Parish Entry

By Fr. Bob Bedard


My tenure at St. Mary’s in Ottawa did not begin until 1984. But it was in preparation for a few years prior to that.

Archbishop Joseph-Aurele Plourde was the ‘ordinary’ of Ottawa and had been since 1967. He was quite a good fellow when you’d get to know him, but he was enigmatic (very hard to figure out) and he was volatile. He could blow up, always unexpectedly, and create havoc in all directions at once.

But, along with his peculiarities, he was truly very prophetic. He had a great sense of Church and was, I believe, adept at reading the signs of the times. Into the eighties, he began to tell me how good he thought I could be as a pastor. Each year for four consecutive years, he would call me in for a discussion and outline the parish situation he had in mind for me. For the first three of those years, I was able to talk him out of it by suggesting other moves that could help solve the ad hoc problems. At the third occasion he had asked me what I myself wanted to do. I told him that I would do anything he said. His response was: “That is no damn help to me. I want to know what you think God is saying to you!”

I actually had not, since I started teaching, wanted at all to be a pastor. During my years at St. Pius X High School, twenty in all, I customarily helped weekends in various parishes – St. Theresa’s, St. Monica’s. The pastors all seemed to be under siege. The job description since Vatican II had grown to amazing proportions, and the men appeared to be extremely busy. There were frequent programs to initiate. There were agendas being suggested and embraced by the lay people, newly conscious of their vital roles in the whole ministry of the Church. The pastors were often men trying to catch up. Some were wearing out others were becoming frustrated, some others even bitter. Their ministry did not often look to me as though it were life-giving for them. I didn’t want to touch it with a ten-foot pole. So, I avoided it like the plague.

I stickhandled successfully around the archbishop for three straight years. Because I continued to make the daily offer to the Lord that I would do anything he wanted, he began to change my heart. I commenced to feel that I would finally have to assume a pastor’s role before too long if I were to stay in the Lord’s will.

During the summer of 1984, I spoke at three conferences across the country – one in the east, one in the west, and one in central Canada. The conference themes were similar, so I gave basically the same talk at all three. My topic became ‘the renewal of a parish’. In it, I described what I called the ideal parish: one in which the Sunday worship would be #1 priority (joyfully enthusiastic and quietly reverent); evangelization to inform everything done; wide-scale delegation of sensitive pastoral ministries to prepared lay people, chosen by the pastor himself; pastor freed up thereby to concentrate on prayer and the service of the word a la Acts 6, relationship-building venues for parishioners, teaching programs for the average Catholic to fill in the many blank spaces in his less than impressive compendium of Catholic truth strong youth presence and participation. It was very well received.

Along with the conferences and the many talks I gave during a country-wide tour on Medjugorje here, there, and everywhere, I sensed the Lord saying to me in prayer that the time was coming soon when I would have to assume the mantle of pastor. I was to return home by September and shut down my travels because God’s word seemed to be that he would shortly change my agenda.

I thought I’d better apprise the archbishop of my musings. After all, he had said he wanted to be kept current on what I thought the Lord was saying to me. I told him I was finished stickhandling around him and would now be willing to take on a parish. He was delighted, but told me there were no openings at the moment. All appointments had been made in June. This was now September. I assured him I knew that, but was simply trying to give him heads up for the inevitable personnel board meetings next spring.

He then asked what kind of parish I had in mind. I replied that I wouldn’t care for one of the big ‘plum’ parishes, but rather one that was somewhat down at the heels. “Some place like St. Mary’s (in danger of being closed) or Blessed Sacrament where I grew up”, (now not much more than an empty shell). He thanked me, and I left.

About two weeks later, I received a call from the auxiliary bishop asking me to come in. I settled into a chair in his office, waiting for him to say something. He looked like the cat that swallowed the canary, but said nothing. Just then, the archbishop appeared at the door with a big smile. “I have seen the finger of God,” he said. “The Holy Spirit wants you to go to St. Mary’s.”

It seems a situation had arisen at St. Theresa’s and the pastor had to be replaced. The pastor from St. Mary’s had offered to go to the now-vacant St. Theresa’s, and St. Mary’s was without a pastor. I was to go there in a month.

Before moving in, I had to meet with the pastor for the compulsory take-over tour. He showed me the books, the accounts, the parish records, the safe, the fire extinguishers, the fuse box ,etc. All of those things just bore me to tears. I didn’t want to know anything about any of them.

He took me through the church. Everything looked fine. Out the front door, he pointed at the disrepair of the front steps. Those will have to be fixed, he said. If there’s an accident, you could be sued. I couldn’t have cared less. The front steps could fall off entirely, I thought, and I wouldn’t even notice.

We went through the hall. It looked clean and unused. As it turned out, only one group used it regularly -–a local Brownie pack – not even a parish concern. He showed me the furnace and how to deal with it. He gave me the plumber’s number. “You’ll need him, for sure,” he said. He reported that the roof was in bad shape and needed serious work – about $40,000. “But we don’t have the money,” he lamented. “We’re barely making it. I’ve pared down the expenses as far as I can. I’m glad you’re taking it on.”

By this time, I was semi-depressed. I have no use for administrative matters and, in fact, refuse to deal with them.

“Nobody comes here anymore,” he continued. “In fact, at any of the Sunday Masses, you can throw a snowball from front to back and not hit anybody.”
“How about music?” I asked, hopefully anticipating something positive by way of an answer. “Well,” he replied, “I don’t sing and I don’t care much for music. There’s a small choir at one of the Sunday Masses, but they’re way back in the balcony and can barely be heard. Besides, the organ is pretty broken down. A lot of the keys don’t work.. It’s a pretty strange sound. It’s a good thing you can’t hear them.

The Sunday collection amounted to about $900 on a weekly basis. And there’s not much to do besides Sacraments. “You’ll have lots of time to read.”

I headed for home that day with a large cloud of gloom hanging over my head.

I was close to panic. What can I do? I’m stuck. I have to go there. I dreaded the very thought.

The week before I got there, all the ushers and the money-counters quit. And a couple of dozen parishioners left the parish. This is before I got there! How bad can this get, I wondered.

I tried to keep calm. I’ll need some help, I thought. I recruited my very close friend Ed Noah, who was between jobs at the time. He would know how to take care of all that administrative stuff. Unlike the former pastor, I do like music and consider it of vital importance in the carrying out and the celebration of the Church’s Liturgy. I got in touch with a young man I knew very well, whom I had taught in high school, and who was a very gifted, prayerful besides, worship leader and musician. His name was Marcel Dion. He agreed to give it a try.

I took up residence at St. Mary’s in the middle of November, 1984. My first Sunday is hard to forget.

There were three Masses Sunday morning in addition the Saturday evening celebration. There was only a corporal’s guard at each one. The weather had turned quite cold. With the furnace clanking away at less than half strength, the people had all their winter clothing on throughout Mass. The lights in the church were very dim (less than half the necessary candle power for the space, we learned later). The sound system was very poor, quite difficult to hear what the new pastor had to say.

My debut was pretty much a disaster. After each Mass I posted myself outside the main door of the church to be available for anybody who might want to talk to me. I might as well have saved my energy. Nobody even came near me, let alone talk to me. I don’t remember if I expected to see some friendly faces, hear some friendly voices, and shake the hands of some friendly people welcoming me to the parish. But, if I did have such expectations, they were most cruelly dashed. Not one word of welcome. The weather was cold, but the parish atmosphere was deep freeze.

I decided not to let it bother me. After all, I was where the Lord and the bishop had placed me. I would bite the bullet and soldier on

I realized that, although I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to see happen in the parish, I didn’t have a clue as to how to get there. I had no strategy, no plan. I wasn’t used to that. I always had different ideas in my head about things to try.

After 2 or 3 repeats of the opening weekend drill, my spirits were down, dragging badly. I moved again into panic mode. What if nothing ever changed? Each week the attendance went down and the collection with it. I wondered if I had been sent here to preside over the demise of the parish. Perhaps I would simply be the last pastor of St. Mary’s and close the place.

Can I possibly get out of here, I wondered? I felt trapped. One last desperate idea occurred to me. What if I faint at the altar next Sunday? They would lug me off to the hospital where I would receive treatment for exhaustion. With deep regret, I would have to tell the archbishop he needed a replacement. I would be free!

It didn’t take long for my conscience to confront me on that one. It would be a lie. I couldn’t do it. So I had to face the music.

My prayer went into a frantic phase. That lasted a week and was replaced by a kind of not-so-holy resignation. At the rate people were leaving the parish, I would soon be talking to myself at St. Mary’s. I could take my predecessor’s advice and read books. I would join a few book clubs. Maybe I could start one myself. That was it. I’d start a little business, a book exchange or something.

As I dithered along in this vein, it began to occur to me that perhaps God had a plan that hadn’t hit me at all. I began to ask him some fairly pointed questions. At the same time, I remembered to pledge to do whatever He might tell me. That, of course, is the key to hearing from the Lord.

Shortly, a word began to drift in and out of my daily personal prayer that I’d never before heard in that context. The word in question was “permission”. It was just another distraction, I told myself. But, try as I might, I couldn’t chase it away. Three or four days in a row, there it was. I asked the Lord if it was his word and, if so, what did He mean by it. It began to take flesh in a very distinct form:

“I want your permission to do what I want to do here. I don’t want your bright ideas and plans to get in my way. As well, I want you to tell the people you’re giving this permission to me. And furthermore, I want their permission, too. If I get enough permissions, I’ll move. When I do, you’ll see it and can then explain it to the people and support it”.

I was quite struck by the cogency of the word and scared to death at the same time. “O Lord, if I start talking like that, they’ll think I’m crazy.”

When He starts getting across to me, I’m not always very sure I’m interpreting it correctly. But this time, it was crystal clear. “Look: they know you’re crazy. What have you got to lose?” He was right. My reputation as a charismatic cuckoo had preceded me.