Guide to Ongoing Formation for Priests

60 | GUIDE TO ONGOING FORMATION FOR PRIESTS

preferences for the sake of the Gospel and orients his will toward faithfully obeying legitimate authority within the Church, so that he can be a more effective instrument for the good of souls. The priest of Christ, whose bride is the Church, is uniquely called to love and respect her in a spousal manner. Only through the Church can the priest generate spiritual children; indeed it is through her that he receives his very office. A priest who undercuts the Church’s authority through disobedience or infidelity commits a grave injustice to the people he serves and poisons the very wellsprings of his own priesthood. “Loyalty toward Christ,” the Second Vatican Council affirmed, “can never be divorced from loyalty toward His Church.” 126 Ecclesial fidelity is, then, a third marker of spiritual formation. The mature priest pays special attention to his attitude toward the Church—not as the Church is in glory, not as he wishes it were now, not as he imagines it once was, but as the Church actually is here, today. He will love the Church as a mother and a teacher and embrace church teachings with gratitude and humility. He will faithfully convey the Catholic faith to his people comprehensively, accurately, and with conviction. He will fulfill liturgical and other norms without needing to put his own idiosyncratic stamp on them. 127 He will cultivate piety and respect toward the pope as well as his own diocesan bishop and the College of Bishops. In loving the Church, he loves all her members, both those on earth and those in glory or in purgatory. He nourishes in himself a deep love for Our Lady and the saints, the angels, and the departed souls who are being prepared for their new life of glory 128 . 158. 159. 126 PO, no. 14. Regarding the participation of the priest in the spousal nature of Christ with the Church, see DMLP, nos. 13-14. Regarding the relationship of the priest’s spiritual life to pastoral charity, see PDV, nos. 22-24. 127 See CIC, c. 846 §1. 128 “[St. Padre Pio] loved the Church, with the many problems the Church has, with so many adversities, with so many sinners. Because the Church is holy, she is the Bride of Christ, but we, the children of the Church, are all sinners—some big ones!—but he loved the Church as she was, he did not destroy her with the tongue, as it is the fashion to do now. No! He loved her. He who loves the Church knows how to forgive, because he knows that he himself is a sinner and is in need of God’s forgiveness. He knows how to arrange things, because the Lord wants to arrange things well but always with forgiveness: one cannot live an entire life accusing, accusing, accusing the Church. Whose is the office of the accuser! The devil! And those who spend their life accusing, accusing, accusing, are—I will not say children, because the devil does not have any—but friends, cousins, relatives of the devil. And no, this is not good, flaws must be indicated so they can be corrected, but at the moment that flaws are noted, flaws are denounced, one loves the Church. Without love, that is of the devil.” Francis, Greeting to the Archdiocese of Benevento, February 20, 2019, www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2019/february/documents/papa-fran cesco_20190220_diocesi-benevento.html .