The Curé d’Ars to Confront Our Lost Culture

On a recent Tuesday, beneath a wide, blue sky stretched over the French countryside, two Benedictine Sisters of Montmartre led me into a small room to speak with the bishop who had offered the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. They spoke softly in French to Bishop Pascal Marie Roland, the shepherd of Belley-Ars, who listened in silence, nodding, his gaze fixed on the floor. When he finally looked up, he remarked in fluent English—learned from his father, an English teacher—“It seems you’ve written a book that pulls our St. Vianney from his grave.” With a faint smile, he continued, “And that you’ve even taken on his voice.” 

The semi-cloistered sisters knew it was time to leave the room, leaving us alone in the small space that once served as the sacristy of St. Jean-Marie-Baptiste Vianney—the humble Curé of Ars. Just steps beyond stood the narrow wooden confessional where he spent up to fourteen hours a day, pouring himself out in the labor of absolution.

There was a time when John Vianney was held up as the model parish priest—the greatest shepherd of souls in the history of Christendom. Popes John XXIII, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI each wrote long letters to their brother priests about Vianney’s holy, pastoral manner, urging them to study and emulate the purity of Vianney’s mortified priesthood.

But it is a different time now.

In fact, to begin my conversation with Bishop Roland, I suggested that the patron of parish priests—irony of ironies—would be canceled today. As his expression shifted, and eyes narrowed, I thought, no wonder the French find us insufferable.

I tried to ease the moment, sharing what I had earlier told the Benedictine Sisters—the serene, habited women who spend their lives attending Mass, praying Holy Hours, and chanting the Divine Office in the Sanctuary of Ars. Their devotion to the Curé runs deep. They love his memory, his humility, and perhaps his soul more intimately than anyone on earth. It seems to me that Vianney courses through their bloodstream.

Before Mass, I stood with two sisters outside Crêperie des Dombes, the shoebox-sized eatery footsteps from Vianney’s old parish church. The warm French incense of crêpes, espresso, and fresh bread rose around us, gently enfolding the morning. I told them I had arrived in Ars the day before, having traveled from America to consecrate my new book, Coached by the Curé: Lessons in Shepherding with St. John Vianney, at St. Sixtus—the humble parish Vianney shepherded from 1818 until his death in 1859.

I told them I come from a family of priests and that St. Vianney is my patron. They smiled deeply, seemingly moved by our shared love for the saint who lives like an icon hanging on the walls of their souls.

I explained to Bishop Roland what I shared with the sisters.

“My book is a love letter in the Curé’s own hand,” I said, watching his eyes. “Like he’s written a postcard and dropped it from Heaven.” I paused, knowing the harder truth and heart of my book lay ahead.

In Heaven, his muse—the martyr Philomena—urges him to guide parents in their calling to become priests in their homes. With God standing beside her, and nine holy priest-saints listening in—Simon Peter, Kolbe, Bosco, Damien the Leper, Patrick, and others—Philomena gives the Curé a new mission and title. No longer is he just the patron saint of parish priests. God has renamed him the Patron Saint of the Domestic Priesthood.

I could see the bishop was listening. But I still hadn’t gotten there.

“Philomena tells Vianney of his new title directly after a dialogue shared by the priest-saints, who discuss with frankness the terribly weakened state of the ministerial priesthood,” I explained. The bishop looked at me, unsmiling but patient. 

As the saints, martyrs, and missionaries speak with candor on the softened and re-engineered priesthood of the past sixty years, God nods to Philomena, who addresses Vianney, her voice rising like a lioness protecting her pride:

“Jean-Marie, too few clergy today are seen today as true rescuers of children. Too many have chosen their own comfort over the fight! Curé, the Church in the West has failed in her mandate to slay the wolf of Modernism that Pope Pius X warned about more than a century ago. Satan has slipped through the breach and driven legions of youngsters into the dark woods of confusion—where, if parents don’t bring them back, they will be lost forever.

“In this time of clergy crisis, it is necessary for faithful Catholic mothers and fathers to recognize their sacred role within the common priesthood. They must become priests in their homes! Invisible choruses of demons roam everywhere now. Countless souls of children are stolen by Satan each day; parents must fight to the death to save their children!

“You, Jean-Marie, must guide and instruct these agonized parents, who have been forced to confront the leviathan of modernity—coach them in the ways of salvation; write to them of how to pull their children back to the safety of the sacraments and into the firm embrace of Holy Mother Church.”

I looked at the bishop’s poker face and continued.

“Through no fault of their own,” Philomena informs the Curé,

“a universe of children have been lured into moral wastelands, godlessness, and into the Ouija boards of their cell phones. The landslide has come. 

“It is a time like no other. Faithful moms and dads must be willing today to trade their own lives for the lives of their children. And they must search out their lost lambs who’ve left the faith. Write to them of how you brought the lost village of Ars back to the faith. God the Father has asked that you offer moms and dads your sacred blueprint of Ars’ resurrection. It was your saving of Ars that will show parents how to bring their children back to the shoreline of His Fount of Mercy and protection.”

Bishop Roland wore a smile that seemed more like a mask—measured and reserved—unlike the warm, open expressions of the sisters when I explained the aim of my book. Though courteous, he offered no real impressions on Coached by the Curé. He simply said he hoped the book would find success and thanked me for my love of St. Vianney and for making my pilgrimage to Ars. I, in turn, expressed my gratitude for his role as shepherd of Belley-Ars and for celebrating a beautiful Mass.

Before leaving the sacristy, I asked the bishop to consider extending an invitation to the then-unknown pope—on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of St. Vianney’s canonization, May 31. The beginning of the conclave was still a few days away.

“Wouldn’t it be a wonderful gift to the Catholic laity,” I said, “if the new Shepherd of the Church made Ars his first papal visit—and consecrated his role as Vicar in the parish where the Curé poured himself out?”

This time, Bishop Roland smiled—genuinely. He knew thousands would soon be pouring into Ars to venerate the Curé’s incorrupt body and to celebrate the centenary of his sainthood.

“It’s a good idea,” he said. “Though it’s probably too late for that.”

I thought then: his visit would come not a moment too soon. It would signal a turning point from the pontificate of Pope Francis—a quiet pivot—and mark a return to the old ways of pastoring the people of God.

I imagine more than a few daily Mass goers privately thought of the conclave when one of last week’s readings recalled the casting of lots that chose St. Matthias—the one appointed to replace the traitor Judas. Chosen to step into the circle of the apostles, Matthias would eventually bring the Gospel to Cappadocia, in what is modern-day Turkey, where tradition holds he was beheaded for the Faith.

The lot has fallen on Pope Leo. In his first sermon to the cardinals, he spoke with sober urgency about the need to turn back the Babylon expanding across the world and into homes—a moral degeneracy that has crept into too many corners of the Church. He invoked the witness of Ignatius of Antioch, the early bishop who was torn apart by wild beasts in the arena, a martyr whose blood bore testimony to unwavering fidelity to Jesus Christ.

It can be imagined that millions of faithful Catholics are praying that Pope Leo resists the temptation to befriend the world. The paradox at the heart of his new vocation is this: because he is called to serve, shepherd, and love the world, he must now begin to hate it.

John Vianney once said of his role as pastor: 

If a priest is determined not to lose his soul, as soon as any disorder arises in the parish, he must trample underfoot all human considerations, as well as the fear of the contempt and the hatred of his people. He must not allow anything to bar his way in the discharge of duty, even if he was certain of being murdered on coming down from the pulpit. A pastor who wants to do his duty must keep his sword in his hand at all times.

Vianney continued: “Did not St. Paul write to the faithful of Corinth: ‘I most gladly will spend and be spent myself for your souls, though loving you more, I be loved less.’”

The great priest-saint of Ars knew what St. Paul knew: all that was not of God was waste. So, both martyrs— Paul red, the Curé white—died daily to themselves to convert and save the souls of the broken world that surrounded them. St. Mother Teresa would often whisper a plea to Heaven: “Take all—give me souls.”

A pilgrimage by Pope Leo to Ars would serve as an unspoken signal to the faithful: the era of friendship with the world from the Seat of Peter is over. As Vianney understood, the pope’s task is to be the chief shepherd and the holy symbol of the Slaughtered Lamb for the Church—the moral voice and the guarantor of unity. It is his essential duty to guard the Church’s dogma and doctrine, ensuring they remain steadfast for the benefit and salvation of mankind.

Fearlessness must reign in Pope Leo as he begins the labor of untangling the knotted mess and measureless abyss of chaos within a Church that is losing its lambs to the world. In the past decade alone, millions of Catholic teens, college students, and young adults have quietly slipped away—bored, disillusioned, or simply unchallenged. The Church’s efforts to soften the ground—to make the Faith more palatable by downplaying the fight for virtue, the pursuit of sanctity, and the call to live sacramentally-fueled countercultural lives—have failed miserably.

Accommodation never works. Friendship with the world never works. Because the world will press you to death until you conform to it.

The Catholic Church needs a hero now. Nothing less will do. Pope Leo must lead a new crusade to search out the lost lambs and bring them back. 

In my book—through Philomena—God asks Vianney to implore parents to become holy priests in their homes. It seems the right place to start. 

When St. Vianney first stepped into the spiritually dead farming village of Ars in the winter of 1818, he knelt in the humble, empty parish church, where only a few villagers attended Sunday Mass. His first recorded prayer echoes through the ages: 

My God, grant me the conversion of my parish. I am willing to suffer all my life, whatever it may please You to lay upon me; yes, even for a hundred years, I am prepared to endure the sharpest pains, only let my people be converted.

Rising from the kneeler before the tabernacle—the sacred space that had become like a hermit’s cell for him—he stepped forward and became a martyr. Within twenty years of that prayer, Ars had become converted into a village of willing martyrs.

Within thirty years of that prayer, the seemingly unlikely figure—who had flunked out of seminary three times—became the one most responsible for the Catholic recovery of the entirety of a France once haunted by the shadow of the guillotine after Robespierre’s Reign of Terror. How did this happen? In the tens of thousands of ways that a pastor dies for the souls of his parish. 

Like a pebble tossed into a pond, his sacrifices, mortifications, endless confrontations with the devil, and boundless love for his people rippled outward, touching nearly every village and city in France—and beyond. A special train line was constructed to accommodate the tens of thousands of pilgrims, both French and European, who stopped in Lyon and then walked 50 kilometers to seek his absolution and, on occasion, have their souls laid bare before them.

John Vianney changed the world because he became its enemy.

I hope Bishop Roland sent that invitation to Pope Leo, urging him to come to Ars for the anniversary of the Curé’s canonization. I can see it clearly in my mind’s eye: Pope Leo, prostrate before the incorrupt body of St. John Vianney, imploring the patron saint of priests to help him become like the One True Priest—Jesus Christ—who embraced His identity as the Slaughtered Lamb to redeem a sinful and lost world.

Do you see Pope Leo as I do—prostrate on the cold, stone floor, pleading with the Curé to help him begin to shepherd our bleeding-out youth and a distracted, drifting, and aching world back to Jesus Christ and His One True Church?

Can’t you see him there—tears streaking the cold stone beneath him—pleading for the Curé’s indefatigability and his intercession: Oh Curé, help me to hate the world as you did, so that through my witness of fatherhood, God might begin to heal and save it.

And even if Bishop Roland never sent the invite, should it not be our prayer for the new Bishop of Rome that the heart of the Curé would be his?