Eyes on....

Welcome to the website of Fr.Survil where his valuable writings are stored, such as the following dated 31 Dec, 2019:



Bp. Edward Malesic   

723 E. Pittsburgh St

Greensburg, PA  15601

Dear Bishop Malesic:

As you told us at the 2019 Christmas gathering of the retired priests of the Greensburg Diocese, I did receive the two books you sent to us: The one on the Gospel of St. Matthew and the one on WHY CELIBACY  

As you will understand when you reach your eighties -- an achievement realized by many of us – celibacy is no longer an existential issue. (Then my cousin Bill just got married at age 83. Sigh.)    But it is still an issue for our Church for a very different reason.     Let me explain:

For three of the twelve years I was pastor of the parish of San Antonio de Padua, Diocese of Verapaz, Guatemala, I served with Fr. Anibal Cabrera of happy memory. At the age of 30 he was assigned by Bishop Flores to work with me.  I accepted Fr. Anibal, knowing he had fathered a child while serving as pastor at another parish in the same diocese. I came to understand he continued seeing the mother of his child on a regular basis. The people of the parish knew as well, but like me, they were most happy with Fr. Anibal’s presence and his many talents such as establishing a parish radio station, increasing Mass attendance, and even leading the commun-ity’s effort to obligate the newly built hydroelectric station’s power reach the town. A major investor of the power station was none other than the president of The Republic. It’s not impossible to imagine Fr. Anibal’s “accidental” death on Good Friday at the age of 33 had some-thing to do with his challenging the president’s business dealings.

Meanwhile, I knew of a number of priests in that and other dioceses in Guatemala whose service to the Church and the Kingdom of Jesus left much to be desired. Does their celibacy help?  Do they take advantage of the Freedom?  Hard to see.

Then In 2007 I attended the beatification of Franz Jagerstatter in the Cathedral of Linz, Austria. One aspect of Blessed Franz’s story is told in the film:  A HIDDEN LIFE, RATED BY the NPR film critic as “One of the ten best films of 2019.”. That aspect is how Franz struggled to balance his obligations as a husband and father of three young children to what his conscience, well-informed by The Gospels of the nonviolent Jesus demanded that he say NO to picking up a gun for Hitler’s wars. How many thousands of German and Austrian celibate priests, free of obligation to wife and children, lived nicely beyond 1945 while millions of Jews, along with a greater number of civilians died in that war.  True enough,  Father Maximillian Kolbe took advantage of the freedom that celibacy bestows, to the glory of his priesthood.  Yet, why was Saint Max such an exception?  

Then, along with the other three who attended Blessed Franz’ beatification, we have since been working to make known the life and contribution to peace-keeping, that of BEN SALMON (www.bensalmon.org) a Catholic layman from Denver/Chicago, father of four, one of whom became a priest, another a nun. BEN faced the same struggle as Franz: How to balance his obligation as a husband and a father to what his conscience, well-informed by the Gospels of the nonviolent Jesus, demanded he say NO to President Wilson’s call to war against German Catholics. To be noted, Ben also said NO while Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore was saying to President Wilson: Yes, you can count on us Catholics to kill those German Catholics in a war to end all wars. Also, how many were the U.S. priests willing to serve as chaplains to accompany and therefore bless, the resulting carnage? 

To conclude:  Hypothetically celibacy holds out great potential, given the freedom it allows for.  Yet, why are those possibilities so often not realized, while married men such as Franz and Ben and Anibal with women and children in their lives, still follow Jesus to Calvary?

Sincerely,

Bernard Survil,  bsurvil@uscatholicpriests.us/                 CC: Clergy, Diocese of Greensburg