On Sunday, I attended a community meeting in the town over from me. The mayor of that town had invited me, as he claimed, to get a chance to discuss the request we’ve submitted to him for the library land purchase. What the meeting turned out to be was a discussion about whether or not the mayor should be ousted from his mayor ship.
The meeting was started by the Catholic priest of the nearest city. He was concerned for the community, as he put it, and knew that everyone agreed that what was best for the town ought be done. Apparently a meeting had been held the week prior which had gotten completely out of hand. So, he was the moderator of this meeting which he promised would be more productive. First he granted someone with complaints against the mayor to speak. The man spoke (with limited interruption) about the many ways the mayor has avoided being accountable with his money to the community members, and the curious ways that he noticed money was being spent.
Then the mayor spoke. He was interrupted repeatedly (and every time seemed less concerned, as if he almost wanted an excuse to not address what the charges that had been brought against him.) The priest had to move on to deliver a mass (it was a Sunday after all) and left another much less competent man in charge as moderator. People began to speak out of turn more rapidly and their tones reached higher and higher pitches. As things got heated, I looked around at all of the other faces in the room and wondered, again, what the hell I was doing there!
The meeting ended when people got too frustrated by their own interruptions and stormed out. Then the mayor left. He was very visibly angry.
It struck me that a priest would rarely be called in to moderate political talks in the US, or at least that is the hope. How many other communities in the world depend on their religious leaders to be more than just spiritual advisors? At what point is it no longer appropriate to ask religious leaders to be more than spiritual advisors?
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