Loneliness and Rural Clergy

November 14, 2024

This paper reflects my experiences and observations as a mental health professional of Catholic clergy working in Rural Areas of Central and Northern Michigan. One of the strong tenets that has always guided my life is “help the helpers” thus I actively did a reach out to the local priests who were the solo priest for a parish. This would involve stopping for coffee, lunch chats, kill a beer, or trying not to dump Father into a river while canoeing. Thus, I learned about loneliness I learned that loneliness is often as experienced by rural clergy. It is critically important to realize that loneliness can have one of more co-existing “buddies” which is where intervention needs to begin.

Buddie #1 Depression. Depression can setup desire for alcohol or substance abuse and eating disorders as will as social isolation: medical conditions such as heart attacks, strokes, cancer, early dementia; also, transference and counter transference dynamics with women who are receiving pastoral counsel. Then there’s the “office wife” dynamics vulnerability where a woman notices the priest’s emotional issues and seeks to take care of him and does.

Buddie #2: Being on call 24/7 with no break. Body never able to “shut down” and recharge. Crisis alert Bio system is always running.

Buddie #3: Life in a Goldfish Bowl. In the rural areas someone is always watching and judging how the priest behaves in public. It is subtle, but relentless pressure and feeds the rumor mill which, in time, will get back to the bishop. So much for having relaxing recharging drinks with the knights at a local bar. Erving Goffman wrote The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life . In this book, Goffman presents the idea that like theater, life has a front stage where we present our performances (jobs, school, community events, etc., to the outside world.) We also have a backstage area where we recharge and prepare for our front stage performances. The all-visible fishbowl prevents the backstage recharge thus creating a major energy drain.

Buddie #4. The double bind situation of pastoral duties and time conflicting with pastoral administrative duties. As an example, the Pastor is at bedside of a dying parishioner while in the back of his head he can see the monthly budget that is due the next day and there is no additional staff to do the work on the budget.

Buddie #5: feeling isolation from diocesean structure and decision making that impacts upon the priest, but feels he has no input. “Discount Feelings Time.”

All of these “buddy dynamics” feed the loneliness experienced by a rural priest. The issue in most situations is not if the rural priest will experience loneliness with one or more of its “buddies,” but when and what will be the damage.