal, then light it and go back to celebrate the
early morning Mass.

But there were tough times as well. He tells of the time his colleague Paddy McEnroe was manhandled in one house by a giant of a man. So Tony said he would go round and talk to him and with his rugby background he was confident he could counter any such manhandling. He knocked on the door and the giant of a man opened it and said "Not another one" and promptly threw Tony into next door's garden. Tony's reflection was "it wasn't that the man didn't love the Lord. He just didn't love the institution."

In mentioning his rugby background I must mention that he was captain of Christ College when he was at Cambridge. He played for Middlesbrough and had a trial for Yorkshire. This explains why he often celebrated Sunday Mass sporting a black eye or having an arm in a sling or carrying a heavy limp. He was also a good cricketer, played for a local league team and formed a parish team. My brother Michael played for this team and it gave him an enthusiasm for the game for the rest of his life

He regularly visited our house and had meetings in our back kitchen with young workingmen, including one of my brothers Tom who had started work on the railway. When I was older I discovered that these had been Young Christian Worker meetings. It was part of a European movement to get young workers to reflect on their work experience in the light of Christ's teaching in the Gospel. After this analysis of their work experience they would decide on some action that they would take, if for instance an unjust work situation needed challenging. This movement was very strong in the heavily industrialised Middlesbrough. Most parishes had a YCW group set up by the priest, supported by the priest but led and run by a young worker. This was an important element, because one aim was to produce leaders for society and the movement did in fact produce many MPs and trade union leaders. Sometime in the sixties the movement went into decline and I once asked Tony the reason for this. He gave one of his typical answers. "Oh" he said "the clergy took up golf."

Middlesbrough was a town with steel mills and an enormous ICI chemical works. Working in a mainly council house parish was in contrast to his own upbringing, which was in a rural setting. He was born at Warter in the East Riding of Yorkshire in 1919. His father was estate manager of a huge estate consisting of 20 or more farms in East Yorkshire. There were 2 sisters one of whom is still alive and here, Patience and to her we extend our sympathy. He was the youngest of 6 boys and now there is only John left and he is in Australia. In his early days there were 1000 workers on the estate in the Wolds owned by Lady Nunburnholme, granddaughter of the Duke of Wellington

His childhood was a very happy one with memories of a loving mother and father. Then there were memories of the 8 teams of horses he would see ploughing, harrowing, rolling and sowing in the fields. And there were woodmen with their shire horses and Tom England the head gamekeeper with 8 gamekeepers under him. Memories of working the bellows in the blacksmith's shop. There was the riding of horses across the Wolds and the tobogganing and skating in the winter.

With this back ground and upbringing in the country, you realised later when you went walking with him how it was that he knew every grass, every flower, every bird, and every fold of the Wolds and would quote Gerard Manley Hopkins ...

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed.

He was elated in the country and drank its juices and converted us 'townies' to its beauty.

There was no Catholic school in the vicinity of his home, so his parents sent him to Catholic Independent schools. His teenage years were spent at the Jesuit-run Stonyhurst College. From there he went to study for the priesthood in Rome at what is known as the English College. It was at this time that Hitler visited Mussolini. This was before the outbreak of the Second World War. Tony and a friend went to watch the 2 dictators as they came out of a meeting. Mussolini and Hitler were saluting the onlookers, but when they passed Tony and friend and seeing them dressed in their black clerical cassocks, Hitler promptly turned his back to them. Tony, later mused whether he would have been morally justified to have lobbed a bomb. Prime Minister Chamberlain and Lord Halifax visited the college at this time as did Eamonn de Valera. When war eventually broke out, the English students were sent back to England where he finished his studies at Stonyhurst. He was ordained in 1943 and from that moment never doubted his decision to become a priest, he told me.

With this background how did Tony adapt so well to a working class town?
An experience he had in a mental hospital answers this. He used to regularly visit St Luke's Mental Hospital in Middlesbrough. There were many locked wards and some of the treatment seems primitive now. He determined to treat every patient with the utmost respect and sensitivity. These were Gospel imperatives. One day he was giving the last rites to a particularly deranged, but dying patient. When he had said the words "May the Lord bless you and lift you up and bring you fullness of life". the patient, in a moment of lucidity, looked at him and said "Thank you for treating me with respect. Even though I was deranged I always heard you. Thank you." And died.

He believed in treating every person as of absolute worth and with the utmost respect. Aristocrat or peasant, sane or insane made no difference to him. Like Jesus Christ he recognised no boundaries, there were no dividing lines in his mind and outlook. The only rule was to treat all as of absolute worth. He acted as though boundaries did not exist. Like Christ he was a free person. The word Catholic, which means universal, for him, meant that no one was excluded. He had risen above denomination. As a consequence he was frequently invited to speak to other Christian denominations. He would be invited to lead their ministers in days of reflection. Not surprising that he was invited to be the first RC priest to preach in York Minster, since the Reformation. Quakers would attend his Masses at the University Chaplaincy and out of respect for their emphasis on silent worship, after Communion there would be an extended period of silence. He loved using Buddhist meditation techniques and practised yoga. The Inter-Faith group in the city of Hull is organising an event to celebrate his contribution to inter-faith matters.

His interests and influence stretched far and wide. He visited prisoners and corresponded with them. He had a particular empathy for people suffering anxiety and depression. Despite his vitality and optimism, he had bouts of depression and understood how people suffered. Sunshine and clouds were the stuff of his life. He was concerned for the excluded and marginalised. His was a gospel of Justice and Peace. With Mary Thompson he set up the Justice and Peace Commission of the Middlesbrough diocese. On our way here Mary's sister, Trudie, described him very well. She said "Tony Storey never diminished." He was one of a few priests who actively supported Justice & Peace matters. He visited Sierra Leone and set up a project there supported by his parish in Cottingham. He was a faithful supporter of Amnesty International and had set up a local group many years ago.

Then there was his tree planting of trees- oak, hazel and beech all over the North of England. He's done it for years. He and his brother Peter had a particularly soft spot for the ancient place of pilgrimage, Our Lady of Mount Grace, Osmotherley. Both were involved in its restoration and planted trees all round it. Then there was his bee keeping. Not to mention his extensive reading. When you met him he would enthuse about some book, "you must read this or you must read that, and I will send it to you." You would meet him the very next day and with the same enthusiasm he would be recommending a different book. He planted trees and he planted friendships far and wide. This enormous congregation is witness to that.

If you feel breathless listening to this litany of interests, you should go on holiday with him. Four years ago I went to Italy with him. Since I'd never been to Rome he took me on a whirlwind 2 day tour. He'd carefully planned it and timed it with minute care as though I was a whole party of people. We arrived late at night, but he was intent on showing me St. Peter's. The square was cordoned off with security barriers. But as I mentioned earlier he did not recognise barriers, so he leapt over them only to re-emerge from the gloom a few moments later escorted by three caribinieri.

It was a memorable holiday and we covered both the Roman antiquities and the Christian ones. Then we were off to Assisi. In the morning we visited the main sights and then at 12 noon he walked me out to the Carceri, the hermitage where St. Francis went for prayer/solitude. It was some way outside of Assisi and up a mountain road. 'Mad dogs and English men', we set out in the blistering midday sun, striding up the mountain road. Him striding me straggling. Tony stoically oblivious of heat or tiredness, lolloping along. Me straggling after fairly recent heart surgery. Not a tree for shade not a person doing the same walk. But then came a car and mercifully stopped and took us the rest of the way. Since his retirement ten years ago he has been an inveterate traveller: Canada, Australia, Poland and in the footsteps of St. Paul in Turkey and Syria.

He spent many years in Hull and Cottingham. He was here at St Charles for 7 years and at the Hull University Catholic Chaplaincy for 11 years and Holy Cross, Cottingham for 15 years and then 10 years retired down here in St Vincent's parish, where he helped out. Former students have described his years at the Catholic Chaplaincy as 'golden years.' He inspired them, stimulated them, supported them and loved them. Today in recognition of his contribution to university life and as a mark of respect, the university is flying the flag at half mast. After my 10 years in this city of Hull I said to him that I had found the Hull people so warm and friendly. He gave one of his typical answers "Well you see, Pete, most of them are pagans and have never been messed about by the churches. " For his dedicated work in St Mary's College, Hull, a building was named after him. For his contribution to university life as catholic chaplain he was awarded an honorary degree. When I succeeded him as catholic chaplain I followed Tony's advice and immediately went to introduce myself to Sir Brynmor Jones, the Vice Chancellor, who at the end of our conversation said to me "You will never be able to fill his shoes, but that's your challenge."
But who could have filled the shoes of this remarkable man, friend, mentor, inspiration, and priest?

He would want me to thank the staff of Castle Hill hospital who cared for him in his last illness. And thanks to his friends, who supported him so well in the end, symbolised particularly by Marian Hall. Towards the end he said to her "I've decided to give in. " "Give in?" she asked. " "Give in to the Almighty who loves me.", he said, then after a pause "not to the Trinity, I've never understood that." He also said "I am going to the Glory". If that was his last word it was fitting, because St. Irenaeus of Lyons in the second century said, "The glory of God is a person fully alive" Tony Storey was such a person - fully alive. We will miss him.

The Gospel we heard read gives us a lasting image:
'Christ also said, "What can we say the kingdom of God is like? What parable can we find for it? It is like a mustard seed which at the time of its sowing in the soil is the smallest of all seeds on earth; yet once it is sown it grows into the biggest shrub of them all and puts out big branches so that the birds of the air can shelter in its shade."' ( Mark 4: 30-32)
Tony Storey was such a tree and many of us sheltered in his shade.
May he rest in peace.