Neil McNicholas: Pray for the priests doing good in the world

No one seems to be speaking up in defence of priests; no one is

countering the bad news with good; no one is offering a positive point of view.

What do people know about priests and the work they do? (And I would like to dispel at this point the popular myth that we only work on Sundays!)

Much of what a priest does will depend on the parish he is in because every parish is different. There are the obvious things such as celebrating Mass each day, hearing confessions, and celebrating baptisms, weddings and funerals. There may be a parish school, a hospital and nursing homes to visit, possibly even a prison.

The following could be a typical day for a priest. His day begins with the celebration of morning Mass. After checking the post, he then heads out to visit a bereaved family to discuss the funeral with them. On the way back, he visits the school and pops into the various classes to say hello. Back home, he grabs a bite to eat before an appointment with a building contractor who arrives half an hour late and so he only just makes it in time for the deanery meeting he has to attend.

Late afternoon, he has several phone calls to return and some bills to pay. He manages to sit down for 20 minutes while he watches the news and then cooks and eats his dinner rather hurriedly because he has a couple coming to see him about a wedding.

They, too, are late making him, in turn, late for a Parish Council meeting which goes on much longer than expected. It's 9.30pm before he is able to catch up on some prayer time and then sits down to watch a programme he has been waiting for all week. But then the phone rings and he is off to the hospital to anoint someone who is dying. By the time he gets home it has been a 15-hour day.

One of the more difficult things that a priest has to do is to be with families who have been bereaved. It is extremely difficult to suddenly

have to step into a family's grief and to try to sensitively provide both ministry and support to them in their needs, but it's what is expected and it's what he does – often several times a week but no less personally on each occasion.

"Catholic priest comforts grieving family" is not a common headline,

nor is "Priest celebrates Mass for 300", or "Catholic priest brings inner healing through Confession", or "Families line up for baptism by

priest", but they give a more accurate picture of priesthood than what we are currently hearing.

Hopefully, when someone has a problem they need to talk about, rather than spending a fortune on counselling, they remember their priest. No priest is an expert on everything, nor will he necessarily have the greatest counselling skills, but as a priest he brings something to the situation that other professionals can't by virtue of his priesthood. How many marriages have priests helped to save? How many suicides have they helped prevent? How many alcoholics have they helped turn their lives around? Those things don't make headlines either.

Media coverage of the issue of abuse has become all that the priesthood is about just at the moment; there is no good news to help redress the balance, no "but on the other hand..." stories. It is making it possible for the actions of a minority who have already caused enough damage to the lives of those they have abused, to now cause even more damage – this time to the priesthood.

The vast majority of priests are good men – not perfect, but generally good – who, day in day out, quietly get on with their ministry, serving their people and trying to live up to their expectations – never an easy task!

And the other thing that never seems to be mentioned is that the

incidence of abuse by priests is no more than in the general population. There have always been "bogey men"; children have always suffered abuse at the hands of fathers, uncles, and even mothers,

but the witch hunt doesn't turn its attention to those areas of our society. As trustworthy as priests should be, surely a child's own parents should be even more so. Why, then, is the focus only on priests?

As long as this continues, we find ourselves ministering under a cloud of suspicion that we don't deserve. Ultimately,the people of our

parishes will suffer as the number of priests available to serve them declines. Prayer is our ultimate hope: prayer for a priesthood

currently under siege and prayer for vocations in spite of it.

Father Neil McNicholas is a parish priest in Whitby.