CAN PRIESTLY MAJESTY AND DIGNITY BE RECOVERED? ONLY BY THE GRACE OF GOD AND COMMONSENSE!

 In the early 80’s Bishop Lessard at a clergy conference lamented that some priests, certainly not I Lord, had lost their sense of the majesty and dignity of Christ the High Priest and His ordained priesthood,

This essay by a Filipino priest or layman, not sure and I have no name, hits the nail on the head and my own experience in what was once the premier seminary in the country in terms of academics, discipline and all the things lost after Vatican II. This was especially so by the 1970’s at my seminary:

“When we look at the priesthood today, both globally and in the Philippines, we are confronted with a serious question: what happened to the dignity, discipline, and gravitas of the priestly state? The answer is not found in isolated scandals or the random personalities of individual priests. It is found in the radical shift of priestly formation that took place after the 1960s. Before that time, priestly training was rigorous, ascetical, and profoundly supernatural. Seminarians were immersed in the rhythm of the Divine Office, with the Roman Breviary demanding hours of daily prayer. They were trained to master the Latin tongue, the theological system of St. Thomas Aquinas, the intricacies of canon law, the depths of moral theology. Most importantly, they were taught that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was at the very center of their existence. To learn the Mass back then was no simple task; it required precision, reverence, and discipline. This difficulty was not a barrier, it was the very means by which seminarians were formed into men of God. When they emerged from seminary, they carried themselves with gravitas. They were not comedians, entertainers, or performers. They were priests, men who radiated authority, men whose very presence communicated the sacred.

But after the 1970s, seminaries across the world embraced a different model of formation, one that was softer, more therapeutic, more focused on “pastoral sensitivity” than on asceticism and sacrifice. The hours of the breviary were shortened, the study of Latin was neglected, the rigors of Thomistic theology were replaced with vague modern philosophies. 

And this is exactly what we see on the viral videos flooding TikTok, Facebook, and X, priests turning their vocation into a stage, behaving like entertainers instead of men of God. And here is the deeper tragedy: the priest who tries to compete with the world as an entertainer will always lose. Why? Because there are already far better entertainers out there. The world does not need another mediocre comedian. It needs a man of God. It needs a priest who will speak the truth, administer the sacraments, and lead souls to Christ. When the priest forgets that and tries to win the world with cheap tricks, he undermines his own dignity and empties the priesthood of its supernatural power.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the Philippines. Filipino culture is joyful, expressive, and deeply communal. These are beautiful qualities that can enrich the Church. But they also carry a danger: the temptation to confuse joy with levity, reverence with entertainment, and pastoral closeness with casual familiarity. Many Filipino priests, eager to connect with their flock, fall into the trap of using social media not to catechize or evangelize, but to entertain. They dance in their cassocks, sing secular songs in their vestments, and deliver homilies sprinkled with corny jokes. The people laugh in the moment, but what happens after? Reverence for the sacred is diminished, the Mass is cheapened, and the priesthood is subtly reduced to a personality rather than a sacred office. Contrast this with the priests of old, Filipino or otherwise, who would never have imagined turning the Holy Mass into a stage or using their sacred office to chase applause. Their authority was rooted in sacrifice, prayer, and discipline. They did not need to entertain, because their holiness attracted souls more powerfully than any viral dance ever could.

The hard truth is this: when you make priestly formation easy, you get easy priests. And when you get easy priests, you get weak parishes, confused laity, and a Church that loses its sense of the sacred. The Filipino faithful do not need priests who act like comedians or TikTok personalities. They need priests who are true fathers, men who will stand in persona Christi with dignity, who will preach the hard truths of the Gospel without compromise, who will embrace the cross of daily prayer and sacrifice. This is what made the priests of the past so strong: their formation was hard, their training was exacting, their lives were anchored in discipline. And this is what is missing in so many seminaries today.

If we want to recover the priesthood, in the Philippines and throughout the world, we must recover the old model of formation. We must return to the rigorous discipline of the Divine Office, to the demanding study of Latin and Thomistic theology, to the precise and reverent training of the liturgy. We must once again form men who are not afraid of sacrifice, who do not need to be liked, who do not seek relevance, but who live only to serve Christ and His Church. The priesthood is not about being popular. It is not about entertainment. It is about holiness. And holiness is hard. But only when the priest embraces the hard path of holiness does he become what he was ordained to be: another Christ, a true father, and a shepherd who will lay down his life for his flock.”

#catholicchurch #catholic #catholicism #romancatholic #catechism #priesthood #sacerdote #pari #ParingPilipino #priestlyvocations