Confession of a City Priest

Christendom Students Hear Confession of City Priest

October 15, 2002

"Every day I could write a book about what happens in a parish in New York City and I don't mean that as any kind of exaggeration. It would make the world's greatest soap opera. I could make a fortune, of course, if I were not bound by the seal of the confessional," playfully confessed Rev. George Rutler to the Christendom College community on October, 7, 2002.

Speaking on the topic of "The Public Diary of a City Priest," Fr. Rutler, pastor of The Church of Our Saviour in Manhattan, NY, spoke about the important role that priests play in the world today and particularly about the work that he does in the city of New York.

Born in 1945 and reared in the Episcopal tradition in New Jersey and New York, Father Rutler was an Episcopal priest for nine years, and the youngest Episcopal rector in the country when he headed the Church of Good Shepherd in Rosemont, Pennsylvania. He was received into the Catholic Church in 1979 and was sent to the North American College in Rome for seminary studies.

Fr. Rutler was ordained to the diaconate in Rome by His Eminence William Cardinal Baum in 1980 and received priestly ordination in St. Patrick's Cathedral at the hands of His Eminence Terence Cardinal Cooke in 1981. He served as Associate Pastor of St. Joseph's Bronxville; Our Lady of Victory in the Wall Street area; and St. Agnes, Manhattan. He was a university chaplain for the Archdiocese, and also chaplain to a general hospital and a psychiatric hospital. For ten years he was National Chaplain of Legatus, the organization of Catholic business leaders and their families engaged in spiritual formation and evangelization. A board member of several schools and colleges, as well as an advisor to the Board of Christendom College, he is also Chaplain of the New York Guild of Catholic Lawyers and has long been associated with Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity, and other religious orders, as a retreat master. For thirteen years his weekly television program has been broadcast worldwide on EWTN. Cardinal Egan appointed Fr. Rutler pastor of The Church of Our Saviour, effective September 17, 2001.

According to Fr. Rutler, despite what many may think, a parish is the heart of the Church, not the Chancery. The reason the parish is so important is because each parish is made up of many different people and families, and the family is the "domestic church." As a pastor, said Fr. Rutler, one needs to keep reminding oneself of that.

Speaking about the diversity of many parishes, Fr. Rutler explained that Our Lord said that the Church would be like a mustard bush into whose branches all manner of birds would gather. "There is the canary, but there is also the cuckoo; the peacock, but also the vulture. Every parish is this way. This is the glory of the Catholic Church. The more we forget this and the more we neglect it, the more the parish will reflect the kind of subtle protestant eyes of our society, which sees the faithful as a gathering of the righteousness, rather than the ability to be constantly absolved."

Fr. Rutler stressed to the audience the need for and the importance of confessions. "If you only knew what happens in the confessional during lunch hours throughout the week; how lives are changed. So often when I feel I have to leave the confessional because either it's too hot in there or I've had too much tea," quipped Fr. Rutler, "somebody comes in and says ‘Bless me Father, I've never been to confession before,' or ‘Bless me Father, it's been thirty years.' The life changing confessions that happen every day would absolutely astonish our media. It's absolutely true that when a priest has the urge to leave the confessional, it is the devil trying to get him out. It is a tremendous compliment the devil pays the Catholic Church."

But Fr. Rutler believes that one of the many reasons that people do not go to confession very often anymore is that confession times are reduced to sometimes a mere thirty minutes a week in some parishes, if at all. Additionally, the churches themselves are not very aesthetically pleasing or welcoming so many people just never enter them. "It depresses me sometimes to visit other parishes and see Churches that look like living rooms or country clubs, not Catholic churches," remarked Fr. Rutler. "Some have fireplaces, and catering halls, while others have large grand pianos in the center of their buildings. I suppose they think Liberace saved mankind!"

Ending his discussion of priestly work, Fr. Rutler recounted how, on September 11, 2001, as then-pastor of St. Agnes Parish in Manhattan, he spent most of his day at what's now called Ground Zero, hearing confessions and administering the last rites to the many firemen who were to risk their lives for the many victims. In fact, he had been working right next to the one priest who was killed, Fr. Michael Judge. "Everyone who was there was very changed. After this, people began realizing that there is holiness in this world, and there is also evil. These are two things that people have neglected for a long time," concluded Fr. Rutler.

Source: http://www.christendom.edu/news/archives/archives02/georgerutler.shtml