How traditionalism misrepresents the priesthood

Being born and raised in traditionalist communities, I had a view of the priesthood that I now realize was very skewed. And as I've thought about it over time, I've also come to realize how it may have affected my view of a potential calling to the priesthood. Although I discerned that I was not called and am very happily married, I can't help but wonder if my discernment process was affected by my understanding of the priesthood and how it was presented to me in the communities I grew up in.

Many people in the traditionalist sphere today have come from a normal parish environment, and have a clear understanding of what the priesthood looks like (how it is connected to the bishop, how the diocesan structure operates, etc). But with the SSJ, FSSP, and SSPX being my only exposure to ecclesiastical environments for all of my formative years, and with all of them implying with some degree of subtlety or another that the "true Church" was confined to their borders, their structure and way of operating was, in my mind, how the church operated. I did not have exposure to anything else. I didn't even know about the existence of the Novus Ordo until I was probably 10, and even when I did, I just thought it was a different way of celebrating mass.

The important factor here is understanding that these communities operate essentially as worldwide missionary apostolates. They establish a presence around the globe and receive assignments from district superiors. Bishops didn't make priest assignments; the superiors of the order (FSSP, etc) were the ones who called the shots. Diocesan boundaries mean little to nothing to them; "little" in that, in groups like the FSSP, they simply obtain permission to operate there, and "nothing" in that, for groups like the SSPX, diocesan boundaries may as well not even exist, because there are no canonical restrictions based on this.

But from the time I was old enough to understand the Church's structure, I thought that all priests received assignments and were transferred in the same way. I hardly knew what a diocese was, apart from the fact that it was a territory that a bishop was in charge of. It never even occurred to me that the bishop would be in charge of the priests in that area; I just thought he was a "point of contact", and that any priests from anywhere in the world came and went, presumably with his knowledge but without any real contact with him. I thought he was a "manager" who signed the papers and had to give yes/no decisions on questions that came his way, but that he was pretty much disconnected from everyone and everything. We never saw the bishop in Kansas; we had his picture in the vestibule, but never spoke about him, and barely even acknowledged his existence. I didn't know where he lived or what he did.

And this was fully aligned with the impression I had of bishops from books I read as a kid. In my mind, bishops were men who perpetually lived in rich robes and a miter, and carried a crozier everywhere. They signed parchments with quill pens, attended councils and church meetings in Rome, and issued condemnations of heretics. If you had the rare privilege of meeting one, you were to kneel and kiss his ring (we were actually told at my school that if the bishop ever came to visit, instead of standing as we would do when another adult entered the room, we were to kneel for the bishop). Never would I have thought that he was a man wearing a suit and collar living in Kansas City.

I truly don't know whether or not this subliminally affected my outlook on the possibility of a vocation, but the times I considered the priesthood as a kid, it went something like this. I would attend the FSSP seminary in Nebraska, then upon ordination, I'd be delegated by the FSSP superiors somewhere around the world they thought would be most appropriate. We had priests from Ireland and Russia at our parish for a time, and one of our priests got transferred to Africa. I thought that at any moment, I could get sprung with the very unwanted assignment of going to some continent I'd never been to, nor had any desire to go to, and no knowledge of (whether the customs, the language, or anything). And because I had no exposure to the structure of the priesthood outside of these confines, it didn't even occur to me that being a "Novus Ordo priest" would be any different. That's just what the priesthood was. And to be quite frank, that seemed daunting. It's something that I didn't want, and I didn't feel the inclination to pursue.

Religious orders were out of the question. If you wanted to be a monk, you had one option: the Benedictines in Clear Creek, Oklahoma. All these other orders we read about in our history books and in the lives of the saints we were encouraged to read- the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Carmelites, the Carthusians, even the Jesuits- for all intents and purposes, didn't exist anymore. They weren't an option. (In hindsight, I think I was under the impression that Clear Creek was the "last monastery standing.")

And this was all in the church. I can only imagine what it was like for people growing up in the SSPX or SSPV or any other independent group, which really did see itself as the last bastion of the Church. My wife said that, growing up in the SSPX, she truly believed their 4 bishops were the only ones left in the world.

I truly did not understand the concept of a diocese, or how a bishop oversaw it, or how priests remained in their diocese and could not be incardinated elsewhere without permission, until my early 20s. That sounds ignorant, and maybe even embarrassing, but it's true. (It didn't help that it was still perpetuated in the communities I attended as a young adult, which only spoke about other parishes within that "order." I remember hearing a sermon at the ICKSP church I attended for a time in which the priest mentioned "our friends on the other side of the state", as if our Catholic neighbors down the block didn't exist.) I only began to grasp this concept when I started investigating the errors of the independent traditionalist movement and understood about incardination, mission delegated from the bishop, and jurisdiction within diocesan boundaries. I remember, as a grown adult, being taken aback when our parochial vicar casually mentioned how he drove down to see his parents an hour away on Sunday afternoons. In my head for the longest time, the odds of getting a parish assignment that was within driving distance from your parents was exceedingly small. It only clicked after he said that and I realized that priests always remain within their diocese. They have to remain within their diocese.

This is, I think, a mostly unknown but very real issue within traditionalism. Having taken on a distinct life unto itself, and accumulating a structure as it expanded worldwide over the last few decades, people are being raised with an inaccurate understanding of what the church is, how it operates, and what it means to serve the church in a vocational capacity. It's not just about not knowing the basics; it's about having little or no connection with our spiritual authority (the bishop), no concept of diocesan priesthood meaning familiarity with many local parishes and priests and people, and trying to discern vocations in the way that traditionalism displays as the norm but what the church sees as very much an exception to the rule. Vocations are not missionary by default. They are local, centered around the local church and the local authority. Yes, it's possible to transfer dioceses, and yes, it's possible to join a missionary order, but those ought to be presented as one option among many, not as the only option. I think perhaps this is a subject worthy of more consideration, as this movement has created a perspective that is, at its core, quite irregular.