Thanks Yaholo for your comment. I find it very interesting, but also in a way, somewhat paradoxical.

Maybe our experiences of “church” are very different? My own (Celtic) and very incarnational approach to pastoral ministry, has always enabled me to engage with people when/where they are and to share their lives (so far as I am allowed to do so by them). It doesn’t really come down to status, though I agree, there are those who might want to promote that. But I have never tried to be holy on behalf of other people. Being holy is something to which we should all aspire.

Perhaps we can agree that there is a difference between “leading” people in a public role (such as saying mass or speaking to people over coffee time afterwards) as opposed to getting alongside them in a pastoral/personal role?

I suppose when I say your comment is paradoxical, I just mean that your estimation of how someone would react to being associated with a “common person” (a priest being human, rather than constantly being some kind of “Imagio Christi”), is just not my own experience of ministry.

For me, making connection with people — as the true imagio Christi, and therefore being myself as God has made me — has always been a point of spiritual growth for all involved, and for some, a joy of revelation and a true example of leadership which speaks to people where they really are. The short-hand for this, in terms of those we are called to love in this world, would be: “I’m worth loving, just as I am.”