Holding Court
from the St Edward Parish Bulletin, May 18, 2025
One of the most challenging and tempting things for me as a priest is what I call “holding court.” It’s a common social situation. I’m sitting with some of y’all enjoying a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. There’s pleasant conversation. Someone asks an innocent question of opinion: “Father, what’s your take on...” And I, who have been thinking about this question, begin to opine... MOST of the time, this is no big deal. I share my thoughts on how catechism classes should work or the state of BitCoin or why the cheese that’s in the long cooler at Kroger is better than the pre-packaged stuff - whatever. And then the conversation moves along and everyone enjoys their evening. “Holding Court” is when a priest can’t or won’t limit himself. Sometimes, as is happening now, there are a lot of questions! There’s a new pope! Father has a unique perspective. There are a lot of questions about the new guy and Father is able to compare and contrast him with Pope Francis. Also, what’s with the name Leo? What does it mean that he is an “Augustinian?” I saw an article on NewsMax about the conclave, I thought that was supposed to be secret? What about Cardinal PizzaHut, why didn’t he win? And these are perfectly good questions! PizzaHut is actually Pizzaballa - which is even more absurd - but still.
The problem with Holding Court is not the curiosity or the questions or the social setting, it’s the inevitable swollen head of the priest! And don’t be deceived, every priest I’ve ever known closely - myself included - LOVES to hold court. And most of the laypeople I’ve befriended in my 20 years of priesthood, love it too. It’s fun. And a little wine can loosen the tongue and we ask questions that we’d otherwise never get a chance to ask.
In addition to the ego boost for the priest, Holding Court tends to require the priest to answer questions in a quick-fire way that makes it hard to give proper context to the answer and makes it REALLY hard to avoid what a teacher of mine used to call “lying by oversimplification.”
Hence, this blog. Immediately after the conclave, I got probably 30 texts with some variation on “is Pope Leo liberal or conservative?” Which is like asking, “is ocean swimming dangerous?” The answer isn’t yes or no... When the first of those texts came in, I sat down and wrote an article which I shared in the bulletin last week: FrHumphries.com/p/the-10-spectra-of-left-v-right-catholicism In that article, I’m able to give some adequate context and provide a resource that can be passed along in a text if your friends are interested.
I wrote another article this week about the ordinary duties of being a Catholic Pastor. FrHumphries.com/p/a-five-tool-pastor A lot of people have asked about the Church this week because of Pope Leo’s election. In my latest post, I explain the day-to-day work of the pastor using a baseball analogy. It’s an analogy I came up with while Holding Court over a glass of wine a few years ago. It’s a good analogy, but it took me two hours to get the details right and Substack tells me that it takes fifteen minutes to read... That’s definitely more practically valuable than me explaining it over coffee. And, to be honest, there’s a both/and. I’m hoping to build out my blog so that I can answer questions AND easily share a link to a post with detailed explanations and links to further resources...
In the meantime, I am NOT saying that I don’t want to drink coffee or wine with you and answer questions! Just give me a time and place! I’ll keep working on my blog and working on keeping my head-size under control!