Worker priests, deacons, and the Little Brothers and Sisters of Jesus

Today is the anniversary of the death of Pere Henri Perrin, the worker priest, born in 1914, who died on October 25, 1954.

The worker-priest movement arose to respond to what many in France and other parts of Western Europe saw as the failure of the Church to reach the working class. Priests left the rectories and worked in factories and other industries.

The priest-worker movement was especially strong in France, responding to the sense that France was not really “Christian,” and that the Gospel seemed irrelevant to the concerns of the working class. The movement was suppressed by the Vatican, partly because the priests got involved in all aspects of their work, including unions. Since many of the unions were dominated by the Communist Party, their involvement in the unions, even elected as union officials, was a “red” flag, literally and figuratively. 

I believe that the Vatican’s decision was sort-sighted and blinded by the virulent anti-Communism of the 1950s (and beyond.)

Though the movement was officially ended, the immersion of priests as well as women religious and lay missionaries, in the daily lives of the poor, living among them, has continued to nurture the real missionary dimension of faith, especially in parts of Latin America. 

About the same time, faithful in the German Church were pushing for the diaconate as a permanent state.  

There had been discussions since the nineteenth century, but one of the most profound discussions happened in the priests' barracks in the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau.

The priests there pondered the tragedy, the scandal, of a church that had not been ready to respond to Hitler. They wondered if the institutional church needed the input of people who were involved in the daily life of the people, in the offices, streets, and factories. 

The notes of one of the imprisoned priests, Father Wilhelm Schamoni, are pointed:

3. The preaching of these deacons, who would be involved in the work-a-day world, would be particularly persuasive and down-to-earth. One perceives in current preaching that it is being done by individuals who are “segregate a populo” [“separated from the people”]. 

4. The Church has largely become a Church of authorities and officials. The feudal state and the civil servant state have rubbed off on her. The diaconate would be an effective means to return Holy Mother the Church to a Church of the people. 

5. The Church has not succeeded in holding its ground among either the leading intellectual classes nor among those classes most easily led astray, the proletariat. In their own milieu, deacons from these classes for these classes could gain influence incomparably deeper than could any priest, since priests would never develop within this milieu the kind of rapport that deacons would have already established. One could develop the diaconate into a means to win back the de-Christianized milieu. An intelligent deacon from the working-class would, without any special theological training, be able to touch the heart of his worker colleagues with just the right words.

After World War II, several of these priests wrote and discussed the diaconate as a permanent state of life. Their work, the work of theologians such as Karl Rahner, and various movements, especially in Germany, paved the way for the diaconate as a permanent state as approved at the Second Vatican Council.

Another movement to be leaven in the everyday world was the formation of the Little Brothers and Little Sisters of Jesus by René Voillaume and Little Sister Magdeleine of Jesus to be a presence among the poor and outcast.

Their first field of presence was among the Muslims in Algeria, following their inspiration by Little Brother Saint Charles de Foucauld. But now their field of mission is among the poor and marginalized. They work and live among the people, witnessed to Christ by their prayer and their daily presence.

All these three movements, in my mind, rose from a concern to be present to those who might not be part of the church community.

The witness of the worker priests and the Little Brothers and Sisters as well as the testimony of Saint Charles de Foucauld mark my understanding of the diaconate. My ordination stole bears the heart and cross of Saint Charles.

Today, remembering Père Henri Perrin, I remember the witness of priest workers as well as many women and men religious who immerse themselves in the lives of the poor, especially the Little Brothers and Little Sisters of Jesus. 

Reflecting on their commitment with the poor and marginalized, I believe that the diaconate should always include some sort of physical presence with those on the margins of society, especially the impoverished.

We are called to reach out to those who might not come to the doors of the church. The call of Pope Francis to go out and encounter those in the margins, central to Evangelii Gaudium and found throughout his teaching, should be central to our diaconate. 

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 Some photos of me in action as a deacon.

Picking coffee in the parish coffee field

Getting help in directions from a campesino

Helping change the flat tire of the pastor's car

Incensing the faithful at Mass

Baptizing a child in San Agustín

The deacon embedded in the secular world: witnessing and listening

In an interview in the virtual Deacon Conference on November 5, 2021, Deacon James Keating spoke of deacons as “clerics embedded in the secular world.”

I think this is a very useful way to speak of the vocation of the diaconate as a permanent state. But this needs to be unpacked, not in terms of the status of clerics versus laity, but in terms of the vocation of the deacon.

Keating and others are pointing to the unique place in the church of the deacon who also has a vocation, including employment, outside the church. The worker-deacon can be in places where a priest usually cannot be found – in the factory, in the courtroom, in the hospital emergency room, in the halls of government.

I am somewhat reluctant to use the word “secular” since it is all too often used in contrast to the sacred. I believe that our role as deacons should reflect an incarnational spirituality.

Jesus is God made flesh, God-Human, Son of God and Son of Mary. He is both. He manifests the presence of God in the midst of human life and living. God reveals Himself in the flesh. As the early fathers (and St. Thomas Aquinas) affirmed. God became humans so that humans may become God – revealing the presence of God in the world.

Thus, the deacon can reveal the presence of God in the daily world – in Spanish, lo cotidiano. His is, as Deacon Tim O’Donnell writes, the ministry of the threshold. I heartily recommend his book, The Deacon: Icon of Christ the Servant, Minister of the Threshold.

But it is, sometimes, useful to note that the world of the church and the secular world often seem to be proposed as not only distinct, but even opposed, realities. But, as “clerics embedded in the secular world,” the deacon can see his call to be a presence in the world and to be one who hears “the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties” of the world (Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, 1). 

PRESENCE IN THE WORLD 

In France, in the middle of last century, the worker priest movement was an experiment by the Church in France to reach the working class which seemed so far away from the message of the Gospel. Priests worked in the factories, without identifying themselves to the other workers. They saw the importance of the presence of the church in the "secular" world. 

Also, one can also look at the example of the Little Brothers and Little Sisters of Jesus who live and work among the poor as a silent witness of the love of God in the world of the poor.

I believe that it extremely important to remember that the restored diaconate has several roots, including the Priest Cell block at Dachau. There, the priests noted the failure of the church to be attentive to the rise of Nazism. They saw the need to have persons, including clerics, who were immersed in the world so that they could share with the church what they were seeing and experiencing.

After the Second World War, one of the priests, Wilhelm Schamoni, noted:

The Church has not succeeded in holding its ground among either the leading intellectual classes nor among those classes most easily led astray, the proletariat. In their own milieu, deacons from these classes for these classes could gain influence incomparably deeper than could any priest, since priests would never develop within this milieu the kind of rapport that deacons would have already established. One could develop the diaconate into a means to win back the de-Christianized milieu. An intelligent deacon from the working-class would, without any special theological training, be able to touch the heart of his worker colleagues with just the right words.

However, Deacon James Keating, speaking of the role of the deacon as bringing the Word to the world, seems more intent on role of the deacon as one who shows the faith to the people he is around. In the interview, Keating mentions a deacon being present at social events and responding to the needs of the people. 

True, but is this the most significant aspect of this description of the deacon's call to de present to the world? 

LISTENING TO THE WORLD

As a cleric living and working in the world outside the institutional church, the deacon might be able to hear more than a priest would. 

This role of listening – and helping make it heard within the Christian assembly – is unique for the deacon working outside the institutional church. (I should note that I work full-time in a rural parish and thus don't show forth this aspect of the diaconate.)

As noted above, the priests in Dachau’s Priest Block saw the need to have persons, including clerics, who were immersed in the world so that they could share with the church what they were seeing and experiencing. They could hear and see what was happening and what one could miss if he were totally immersed in the affairs of the church.

Cardinal Walter Kasper has spoken of the deacon as “the listening post.” Referring to an ancient document, he noted that the deacon “is depicted as ‘the ears, mouth, heart and soul of the bishop’ (Didasc. II, 44).“ Thus, “The deacons can act as the eyes and ears of the bishop in identifying areas of need and can help him in his task of being father to the poor.”

The deacon thus can become the advocate of the poor and oppressed, amplifying their voices, which he has heard.

Saint Oscar Romero, martyr-archbishop of San Salvador, was called “La voz de los sin voz” – the voice of the voiceless. His homilies – which were extremely long – were a combination of reflection on the scriptures and sharing the news of the week, including the names of people killed or disappeared. These homilies were broadcast on the archdiocesan radio as an alternative source of news, as well as a call for justice.

What Monseñor Romero did, the deacon can do – listening to the Word of God in the scriptures and listening to the word of God in the cries of the poor. We can do this, I believe, when we are present to the world – especially with those at the margins of society.

A few weeks before I was ordained, I was in El Salvador and visited the tomb of Romero and dedicated my diaconal ministry to him. As I look back, I see how fitting this has been.

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Marshall Gibbs, “The Deacon as Preacher,” Forming Deacons: Ministers of Soul and Leaven.
Walter Kasper, “The Deacon offers an ecclesiological view of the present day challenges in the Church and Society,” Paper given at IDC Study-Conference, Brixen, Italy, October 1997. 

Holocaust Remembrance Day

My life has been shaped by my high school encounter with the reality of the Holocaust.

I don’t know when I first learned about the Holocaust but during high school I began to be concerned about this horror. At that time I was in a Franciscan minor seminary and so one of my concerns was the apparent failure of the Catholic Church to respond to the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust

There was Rolf Hochhuth’s 1963 play, The Deputy. Some consider it to be overstated and a piece of propaganda against Pope Pius XII, but it raises the question of why the church was so hesitant to speak openly.

I also ran across Gordan Zahn’s 1962 study, German Catholics and Hitler’s Wars: A Study in Social Control Though Zahn’s interest was mainly in the failure of most of the German bishops to respond to Hitler’s wars, it also brings to the fore the failure of the church to speak out.

Two years later, Gordon Zahn published In Solitary Witness: The Life and Death of Franz Jägerstätter, his account of the life of an Austrian who refused to serve in Hitler’s army. He ran across the story when he was researching his book on war and German Catholics and proceeded to make known the life and writings of this farmer who discerned the evil of Nazism and sacrificed his life for his convictions. He was subsequently beatified by the Catholic Church and recently a movie was released, A Hidden Life, which I heartily recommend.

About this time, I came across the speech that Albert Camus gave at a Dominican monastery in 1948. It put into words my concerns – not just about the Holocaust but also about the Vietnam War which was raging in the mid and late 1960s.

“What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear, and that they should voice their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the simplest [person]. That they should get away from abstraction and confront the blood-stained face history has taken on today.”

Camus concluded his remarks with these prophetic words:

“…if Christians made up their minds to it, millions of voices — millions, I say — throughout the world would be added to the appeal of a handful of isolated individuals who, without any sort of affiliation, today intercede almost everywhere and ceaselessly for children and for [human beings].”

In 1973, I took an extended vacation to Europe, traveling mostly by bicycle and train. I stopped in Munich, in part for the beer, but also I wanted to visit Dachau, the concentration camp. It was not a death camp but many died here and their bodies were cremated. I walked in silence around the camp, paused at the crematory (where I sensed the smell of death), and prayed at the chapel there. As I returned to Munich on a train, I noted that this place of mass death and detention was so close to a major city. How could the people in the nearby town not notice the smell of death and how could the city of Munich not note the presence of this center of evil.

Crematoria at Dachau

Remembering the holocaust and other crimes of mass destruction of the twentieth century as well as the massive civilian deaths in war and concentration camps throughout the world, I have been moved to be with those who suffer and to speak up with them. In some way, it opened me to come to Honduras. 

But it opened me to something more.

A few years ago, the bishop asked me to consider the permanent diaconate. As is my custom, I began to look for information. The first article I came across, by William Ditewig, mentioned that priests in Dachau discussed the permanent diaconate. They asked why the church didn’t respond to the evil of Nazism and wondered whether the clergy was too distant from the realities around them. They thought that it might be good to have people involved in the world as members of the clergy to keep the church closer to the reality people experience. I wrote about this in a blog post a few months before I was ordained. I also wrote ab out this last year in another blogpost.

Last year, I had planned to go to an international deacons’ conference in Germany and had planned to spend a day at Dachau. That, of course, was cancelled due to the outbreak of the Corona-19 virus. I still have hopes to one day visit that seedbed of the contemporary diaconate.

For me, this has meant that for me the diaconate has a strong prophetic dimension.

We are called to announce the Reign of God, that God has come near and is present among us. But that also means that we help people identify the evils – both personal and institutional – around us. We are not just to wash the wounds of those who suffer but we are called to speak up about what has brought about this suffering and death.

This means that we may have to take risks of offending others. But silence opens the way for evil to flourish. It might also mean that we stand with those who suffer. 

I know many deacons stand at the side of the unborn, but how many of us stand with those who suffer from racist attacks? Many stand with the poor, offering them assistance, but how many of us raise questions about why they suffer

For this reason, I have a rather peculiar idea of what it means to be a deacon. 

The deacon must stand at the side of the people in need – all of them, most of all the impoverished. I have my concerns with any deacon who does not get his hands dirty at the side of the poor and who is not willing to speak up with them (and for them). 

We should not do this from the outside, but from within the world of the poor - living the "culture of encounter" that Pope Francis stressed. 

It’s a challenge that I don’t live up to – but God keeps calling me. 

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 Photo of crematoria at Dachau from Wikipedia.

Deacon reflection 5

 Dachau and the prophetic role of deacons

The first thing I read after Bishop Darwin Andino asked me to consider the diaconate was an article by Deacon William Ditewig in US Catholic. (Source noted below.)

 

In that article, which is well worth reading, he noted the recent origins of the permanent diaconate in the priests’ barracks at the Dachau concentration camp. More than 2,500 priests, as well as Orthodox priests and a bishop and Protestant clergy were held there. I wrote about this shortly before I was ordained in this blog post.

 

In Dachau, several priests began discussions about the church, concerned that, in the face of World War I and the rise of Nazism, the Church had not been as aware and forthright as it might have been. Having deacons, who were involved in their “mundane” occupations, might be a way for the institutional church to be more aware of what was happening – not just in the political sphere but also in the daily lives of the faithful.

 

I see this as one of the most important aspects of the restored diaconate, one that I fear is not always practiced.

 

The permanent deacon has, most often, a family and a job “in the world”. I am an exception, being single and working in the church.

 

The married deacon can bring to his ministry the joys and the struggles of family life, including raising children with values that are very much different than those of the dominant culture of competition, individualism, and domination. These can influence his preaching, his ways of connecting with people, and even his role in the sacraments of baptism and matrimony. They also can open his heart to the needs of poor and broken families.

 

The deacon with a “secular” job can not only bring the Gospel to impact on the workplace, but he has the opportunity to show in his work the dignity and holiness of work that serves the common good and keeps the poor at the center of our concern.

 

But there is another dimension that I have not seen all too often. The deacon can bring to the Church, both the local congregation and the bishops and priests, the injustices and the temptations to worship the gods of power, wealth, and sex that he encounters in the world.

 

I wish that we deacons were more visible in this prophetic aspect of our ministry – following the example of Christ who is prophet, priest, and servant-king.

Where am I in the face of the injustices around us?

 

I do mention the problems of corruption in some of my homilies, but is there more that I can do? A few times I have shared my concerns with the bishop, usually in a letter or e-mail. I accompanied the bishop and some priests when he went to the town of Azacualpa where a mining company is moving a cemetery to extract the gold found under it. I also try to share my concerns in my blog and on my Facebook page.

 

This can be done and we deacons should do it more.

 

Our prophetic word, our analysis of reality, our denunciations of injustice must be done – but with a spirit of love and based in the message of the Gospels.

 

So much of the discussion about issues is partisan and vituperative.

 

How can we be prophetic – in truth and in love?

 

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"A call of their own: The role of deacons in the church", US Catholic, June 2014.

http://www.uscatholic.org/articles/201406/call-their-own-role-deacons-church-28973

Roman collars or muddy shoes

Deacons wearing collars

I am completely against deacons wearing Roman collars. If I am fortunate, my bishop will never ask me to wear one.

A recent discussion on a closed Facebook group yielded over 150 of comments, many of them in favor of wearing the Roman collar, many arguing its usefulness to distinguish deacons as clergy.

My first reaction was that this may be a symptom of a growing clericalism of the permanent diaconate. But this is not my major concern.

My second reaction was that wearing a collar can create distance between the deacon and the rest of the People of God. When the local bishop asked me to consider the diaconate I told him that I was concerned that this would create a wider breach between me and the people I serve.

As a layman from the US, a missionary in Honduras, I had privilege. I could leave whenever I want and return to the US. I had the financial security of social security monthly payments and a bank account. And there was more.

Would becoming a permanent deacon pull me further away from the poor in whose midst I serve.

But my real reason against the collar is theological. I think the theology of the diaconate is not sufficiently developed and so we fall back upon arguments of the deacon being a cleric and the usefulness of being recognized as one.

But I think we need to get back to the roots of the move toward the permanent diaconate.

After talking with the bishop, one of the first articles I read on the diaconate mentioned that priests in the Dachau concentration camp seriously studied the crisis in Nazi Germany and the failure of the church to recognize and respond to the emergent evil of the Third Reich.

This was not a move to clericalize the church. Rather, as William Ditewig wrote in The Emerging Diaconate,

the pioneers of a renewed diaconate, incarcerated at Dachau concentration centration camp, saw the diaconate as a necessary component of a renewed church transforming the world so that tragedies such as the Second World War and the Shoah would not happen again.

I wonder. Was there no one in the Resistance to Nazi Germany who had the ears of the bishops? If there were permanent deacons, living and working in the streets of Germany, would they have been able to let the bishops see what was really happening?

If the deacons are “the eyes and the ears” of the bishop, they may make them more aware of the serious crises facing the lives of ordinary peoples.

The deacon should be in a place in the secular world – not only revealing the sanctity of the world of work by his presence, but also bringing the experiences of his coworkers to the altar. He also should be the one who brings the poor to the church and the church to the poor.

Does the permanent deacon bring the world of work into the structures of the Church? Will he let the bishops and those in authority know of the challenges facing the world?

In addition, would the deacon in his daily life of family and work be better able to show the presence of Christ? This seems to be what one of the priests at Dachau noted:

The Church has not succeeded in holding its ground among either the leading intellectual classes nor among those classes most easily led astray, the proletariat. In their own milieu, deacons from these classes for these classes could gain influence incomparably deeper than could any priest, since priests would never develop within this milieu the kind of rapport that deacons would have already established. One could develop the diaconate into a means to win back the de-Christianized milieu. An intelligent deacon from the working-class would, without any special theological training, be able to touch the heart of his worker colleagues with just the right words.

The working permanent deacon might be the one who can better connect the world and the altar, the Church and the people who are alienated or marginalized from faith.

I think this is part of what Pope Saint John Paul II meant when he spoke in a 1993 general audience:

A deeply felt need in the decision to re-establish the permanent diaconate was and is that of a greater and more direct presence of Church ministers in the various spheres of the family, work, school etc., in addition to existing pastoral structures.

This line of thought leads me to suggest that we need to develop the practice and the spirituality of the worker-deacon.  One of the experiments in Europe in the mid-twentieth century that I think held out some hope for the re-evangelization of Europe was the worker-priest movement. Perhaps that movement should be the inspiration of a theology of the “worker-deacon.”

I write this as one working full-time in the church but I see the need to develop a diaconate in the world, a diaconate of the blue collar worker, a diaconate of the campesino, a diaconate of the bus driver, a diaconate of the civil servant.

In addition, the deacon should be recognized by who he is and what he does – not just at the table of the Lord at Mass but at the table of the poor.

Is the permanent deacon – am I – an icon of Christ the Servant at the Table of the Lord and an icon of the Servant Body of Christ in the world?

A final thought.

If the deacon is to serve in the margins, to witness the church’s love and justice for the poor and neglected, what might be our distinctive sign?

Father Paul McPartlan pointedly wrote that “The deacon stands at the altar and prepares the gifts with clean hands, but he stands also where the practical need is greatest, getting his hands very dirty.”

The dirt under our fingernails might be a worthy sign of our diaconal ministry. But I think there is another image that might help us develop a practical theology of diaconal ministry.

Pope Francis worked for some time with Jesuits in formation in Argentine. When they returned from their visits to the villas miserias, the poor neighborboods, he would inspect their shoes to see if they had walked among the poor.

Maybe muddy shoes should be the sign of the deacon.

Dachau and deacons

The diaconate as a permanent order almost disappeared after the sixth century, except for a few exceptions, including St. Francis of Assisi.

The Council of Trent promoted the restoration of the diaconate but nothing came of it. Catholics in Germany discussed it from the middle of the nineteenth century.

But it took the horror of Nazi Germany to bring the permanent diaconate to the fore and to give a impetus to its restoration.

Cellblock 26 at the Dachau concentration camp held a large number of priests. In that barracks Fathers Otto Pies, S.J., and Wilhelm Schamoni discussed the need for a permanent diaconate for a renewed Church.

They were not merely responding to a possible shortage of priests but to the need for the church to have men who were involved in what might be called “secular pursuits” to be part of the ministry – to serve, to preach, and to assist at the altar.

This was not a move to clericalize the church. Rather, as William Ditewig wrote in The Emerging Diaconate,

the pioneers of a renewed diaconate, incarcerated at Dachau concentration camp, saw the diaconate as a necessary component of a renewed church transforming the world so that tragedies such as the Second World War and the Shoah would not happen again.

In 1973 I visited Dachau during a summer bicycle tour of Europe. It was a sobering experience, which touched me deeply. There was what I felt was the smell of death in the crematoria. The barracks felt full of sorrow and suffering. But what most affected me was the trip to and from Dachau. Dachau is less than an hour from Munich. How could this be overlooked?

When I visited I had not known about Cellblock 26, the Priests’ Block. Until last year I didn’t realize that the restoration of the diaconate has one of its roots there.

That deeply touched me, because one of my concerns since high school has been the failure of the institutional Church to respond openly to the evils of Nazism and the Holocaust, a failure that has been repeated any number of times since then.

The witness of those who did speak out and suffered has been for me a source of inspiration and an incentive for courage.

In regard to the diaconate, these remarks from the concentration camp notes of Father Schamoni deserve to be shared:

3. The preaching of these deacons, who would be involved in the work-a-day world, would be particularly persuasive and down-to-earth. One perceives in current preaching that it is being done by individuals who are “segregate a populo” [“separated from the people”].
4. The Church has largely become a Church of authorities and officials. The feudal state and the civil servant state have rubbed off on her. The diaconate would be an effective means to return Holy Mother the Church to a Church of the people.
5. The Church has not succeeded in holding its ground among either the leading intellectual classes nor among those classes most easily led astray, the proletariat. In their own milieu, deacons from these classes for these classes could gain influence incomparably deeper than could any priest, since priests would never develop within this milieu the kind of rapport that deacons would have already established. One could develop the diaconate into a means to win back the de-Christianized milieu. An intelligent deacon from the working-class would, without any special theological training, be able to touch the heart of his worker colleagues with just the right words. 

The witness of Fathers Pies and Schamoni and their vision of the restoration of the permanent diaconate as a way to keep the Church in contact with the world struck a chord in me.

Fr. Schamoni’s vision of the diaconate as “an effective means to return Holy Mother the Church to a Church of the people” was reflected in the words of Pope Paul VI at the end of the Second Vatican Council:

We stress that the teaching of the Council is channeled in one direction, the service of humankind, of every condition, in every weakness and need. The Church has declared herself a servant of humanity…

Can the diaconate – and my presence in the order of the diaconate – be a sign of Christ the Servant who stands up against all the degrades God’s children in this world?

That is a challenge for me as I approach becoming a candidate for the diaconate.