There but for the grace of God will go the rest of us...
By Kim Mulford and Jim Walsh
Courrier Post
April 3, 2008
The Camden Diocese plans to slash its number of parishes from 124 to 66, Bishop Joseph Galante has announced.
Under a restructuring program, the diocese will consist of 38 merged parishes, three "clusters" involving six parishes and 22 stand-alone parishes, Galante said at a press conference today.
The changes will occur over the next one to two years, he said.
Galante said the number of "worship sites" will vary - with some serving as "primary, year-round sites" and others in use as secondary sites, mission sites or in summer months at the Jersey Shore.
"While Catholic population is increasing overall, in many instances it has shifted out of former Catholic populations centers into other parts of the diocese, leaving behind parish facilities that are in close proximity to each other, but are now under-utilized and aging," he said.
In Camden,the consolidation would merge two neighborhood parishes - Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Fatima in South Camden and Holy Name in North Camden - into a parish based at the downtown Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.
Members of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Fatima had protested outside diocesan headquarters in an effort to prevent that merger.
In addition, St. Joan of Arc and St. Bartholomew will merge and be clustered with Sacred Heart parish in Waterfront South. The diocese said clustering means that parishes will retain identities and share a priest or team of priests.
And St. Joseph Pro-Cathedral in East Camden would merge with St. Cecelia and St. Veronica.Two Camden parishes - St. Anthony and St. Joseph - would remain as stand-alone institutions.
Mergers will affect four parishes in Cherry Hill.
Queen of Heaven is to join with nearby St. Peter Celestine on the town's west side, while St Pius X (west side) will join with Holy Rosary on the east side.
In addition, St. Mary parish is to be clustered with St. Thomas More.
Other mergers in Camden County:
--St John and Transfiguration, both in Collingswood will join with Holy Saviour in Westmont.
--St. Aloysius of Oaklyn and St. Vincent Pallotti of Haddon Township.
--Also Sacred Heart in Mount Ephraim with Holy Maternity in Audubon.
--Annunciation of Bellmawr is to join St. Anne of Westville and St. Maurice of Brooklawn. Standing alone would be St. Peter in Merchantville, St. Stephen in Pennsauken, Immaculate Heart in Woodlynne and St. Mary of Gloucester City, the oldest parish in the diocese.
More mergers:
--St. Lawrence of Lindenwold joins St. Luke of Stratford and Our Lady of Grace in Somerdale.
--Mary Mother of the Church in Bellmawr joins St. Francis de Sales in Barrington and St. Gregory in Magnolia.
--St. Maria Goretti of Runnemede joins St. Teresa of Runnemede.
--St. Rose of Lima stands alone in Haddon Heights.
--St. Agnes and St. Jude, both of Blackwood, are merging.
--St. Mary of Williamstown and St. John Neumann of Sicklerville, are merging.
--Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Berlin Borough, joins with St. Edward of Pine Hill and Mater Ecclesiae of Berlin Borough.
--Standing alone are Holy Family of Sewell, St. Charles Borromeo of Sicklerville and Sts. Peter and Paul of Washington Township.
--A three-way merger will join Holy Name of Jesus in Mullica Hill, with St. Joseph of Woodstown and St. Ann of Elmer.
In Gloucester County, these mergers will occur:
--Our Lady of Lourdes, Glassboro, with Our Lady Queen of Peace in Pitman.
--St. Margaret of Woodbury Heights with St. John Vianney of Deptford.
--St. Patrick of Woodbury, with St. Matthew of National Park and Most Holy Redeemer of Westville Grove.
--Merging with a priest team are St. Catherine of Siena, Clayton, and Nativity of Franklinville and St. Bridget of Glassboro.
--Incarnation in Mantua will stand alone.
--At the Jersey Shore, three churches will merge in Ocean City - St. Augustine, St. Frances Cabrini and Our Lady of Good Counsel.
--St. Ann of Wildwood merging with Assumption of Wildwood Crest.
--Maris Stella of Avalon merging with St. Paul of Stone Harbor.
--Standing alone will be: Our Lady Star of the Sea in Cape May, St. Joseph of Sea Isle City and Our Lady of the Angels in Cape May Court House. Also at the Shore, St. Nicholas of Tolentine will stand alone in Atlantic City.
Across the country, and especially the Northeast, bishops facing similar problems are cutting parishes.
Between 1995 and 2007, the church reported a loss of nearly 700 parishes nationwide, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. More cuts are on the way. Within the next two decades, the number of active diocesan priests in the United States is expected to drop in half to 11,500.
In six South Jersey counties, 124 parishes serve an estimated 450,000 Catholics, or about 33 percent of the population. However, just a quarter of Catholics in the diocese attend Mass regularly, officials say.
The population has shifted, too. In some areas where there are many churches clustered tightly together, the population is expected to decline. In other places, such as Gloucester County and parts of Atlantic County, the population is expected to grow as development of former farmland continues.
Most pressing is the impending priest shortage. The diocese expects it will have fewer than 85 active priests by 2015, a 50 percent decline.
Planning committees weighed options such as merging parishes into a new parish and clustering two or more parishes so they can share a priest. Others may be led by a "director of parish life" instead of a priest, and some parishes may be grouped together under a team of priests.
Sister Christine Schenk, executive director of Future Church, said her organization has been warning about the impending priest shortage and parish cutbacks for two decades.
If laity don't get involved now in shaping the future of the church, she said, "I don't know where the voice of the Catholic laity will come from."
"We've tried to get people to be proactive, but most people are just in denial," Schenk said in an interview earlier this week. "They don't want to believe their parish is going to close. When they see it's real, then it's suddenly a crisis . . . This is a situation that the Camden Diocese is going to face (today) but they're going to be facing it again in five years. All you have to do is look at the 50 percent loss in the number of priests."
Shrinking the number of parishes to fit the number of priests will lead to a loss of Catholics, Schenk believes.
"Most Catholics do not think worshiping in a mega parish with 10,000 other people is a way they appreciate Catholic community," Schenk said. "To break up vital communities which have spiritually supported each other for many years is a big mistake."
While the diocese has been careful to distinguish between a parish "closing" and a parish "merging," some affected parishioners still feel the pain.
Nick Matteo, a member of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Berlin, said there will be a lot of anxiety among those who will be displaced from their home parishes.
"A church and its pastor are very personal to many people," Matteo wrote in an e-mail sent this week. "Many of these parishioners have only known one parish in their lifetime. Some of us have looked long and hard to find the right fit for our families."
Parishes that absorb other congregations should "help relieve their anxiety" by welcoming them into their new parish, Matteo said.
Amy Weirauch, a member of Queen of Heaven Parish in Cherry Hill, said the situation was awful.
"I'm still praying for a miracle," she said before Thursday's announcement.
Reach Kim Mulford at (856) 251-3342 or kmulford@courierpostonline.com
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Think celibacy ISN'T the issue? Listen to those who know.
..Finally, the Roseville conference ["The Other Health Crisis", December 2007], hosted by Care of the Soul (www.careofthesoul.org), a counseling, pastoral care, and fitness outreach, proposed that research be done to determine what effect mandatory celibacy has on a man's decision to become a priest in this culture...
Guest opinion column by Fr. Lawrence Ventline, founding director of Care of the Soul, in The Oakland Press, 3/11/2008. The rest of the column about the priest shortage and crisis in the Catholic clergy is worthwhile too.
Reflecting on the priest shortage in New York ("Of the 176 Catholic dioceses in the U.S., the Archdiocese of New York ranks 170th in terms of the ratio of seminarians to the total Catholic population, according to a December study by Catholic World Report."):
...New York's Irish community has provided the vast majority of parish priests for 200 years. Part of the problem facing the archdiocese is that an estimated 40% to 50% of Catholic New Yorkers are Hispanic, but Hispanic communities are not producing priests.
Dominican-born Alex Reyes, 24, of the Bronx, a third-year seminarian, said many Hispanic young men told him they might be interested in becoming priests if not for one thing.
"I know a lot of young Hispanic guys who are very interested in the priesthood, but to tell you the truth, the big problem is celibacy," Reyes said. "That is the main reason they hold off."...
Priests hope Pope Benedict visit inspires vocation, by Gary Stern, Westchester Journal News, March 11, 2008. Again, the human resource issues of the Catholic Church are explored in detail here.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Catholic Church Reform: The Novel
I'm reading an interesting new book, Cardinal Mahony: A Novel, by Robert Blair Kaiser, a Catholic journalist who has covered the Church's affairs for several decades with particular expertise in the Second Vatican Council. Kaiser is also a co-founder of TakeBackOurChurch.org.The premise of the novel is that Cardinal Mahony is kidnapped by a group of liberation theologians and made to answer for his administrative failures, particularly the mishandling of the priest sexual abuse crisis. He falls in love with his kidnappers and converts to their perspective and returns to the United States a different man, determined to refashion the Church along progressive, autochthonous lines. Don't ask me how it ends becuse I haven't got there yet (and I wouldn't tell you anyway!). But the journey itself is worthwhile, taking the reader through detailed, if fictional, musings on all the major theological issues in the 21st century Catholic Church in America. Those who enjoy "romans à clef" might want to try to figure out who some of the major fictional characters are modeled after. I would personally like to know which Latina theologian became the fictitious "Juana Magarita Obregón"...Another review from the National Catholic Reporter appears below.
CARDINAL MAHONY: A NOVEL
By Robert Blair Kaiser
Humble-bee Press, 257 pages, $19.95
A fantasy novel for liberal Catholics
Reviewed By Dennis Coday
Robert Blair Kaiser’s Cardinal Mahony: A Novel is more a polemic wrapped in a tale of intrigue than it is a novel. Surprisingly, the book works pretty well as fiction and as argument.
The book is set in the near future. Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles is kidnapped by a clandestine revolutionary group inspired by liberation theologians and taken to Mexico. The group, calling itself Para los Otros, puts the cardinal on trial and broadcasts the proceedings live to the whole world.
The group charges Mahony with “misfeasance and malfeasance,” saying he has “forgotten the sacred duties of his episcopal office,” “let the unwritten rules of his clerical club undermine the rule of the Gospel,” and “robbed the patrimony of Christ’s poor to enrich crafty lawyers -- and keep sodomizing priests out of prison.” Mahony is judged by a jury of his peers: six retired Latin American bishops.
I won’t give anything away by saying that the cardinal is found guilty. With the verdict read, the judge hands down the sentence announcing to “everyone in the court and 590 million television viewers, ‘We sentence Cardinal Mahony to become a Christian!’ ” Hokey as this sounds, in the context of the novel, it works.
Mahony returns to Los Angeles a changed man. He moves out of his palatial residence, turning it over to the Los Angeles Catholic Worker for a homeless shelter, and moves into a room on the AIDS ward of Queen of Angels Hospital and serves the patients there as a chaplain.
He also puts together a kitchen cabinet comprising a layman who helped found Para los Otros, an Australian Jesuit theologian, a Latina lawyer and a Jewish labor organizer. Together they develop a plan to establish a church more open to American-style democracy and reforms in the church such as elected bishops, married priests and women priests.
This sets off a series of machinations from the Vatican in league with conservative elements of the U.S. church to stop the movement. In response, Mahony’s crew dips into its own bag of dirty tricks, which brings the novel to a cliff-hanger ending and sets the reader up for a sequel.
A few implausibilities detract from the novel. The testimony brought against Cardinal Mahony in his trial -- testimony about the child sex abuse scandal, about million-dollar cost overruns to build a new cathedral and such -- is readily available. I wasn’t convinced that being confronted with it in a jungle courtroom would somehow convert Mahony, let alone hold a worldwide television audience mesmerized.
Mr. Kaiser knows his subject. From 1999 to 2005, he was a contributing editor in Rome for Newsweek magazine. His coverage of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) for Time magazine earned him an Overseas Press Club Award. He also knows the players in the American Catholic church today and gives them convincing voices in his novel, making the story a sounding board for American Catholics who dream of the kind of reforms Mahony’s kitchen cabinet seeks.
NCR senior correspondent John L. Allen Jr. met the real Cardinal Roger Mahony at the Vatican in late November when the cardinal was attending the consistory that installed 28 new cardinals. Cardinal Mahony told Mr. Allen that he had read Mr. Kaiser’s book on the plane trip from Los Angeles. Asked for a reaction, Mr. Allen says, Cardinal Mahony “simply laughed.”
Mr. Kaiser’s ambition for the novel is revealed just inside the front cover. The book is dedicated to Harriet Beecher Stowe, whom Mr. Kaiser calls a “Conneticut schoolteacher who had the grit and gumption to write her message novel.”
The author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin rode the winds of a changing zeitgeist. Clearly, Mr. Kaiser hopes similar breezes are blowing.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Ireland: Serving priests admit breaking celibacy vow
By Conor Ryan
The Irish Examiner
03 March 2008
More than a dozen serving Catholic priests have told a radio poll they have broken their celibacy vows, but continue to work in parishes.
A survey of ordained priests by Newstalk 106’s Moncrieff Show also revealed an atmosphere of dissatisfaction with the Church’s rules on its clergy abstaining from sex.
It asked 15 questions of 584 priests by phone and letter. However, only 80 agreed to respond.
Of those 12 priests said they had broken their chastity vows since their ordination.
“I am a human person liable to sinfulness and weakness like all humans,” one man replied.
One priest admitted he had “struggled, fallen and risen again” while another replied “if chaste means not involved in a genital sexual union — no”.
The majority of priests said they had kept their promise to abstain from sex.
“I took a vow of chastity at ordination. It’s like any other commitment you live by it, you remain faithful to it,” a celibate priest said.
When asked if they supported the removal of this condition by the Church and should ordained men be allowed to marry, 48 priests said they did, although a similar amount felt Pope Benedict XVI would never change the rule even if it was contributing to the decline in the number of people pursuing vocations.
“The celibacy issue has been one of the occasions for many priests who have much more to offer leaving the active ministry. It is also a fact, I believe, in the decline in numbers offering themselves for consideration as candidates for ordained ministry,” a priest said.
However, many of those who responded felt the celibacy issue was being overplayed and used as a rod to beat the Church.
“I get the impression that those who talk most about it only want to get a dig at the Church. They are not concerned about the welfare of the Church or of individual Catholics,” said one man.
According to the survey team many of the priests contacted opted out of questioning when asked about celibacy.
A slim majority supported the call to allow women to become ordained ministers.
The full results of the survey will be carried on the Moncrieff Show today at 2pm to 4.30pm.
The Irish Examiner
03 March 2008
More than a dozen serving Catholic priests have told a radio poll they have broken their celibacy vows, but continue to work in parishes.
A survey of ordained priests by Newstalk 106’s Moncrieff Show also revealed an atmosphere of dissatisfaction with the Church’s rules on its clergy abstaining from sex.
It asked 15 questions of 584 priests by phone and letter. However, only 80 agreed to respond.
Of those 12 priests said they had broken their chastity vows since their ordination.
“I am a human person liable to sinfulness and weakness like all humans,” one man replied.
One priest admitted he had “struggled, fallen and risen again” while another replied “if chaste means not involved in a genital sexual union — no”.
The majority of priests said they had kept their promise to abstain from sex.
“I took a vow of chastity at ordination. It’s like any other commitment you live by it, you remain faithful to it,” a celibate priest said.
When asked if they supported the removal of this condition by the Church and should ordained men be allowed to marry, 48 priests said they did, although a similar amount felt Pope Benedict XVI would never change the rule even if it was contributing to the decline in the number of people pursuing vocations.
“The celibacy issue has been one of the occasions for many priests who have much more to offer leaving the active ministry. It is also a fact, I believe, in the decline in numbers offering themselves for consideration as candidates for ordained ministry,” a priest said.
However, many of those who responded felt the celibacy issue was being overplayed and used as a rod to beat the Church.
“I get the impression that those who talk most about it only want to get a dig at the Church. They are not concerned about the welfare of the Church or of individual Catholics,” said one man.
According to the survey team many of the priests contacted opted out of questioning when asked about celibacy.
A slim majority supported the call to allow women to become ordained ministers.
The full results of the survey will be carried on the Moncrieff Show today at 2pm to 4.30pm.
Friday, February 29, 2008
CDF bans inclusive language for baptisms
This is one of those stories which makes me wonder (as my Quaker mother used to ask) "what is an intelligent woman like you doing in the Catholic Church?".
BREAKING: Vatican holds that 'Feminist Inspired' Baptisms are Invalid
2/29/2008
Vatican Information Service
There have been efforts, most grouped under the banner of "inclusive language" flowing from some schools of 'feminist' theology,to change the Trinitarian formula, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Holy See has directly addressed the errant reformulation of the Baptismal formula in this way and holds that any such Baptisms are invalid.
VATICAN CITY (VIS) - Made public today were the responses of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to two questions concerning the validity of Baptism conferred with certain non-standard formulae.
The first question is: "Is a Baptism valid if conferred with the words 'I baptise you in the name of the Creator, and of the Redeemer, and of the Sanctifier', or 'I baptise you in the name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer'"?
The second question is: "Must people baptised with those formulae be baptised 'in forma absoluta'?"
The responses are: "To the first question, negative; to the second question, affirmative".
Benedict XVI, during his recent audience with Cardinal William Joseph Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, approved these responses, which were adopted at the ordinary session of the congregation, and ordered their publication. The text of the responses bears the signatures of Cardinal Levada and of Archbishop Angelo Amato S.D.B., secretary of the dicastery.
An attached note explains that the responses "concern the validity of Baptism conferred with two English-language formulae within the ambit of the Catholic Church. ... Clearly, the question does not concern English but the formula itself, which could also be expressed in another language".
"Baptism conferred in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit", the note continues, "obeys Jesus' command as it appears at the end of the Gospel of St. Matthew. ... The baptismal formula must be an adequate expression of Trinitarian faith, approximate formulae are unacceptable.
"Variations to the baptismal formula - using non-biblical designations of the Divine Persons - as considered in this reply, arise from so-called feminist theology", being an attempt "to avoid using the words Father and Son which are held to be chauvinistic, substituting them with other names. Such variants, however, undermine faith in the Trinity".
"The response of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith constitutes an authentic doctrinal declaration, which has wide-ranging canonical and pastoral effects.
Indeed, the reply implicitly affirms that people who have been baptised, or who will in the future be baptised, with the formulae in question have, in reality, not been baptised.
Hence, they must them be treated for all canonical and pastoral purposes with the same juridical criteria as people whom the Code of Canon Law places in the general category of 'non-baptised'".
BREAKING: Vatican holds that 'Feminist Inspired' Baptisms are Invalid
2/29/2008
Vatican Information Service
There have been efforts, most grouped under the banner of "inclusive language" flowing from some schools of 'feminist' theology,to change the Trinitarian formula, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Holy See has directly addressed the errant reformulation of the Baptismal formula in this way and holds that any such Baptisms are invalid.
VATICAN CITY (VIS) - Made public today were the responses of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to two questions concerning the validity of Baptism conferred with certain non-standard formulae.
The first question is: "Is a Baptism valid if conferred with the words 'I baptise you in the name of the Creator, and of the Redeemer, and of the Sanctifier', or 'I baptise you in the name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer'"?
The second question is: "Must people baptised with those formulae be baptised 'in forma absoluta'?"
The responses are: "To the first question, negative; to the second question, affirmative".
Benedict XVI, during his recent audience with Cardinal William Joseph Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, approved these responses, which were adopted at the ordinary session of the congregation, and ordered their publication. The text of the responses bears the signatures of Cardinal Levada and of Archbishop Angelo Amato S.D.B., secretary of the dicastery.
An attached note explains that the responses "concern the validity of Baptism conferred with two English-language formulae within the ambit of the Catholic Church. ... Clearly, the question does not concern English but the formula itself, which could also be expressed in another language".
"Baptism conferred in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit", the note continues, "obeys Jesus' command as it appears at the end of the Gospel of St. Matthew. ... The baptismal formula must be an adequate expression of Trinitarian faith, approximate formulae are unacceptable.
"Variations to the baptismal formula - using non-biblical designations of the Divine Persons - as considered in this reply, arise from so-called feminist theology", being an attempt "to avoid using the words Father and Son which are held to be chauvinistic, substituting them with other names. Such variants, however, undermine faith in the Trinity".
"The response of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith constitutes an authentic doctrinal declaration, which has wide-ranging canonical and pastoral effects.
Indeed, the reply implicitly affirms that people who have been baptised, or who will in the future be baptised, with the formulae in question have, in reality, not been baptised.
Hence, they must them be treated for all canonical and pastoral purposes with the same juridical criteria as people whom the Code of Canon Law places in the general category of 'non-baptised'".
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Catholic Church faces new crisis — Ireland is running out of priests
David Sharrock, Ireland Correspondent
The Times
February 27, 2008
Ireland is running out of priests at such a rate that their numbers will have dropped by two thirds in the next 20 years
Ireland, a country that used to export its Catholic clergy around the world, is running out of priests at such a rate that their numbers will have dropped by two thirds in the next 20 years, leaving parishes up and down the land vacant.
The decline of Catholic Ireland, for decades the Pope’s favourite bastion of faith in Europe, has been regularly predicted, as the economic successes of the Celtic Tiger brought growing secularisation. But new figures have starkly set out the fate of the Irish priesthood if action is not taken by the Church to reverse the trend.
One-hundred and sixty priests died last year but only nine were ordained. Figures for nuns were even more dramatic, with the deaths of 228 nuns and only two taking final vows for service in religious life.
Based upon these figures The Irish Catholic newspaper predicts that the number of priests will drop from the current 4,752 to about 1,500 by 2028.
The decline in vocations is attributed to the loss of the Church’s authority after a string of sex-abuse scandals. In 1994 the Government collapsed over the mishandling of the case of a paedophile priest Brendan Smyth.
The scandals broke a dam of silence, prompting apologies from both the Church and the Government for the abuse of children and women who passed through religious institutions. An estimated €1 billion (£750,000) are being paid out in compensation to victims.
Regular church attendance, which was at 90 per cent at the start of the 1990s, has suffered a collapse, mitigated partially in recent years by the mass influx of Polish workers.
The priestly age profile is creating another dilemma because most priests are already close to normal retirement age. The average age of Irish priests is currently 61.
Religious commentators are calling on the Church authorities to convene a national synod to address the crisis. Some are even challenging the vow of celibacy as unnecessary. “The time has come for the Church in Ireland to confront this problem much more seriously,” The Irish Catholic said.
Father Eamonn Bourke, director of vocations in Dublin, said: “These latest statistics bring the problems we are facing into sharp focus.
“It is impossible to argue with statistics and the situation is very grave. For a long time people have failed to real-ise how much the decline is.” He said he was concerned that “some priests are reluctant to offer priesthood to people as a valuable way of life. It will take a long time to increase this confidence.”
David Quinn, a commentator on Irish religious affairs, told The Times: “The real problem is that the demographic has finally caught up and priests are retiring and dying at a rate of knots.
“I’d say that a majority of priests in Ireland would probably favour dropping the celibacy rule, while the bishops would be more evenly split on the issue. But vocations in Ireland were exceptionally high between 1920 and 1960, higher than in the 19th century, just as now they are so low as to be an aberration. Ireland is now the vocations blackspot of the world.
“It’s not a crisis, it’s a catastrophe and it’s happened in a generation. There used to be three priests for every parish but it’s becoming common for two priests to share three parishes. In the near future there will be just one priest for every five parishes.” Mr Quinn said that the Church had to do more to promote vocations, both in schools and at the altar.
One possible solution to the crisis was illustrated this week when a former Catholic priest became Dean of the Protestant Church of Ireland’s Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin.
The Very Rev Dermot Dunne made a point of kissing his wife, Celia, while standing on the steps of the cathedral as he took up his new office.
He is the first Dean of Christ Church since the 16th-century Reformation to have received his theological education in a Catholic seminary, St Patrick’s Maynooth.
His most illustrious predecessor in the role is the satirist and author of Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift.
“It came to a point where I felt I needed to be honest,” he said. “I could see the Church was going one way and I another. My thinking was different on areas of human sexuality, on marriage, the place of women in the Church and the question of vocation of women and the admission of women to the ordained ministry.”
Mr Dunne said he had discussed his doubts while still a Catholic priest with Dr John Magee, then his bishop.
“The difference of opinion we had was over whether there is an intrinsic connection between the vocation to celibacy and the vocation to the ordained ministry. The official view is that there is, I would hold that there isn’t. So that is why I moved outside.”
It is all so different from 1947, when the Irish Government sent a note to Pope Pius XII inviting him to relocate to Ireland in the event of a communist takeover of Italy.
The Pope replied to the Irish ambassador to the Vatican: “Ah Ireland, where else could I go but Ireland!”
All the hours God sends
— Priests in Ireland work six days a week. They are encouraged to take one day off. In quieter parishes, some priests also get Sunday afternoons to themselves
— They receive the statutory 21 days’ holiday every year, although they are expected to work on Bank Holidays
— Priests are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and will respond immediately to midnight phone calls summoning them to the bedsides of seriously ill patients
— Would-be priests who enter seminary spend seven years training. The retention rate of those who enter compared with those who get ordained is about 60 per cent
— Priests are self-employed and receive a stipend of €1,000 (£750) a month. This grows dependent on years of service and can also increase if priests take on extra jobs outside their parish responsibilities.
— Retirement age for priests is 75 but most continue if they are in good health. Older priests give up their parish administrative duties but continue to celebrate Mass and the sacraments
— On April 13 a national year of vocation begins in Ireland that will try to boost the numbers of young men entering seminaries
The Times
February 27, 2008
Ireland is running out of priests at such a rate that their numbers will have dropped by two thirds in the next 20 years
Ireland, a country that used to export its Catholic clergy around the world, is running out of priests at such a rate that their numbers will have dropped by two thirds in the next 20 years, leaving parishes up and down the land vacant.
The decline of Catholic Ireland, for decades the Pope’s favourite bastion of faith in Europe, has been regularly predicted, as the economic successes of the Celtic Tiger brought growing secularisation. But new figures have starkly set out the fate of the Irish priesthood if action is not taken by the Church to reverse the trend.
One-hundred and sixty priests died last year but only nine were ordained. Figures for nuns were even more dramatic, with the deaths of 228 nuns and only two taking final vows for service in religious life.
Based upon these figures The Irish Catholic newspaper predicts that the number of priests will drop from the current 4,752 to about 1,500 by 2028.
The decline in vocations is attributed to the loss of the Church’s authority after a string of sex-abuse scandals. In 1994 the Government collapsed over the mishandling of the case of a paedophile priest Brendan Smyth.
The scandals broke a dam of silence, prompting apologies from both the Church and the Government for the abuse of children and women who passed through religious institutions. An estimated €1 billion (£750,000) are being paid out in compensation to victims.
Regular church attendance, which was at 90 per cent at the start of the 1990s, has suffered a collapse, mitigated partially in recent years by the mass influx of Polish workers.
The priestly age profile is creating another dilemma because most priests are already close to normal retirement age. The average age of Irish priests is currently 61.
Religious commentators are calling on the Church authorities to convene a national synod to address the crisis. Some are even challenging the vow of celibacy as unnecessary. “The time has come for the Church in Ireland to confront this problem much more seriously,” The Irish Catholic said.
Father Eamonn Bourke, director of vocations in Dublin, said: “These latest statistics bring the problems we are facing into sharp focus.
“It is impossible to argue with statistics and the situation is very grave. For a long time people have failed to real-ise how much the decline is.” He said he was concerned that “some priests are reluctant to offer priesthood to people as a valuable way of life. It will take a long time to increase this confidence.”
David Quinn, a commentator on Irish religious affairs, told The Times: “The real problem is that the demographic has finally caught up and priests are retiring and dying at a rate of knots.
“I’d say that a majority of priests in Ireland would probably favour dropping the celibacy rule, while the bishops would be more evenly split on the issue. But vocations in Ireland were exceptionally high between 1920 and 1960, higher than in the 19th century, just as now they are so low as to be an aberration. Ireland is now the vocations blackspot of the world.
“It’s not a crisis, it’s a catastrophe and it’s happened in a generation. There used to be three priests for every parish but it’s becoming common for two priests to share three parishes. In the near future there will be just one priest for every five parishes.” Mr Quinn said that the Church had to do more to promote vocations, both in schools and at the altar.
One possible solution to the crisis was illustrated this week when a former Catholic priest became Dean of the Protestant Church of Ireland’s Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin.
The Very Rev Dermot Dunne made a point of kissing his wife, Celia, while standing on the steps of the cathedral as he took up his new office.
He is the first Dean of Christ Church since the 16th-century Reformation to have received his theological education in a Catholic seminary, St Patrick’s Maynooth.
His most illustrious predecessor in the role is the satirist and author of Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift.
“It came to a point where I felt I needed to be honest,” he said. “I could see the Church was going one way and I another. My thinking was different on areas of human sexuality, on marriage, the place of women in the Church and the question of vocation of women and the admission of women to the ordained ministry.”
Mr Dunne said he had discussed his doubts while still a Catholic priest with Dr John Magee, then his bishop.
“The difference of opinion we had was over whether there is an intrinsic connection between the vocation to celibacy and the vocation to the ordained ministry. The official view is that there is, I would hold that there isn’t. So that is why I moved outside.”
It is all so different from 1947, when the Irish Government sent a note to Pope Pius XII inviting him to relocate to Ireland in the event of a communist takeover of Italy.
The Pope replied to the Irish ambassador to the Vatican: “Ah Ireland, where else could I go but Ireland!”
All the hours God sends
— Priests in Ireland work six days a week. They are encouraged to take one day off. In quieter parishes, some priests also get Sunday afternoons to themselves
— They receive the statutory 21 days’ holiday every year, although they are expected to work on Bank Holidays
— Priests are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and will respond immediately to midnight phone calls summoning them to the bedsides of seriously ill patients
— Would-be priests who enter seminary spend seven years training. The retention rate of those who enter compared with those who get ordained is about 60 per cent
— Priests are self-employed and receive a stipend of €1,000 (£750) a month. This grows dependent on years of service and can also increase if priests take on extra jobs outside their parish responsibilities.
— Retirement age for priests is 75 but most continue if they are in good health. Older priests give up their parish administrative duties but continue to celebrate Mass and the sacraments
— On April 13 a national year of vocation begins in Ireland that will try to boost the numbers of young men entering seminaries
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Anglican Dean quit Catholic Church 'over celibacy rules'
By John CooneyThe Irish Independent
Tuesday February 26 2008
Photo: Dean Dermot Dunne kisses his wife Celia outside Christ Church cathedral.
A priest has told how compulsory celibacy was part of his personal journey away from the Catholic "church of his youth" towards the Anglican ministry.
The Very Reverend Dermot Dunne also spoke of his concerns over the Catholic Church's teaching against birth control, on not allowing divorce to couples in broken marriages, as well as its refusal to admit women to the priesthood.
He was speaking in Dublin yesterday at the announcement of his appointment as Dean of the Church of Ireland's Christ Church cathedral.
Currently the Church of Ireland Archdeacon in the diocese of Ferns, Dean-elect Dunne becomes Christ Church's first Dean since the 16th Century Reformation to have received his theological education in a Catholic seminary, St Patrick's College, Maynooth.
Dean Dunne spoke of how he found that the premise of his faith and his theological understanding were moving him outside the Catholic Church.
"It came to a point in my life where I felt I needed to be honest," he said. "To follow that theological understanding and pursue the journey the way it was going, I needed to leave the church of my youth.
"I could see that the Church was going one way and I another. My thinking was different on areas of human sexuality, on marriage, the place of women in the Church and the question of vocation of women and the admission of women to the ordained ministry."
Dean Dunne revealed that he had a healthy discussion with his then bishop, Dr John Magee, the former papal secretary.
"The difference of opinion we had was over whether there is an intrinsic connection between the vocation to celibacy and the vocation to the ordained ministry," he said.
"The official (Catholic Church) view is that there is an intrinsic link. I would hold that there isn't. So that is why I moved outside. My view of celibacy is that it is a sacred vocation which people are called to, not only in the ordained ministry, but in ordinary life."
Dunne said he still had a great love for the church of his youth and remained in contact with friends from Maynooth and the diocese of Cloyne. His move into Anglicanism was a celebration of life and movement in the Christian faith.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Ireland: Church is paying a high price for its celibacy rule
By John Cooney
The Irish Independent
Monday February 25 2008
The appointment of a former Catholic priest as the Anglican Dean of Dublin's Christ Church cathedral is an example how the obligatory rule of celibacy of the Roman priesthood is losing clergy to the more liberal Church of Ireland.
After his marriage to his wife Celia, and his resignation as a priest of the Catholic diocese of Cork and Ross, Dean Dermot Dunne has been ministering as an Anglican rector in the diocese of Ferns, Remarkably, Dean Dunne discovered that three of his 11 colleagues had also left the ranks of the Catholic clergy.
A number of nuns and Catholic laity have also found a spiritual haven in becoming members of the Church of Ireland.
This relatively small but significant switch in denominational allegiance from the tight discipline and moral rules of Roman Catholicism to a freer ethos of respect for individual conscience allowed in the more broad Church of Ireland is worthy of greater attention than it has so far drawn in the national media.
Dean Dunne's rapid rise within his adopted ecclesial community in these more ecumenical times comes only days after new figures revealed the extent of the drop in clergy numbers in the Irish Catholic Church that is now reaching catastrophic proportions.
Last year 160 priests died while only nine men were ordained, and 228 nuns passed away with only two newcomers taking religious vows.
Under current trends of ageing clerics and few recruits, the number of priests will halve from 4,752 to 1,500 over the next two decades. Convents could become an antiquarian rarity.
By any standard, this is a manpower crisis. It is recognised as such by the 'Irish Catholic' newspaper, traditionally regarded as a conservative voice, but which has called for the convening of a National Synod of Bishops, priests and laity to confront the emergency.
Dioceses throughout the country have become so short of priests that many parishes are priestless, and the frequency of Masses has been drastically reduced.
Opinion polls have shown there is popular demand for ending the rule of obligatory celibacy, but so far such appeals have been ignored by the church establishment in Ireland, which will not dare to challenge Pope Benedict's unwillingness to change this rule dating from the 12th century.
Vatican policy since the early 1960s has been opposed to the revision of the celibacy obligation. Even the reform-minded Pope John XXIII did not allow the matter to be discussed at the Second Vatican Council, 1962-5.
His successor, Pope Paul VI, grappled with a massive exodus of the best and the brightest from the priesthood who left to get married. Paul described them as traitors.
An even more hard line was taken by Pope John Paul II, who made it exceedingly difficult for priests to become laicised. The present Pope, Benedict XVI, is also taking a firm 'no change' line.
Yet, an exception has been made by Rome to this rule through its admission to the Catholic priesthood of married men who have converted from the Anglican Communion.The Orthodox and Easter Rite Churches allow its priests to marry before ordination.
While hoping for an upturn in vocations, the Irish Catholic Church has won Vatican approval for the training of married male deacons over five years, the diaconate is an ordained ministry which traces its origins back to the time of the apostles.
There will be a preliminary year before a man is accepted as a candidate. The formation programme will take three years (part time). It involves the serious study of theology and philosophy, as well as pastoral, spiritual and human formation.
The minimum age for admission is 25 years for a celibate candidate, and 35 years for a married candidate.
The maximum age is 60 years. While married men may be ordained, deacons who are widowed do not normally remarry.
To ensure that the diaconate does not conflict with the responsibilities of marriage, a married man may only be accepted as a candidate for diaconate if he has the formal approval of his wife.
Deacons who receive the sacrament of Holy Orders will not normally wear clerical dress, but will be allowed to wear vestments when officiating at services.
Candidates must be men who have a good knowledge of the Gospel, a well-established spiritual life, and a proven willingness to serve others, even at some personal cost.
While the Church authorities insist that deacons will not be substitute priests, there are fears that they will be viewed as such, and that the numbers entering the diaconate will not resolve the need for priests, whether married males or women, in the Irish Church.
The Irish Independent
Monday February 25 2008
The appointment of a former Catholic priest as the Anglican Dean of Dublin's Christ Church cathedral is an example how the obligatory rule of celibacy of the Roman priesthood is losing clergy to the more liberal Church of Ireland.
After his marriage to his wife Celia, and his resignation as a priest of the Catholic diocese of Cork and Ross, Dean Dermot Dunne has been ministering as an Anglican rector in the diocese of Ferns, Remarkably, Dean Dunne discovered that three of his 11 colleagues had also left the ranks of the Catholic clergy.
A number of nuns and Catholic laity have also found a spiritual haven in becoming members of the Church of Ireland.
This relatively small but significant switch in denominational allegiance from the tight discipline and moral rules of Roman Catholicism to a freer ethos of respect for individual conscience allowed in the more broad Church of Ireland is worthy of greater attention than it has so far drawn in the national media.
Dean Dunne's rapid rise within his adopted ecclesial community in these more ecumenical times comes only days after new figures revealed the extent of the drop in clergy numbers in the Irish Catholic Church that is now reaching catastrophic proportions.
Last year 160 priests died while only nine men were ordained, and 228 nuns passed away with only two newcomers taking religious vows.
Under current trends of ageing clerics and few recruits, the number of priests will halve from 4,752 to 1,500 over the next two decades. Convents could become an antiquarian rarity.
By any standard, this is a manpower crisis. It is recognised as such by the 'Irish Catholic' newspaper, traditionally regarded as a conservative voice, but which has called for the convening of a National Synod of Bishops, priests and laity to confront the emergency.
Dioceses throughout the country have become so short of priests that many parishes are priestless, and the frequency of Masses has been drastically reduced.
Opinion polls have shown there is popular demand for ending the rule of obligatory celibacy, but so far such appeals have been ignored by the church establishment in Ireland, which will not dare to challenge Pope Benedict's unwillingness to change this rule dating from the 12th century.
Vatican policy since the early 1960s has been opposed to the revision of the celibacy obligation. Even the reform-minded Pope John XXIII did not allow the matter to be discussed at the Second Vatican Council, 1962-5.
His successor, Pope Paul VI, grappled with a massive exodus of the best and the brightest from the priesthood who left to get married. Paul described them as traitors.
An even more hard line was taken by Pope John Paul II, who made it exceedingly difficult for priests to become laicised. The present Pope, Benedict XVI, is also taking a firm 'no change' line.
Yet, an exception has been made by Rome to this rule through its admission to the Catholic priesthood of married men who have converted from the Anglican Communion.The Orthodox and Easter Rite Churches allow its priests to marry before ordination.
While hoping for an upturn in vocations, the Irish Catholic Church has won Vatican approval for the training of married male deacons over five years, the diaconate is an ordained ministry which traces its origins back to the time of the apostles.
There will be a preliminary year before a man is accepted as a candidate. The formation programme will take three years (part time). It involves the serious study of theology and philosophy, as well as pastoral, spiritual and human formation.
The minimum age for admission is 25 years for a celibate candidate, and 35 years for a married candidate.
The maximum age is 60 years. While married men may be ordained, deacons who are widowed do not normally remarry.
To ensure that the diaconate does not conflict with the responsibilities of marriage, a married man may only be accepted as a candidate for diaconate if he has the formal approval of his wife.
Deacons who receive the sacrament of Holy Orders will not normally wear clerical dress, but will be allowed to wear vestments when officiating at services.
Candidates must be men who have a good knowledge of the Gospel, a well-established spiritual life, and a proven willingness to serve others, even at some personal cost.
While the Church authorities insist that deacons will not be substitute priests, there are fears that they will be viewed as such, and that the numbers entering the diaconate will not resolve the need for priests, whether married males or women, in the Irish Church.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Brazilian priests ask for alternatives to celibacy; make a proposal to the Vatican
AFP
2/20/2008
SAO PAULO – The “Encontro Nacional de Presbíteros” (“National Meeting of Priests") in Brazil has asked the Catholic Church to find alternatives to mandatory celibacy for priests, according to media reports.
Proposal for married priests
The document, approved by 430 representatives of 18,685 priests from 9,222 parishes throughout Brazil, proposes to the Vatican the ordination of married men and the readmission of priests who abandoned their functions to get married, the O Estado de Sao Paulo daily says. The gathering “does not suggest the complete abolition of celibacy, which would continue to be an option for the religious orders and congregations for example, but they propose that there be other types of ordained ministry”, the daily specifies.
The petition will be sent to the Congregation for the Clergy, presided in the Holy See by the Brazilian cardinal Claudio Hummes, who was the archbishop of Sao Paulo.
The gathering is also seeking “clearer and more definite directives on the pastoral accompaniment of couples in second marriages” (divorced Catholics who have remarried). Currently these faithful, united in civil marriage, cannot take communion or go to confession.
Hummes, who participated in the gathering at the Itaici monastery in Indaiatuba, warned that both demands contradict the current norms which the Church “has no intention of changing”, said the Sao Paulo newspaper.
English translation by Rebel Girl. Within the next couple of weeks the Comissão Nacional dos Presbíteros should be publishing the final document from the meeting, titled "Subsídios para reflexão." If you can read Portuguese and want more information, check out these articles:
Postscript
For those who read Spanish, the version of this story in El Pais has even more interesting details:
* An unnamed Brazilian bishop alleges that the Catholic Church in Brazil already has ordained married laymen as priests but that "Rome knows but does not want it made public."
* That Eucharistic celebrations are permitted in private homes in areas where there are no priests.
* That the document also contains a demand for democratization of the process for nominating bishops.
* With regards to divorced and remarried couples, this article adds that Brazilian priests are among the most liberal on this issue and rarely deny communion to couples in this situation
* Finally, the document also asks for the Church to be more open and reach out to the faithful beyond the "parish". It points out that in Brazil on average over 1 million Catholics a year have converted to the Protestant churches which are less bureaucratic and attract those who are poorer and have less formal education.
2/20/2008
SAO PAULO – The “Encontro Nacional de Presbíteros” (“National Meeting of Priests") in Brazil has asked the Catholic Church to find alternatives to mandatory celibacy for priests, according to media reports.
Proposal for married priests
The document, approved by 430 representatives of 18,685 priests from 9,222 parishes throughout Brazil, proposes to the Vatican the ordination of married men and the readmission of priests who abandoned their functions to get married, the O Estado de Sao Paulo daily says. The gathering “does not suggest the complete abolition of celibacy, which would continue to be an option for the religious orders and congregations for example, but they propose that there be other types of ordained ministry”, the daily specifies.
The petition will be sent to the Congregation for the Clergy, presided in the Holy See by the Brazilian cardinal Claudio Hummes, who was the archbishop of Sao Paulo.
The gathering is also seeking “clearer and more definite directives on the pastoral accompaniment of couples in second marriages” (divorced Catholics who have remarried). Currently these faithful, united in civil marriage, cannot take communion or go to confession.
Hummes, who participated in the gathering at the Itaici monastery in Indaiatuba, warned that both demands contradict the current norms which the Church “has no intention of changing”, said the Sao Paulo newspaper.
English translation by Rebel Girl. Within the next couple of weeks the Comissão Nacional dos Presbíteros should be publishing the final document from the meeting, titled "Subsídios para reflexão." If you can read Portuguese and want more information, check out these articles:
Padres pedem discussão sobre o celibato, Folha Online, 2/20/2008
Padres sugerem o fim do celibato, O Estado de Sao Paulo, 2/20/2008
Postscript
For those who read Spanish, the version of this story in El Pais has even more interesting details:
* An unnamed Brazilian bishop alleges that the Catholic Church in Brazil already has ordained married laymen as priests but that "Rome knows but does not want it made public."
* That Eucharistic celebrations are permitted in private homes in areas where there are no priests.
* That the document also contains a demand for democratization of the process for nominating bishops.
* With regards to divorced and remarried couples, this article adds that Brazilian priests are among the most liberal on this issue and rarely deny communion to couples in this situation
* Finally, the document also asks for the Church to be more open and reach out to the faithful beyond the "parish". It points out that in Brazil on average over 1 million Catholics a year have converted to the Protestant churches which are less bureaucratic and attract those who are poorer and have less formal education.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Diocese on no moral high ground
By Carol Dunn | Reads Landing, Minn.
Well, what a mess.
A single Catholic school teacher signed a contract to be a moral example. She had sex. She got pregnant. She didn’t abort the child. Her bosses requested her resignation. She went to the media.
The teacher told her story using that New Testament term “forgiveness.” The principal and priest — part of a well-sued organization—made no comment.
Critics noted the church declaring “No abortions!” tripped over itself again.
The teacher broke contract: Protecting life and telling truth don’t trump “the big nasty.”
The bosses had no choice. The Winona Diocese requires this contract to insure children good moral examples.
What a pile of hypocrisy!
A priest is arrested for soliciting gay prostitutes; he’s moved to a new parish and school. A teacher has extra-marital sex; she must resign. For the priest, the official Diocesan spin is, “We must forgive.”
For the teacher, it’s, “We cannot comment.”
I’m sorry, dear teacher; you will lose your students, the rest of this year’s salary and more. Confronting the power-filled — especially Catholic — brings suffering. New Testament teachings notwithstanding, they’ve been guarding their stones for two millennia. It will be painful.
I’m sorry, dear women of child-bearing potential; no enforceable laws say you can’t be fired for being pregnant.
Legislators, are you awake?
Winona Diocesan leadership, your moral ambivalence is showing.
What an obscene mess.
Well, what a mess.
A single Catholic school teacher signed a contract to be a moral example. She had sex. She got pregnant. She didn’t abort the child. Her bosses requested her resignation. She went to the media.
The teacher told her story using that New Testament term “forgiveness.” The principal and priest — part of a well-sued organization—made no comment.
Critics noted the church declaring “No abortions!” tripped over itself again.
The teacher broke contract: Protecting life and telling truth don’t trump “the big nasty.”
The bosses had no choice. The Winona Diocese requires this contract to insure children good moral examples.
What a pile of hypocrisy!
A priest is arrested for soliciting gay prostitutes; he’s moved to a new parish and school. A teacher has extra-marital sex; she must resign. For the priest, the official Diocesan spin is, “We must forgive.”
For the teacher, it’s, “We cannot comment.”
I’m sorry, dear teacher; you will lose your students, the rest of this year’s salary and more. Confronting the power-filled — especially Catholic — brings suffering. New Testament teachings notwithstanding, they’ve been guarding their stones for two millennia. It will be painful.
I’m sorry, dear women of child-bearing potential; no enforceable laws say you can’t be fired for being pregnant.
Legislators, are you awake?
Winona Diocesan leadership, your moral ambivalence is showing.
What an obscene mess.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Celibacy "not necessary, theologically"
German bishops' leader airs controversial views
Berlin, Feb. 18, 2008 (CWNews.com) - The newly elected president of the German bishops' conference has called for reconsideration of clerical celibacy and distanced himself from a Vatican pronouncement that Protestant communities cannot be regarded as churches.
In an interview with Der Spiegel, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch of Freiburg observed that priestly celibacy is "not necessary, theologically." He said that a shift away from that discipline would lead to "a revolution, in which a part of the Church might not join." But he said the option should be considered...
Berlin, Feb. 18, 2008 (CWNews.com) - The newly elected president of the German bishops' conference has called for reconsideration of clerical celibacy and distanced himself from a Vatican pronouncement that Protestant communities cannot be regarded as churches.
In an interview with Der Spiegel, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch of Freiburg observed that priestly celibacy is "not necessary, theologically." He said that a shift away from that discipline would lead to "a revolution, in which a part of the Church might not join." But he said the option should be considered...
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Rent a priest
Service allows priests no longer involved in parish life to perform religious celebrations not sanctioned by the Catholic Church
By Rena Fulka, Staff Writer
The Southtown Star
February 17, 2008
The Rev. Terrance McNicholas left his position as an associate pastor in the Archdiocese of Chicago more than a decade ago.
Yet he continues to say Mass alone every day in his Hyde Park home.
"It's part of my routine. It's who I am," said the clinical social worker with a private practice in Chicago, Arlington Heights and Palos Heights.
He also conducts weddings and officiates at funerals through Rent A Priest, a service of Celibacy is the Issue Ministries.
Though he no longer is involved in parish life, McNicholas is licensed by the state to perform weddings.
"I believe I was called to the priesthood, not by any bishop, priest or pope, but by the spirit of God," he said.
Celibacy is the Issue was founded in 1992 when Louise Haggett was unable to find a local Catholic priest to visit her mother in a nursing home.
The international lay group's mission is to locate, recruit and promote resigned Roman Catholic priests to provide spiritual and sacramental ministry to the faithful who need it.
Two dozen Rent A Priests are on call in Illinois alone.
According to the group, a priest is a person engaged in a vocation of service, and a cleric occupies an organizational position in the institutional church.
During her research, Haggett said she uncovered 21 canon laws validating priesthood is for life, even if the ordained choose to marry.
The Rev. Dennis Condon, former executive director of Respond Now in Chicago Heights, is among the married men on the Rent A Priest roster. His ministry is certified by Celibacy is the Issue, Federation of Christian Ministries and Frankfort-based International Council of Community Churches.
The weddings, funerals, baptisms, home liturgies and marriage-vow renewals Condon conducts are not sanctioned by the Catholic Church, and all must take place outside an actual Catholic Church building.
"I tell people from the get-go that whatever I do for them is not recognized by the Catholic Church. I don't come off on any false pretenses," said Condon, who was a Spanish-speaking padre with the Oblates of Mary Immaculate in the late 1960s.
"For a wedding to be official in the eyes of the church, it must take place within the confines of a Catholic church."
There are many other requirements for a sanctioned marriage, some of which vary from one diocese to the next.
Those most likely to seek Rent A Priest services are Catholics who no longer attend Mass, a segment representing 73.3 percent of the American Catholic population, according to Celibacy is the Issue.
Loli and Al DiSanto, of Chicago's Lakeview community, wanted their wedding ceremony to be intimate and out-of-the-norm.
"We both grew up Catholic and went to Catholic schools, but we didn't have any one church we wanted to go to. And we don't go to church every Sunday," Loli DiSanto said.
"We thought it would be so romantic to be married on the lake next to the (Adler) Planetarium, but none of the priests we grew up with could marry us outside the church."
At their caterer's suggestion, the couple hired Condon, who offers an ecumenical, non-judgmental ministry throughout Chicago and Northwest Indiana.
"For us, our wedding wasn't a Catholic thing," DiSanto said. "It was about our relationship, the union of me and Al and committing our lives to each other. We wanted to get away from the 100-percent Catholic ceremony."
DiSanto said Condon sent them a packet of premarital information, met with them several times before the ceremony and allayed their pre-wedding jitters.
"We got to pick and choose and put together our entire ceremony ourselves, and we still get compliments on how beautiful, unique and touching our wedding was," she said.
Two years later, the couple hired Condon to baptize their daughter Lorelei.
"We had the baptism outside in the backyard with a fountain and a baptismal candle," DiSanto said.
"We had just moved into a new house we had built, and we had the house blessed and the baby baptized on the same day."
DiSanto refers Condon to relatives and friends and said she most likely will call on him again.
"We spent a lot of time with Rev. Condon, and we're getting to know his wife. He's part of our family now," DiSanto said.
"It's nice to be able to turn to a priest who's also married and who understands the ins and outs of daily living. Sometimes you can't turn to your parents or in-laws because they are no longer living. So it's nice to be able to turn to a person of faith who is married and can give advice."
But can the couple ever re-join the Catholic church?
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," DiSanto said.
"The Catholic church is supposed to be all-forgiving. If someone does not welcome me as a member of their community because my marriage was not sanctified inside the walls of the church, then I'm not sure I want to be a member of that community."
McNicholas' story
A native of Chicago's Southwest Side, McNicholas was born to an Irish Catholic father and a German Missouri Synod Lutheran mother.
"Ours was an ecumenical family, and we'd switch off between masses and services," he said.
McNicholas entered high school seminary after public grade school at the suggestion of his eighth-grade religion teacher, a Catholic sister whose twin was a religious, too.
"She thought it would be the coolest thing for my identical twin brother and I to be priests," he said.
"I bought it. My brother didn't."
McNicholas shared nothing but fond memories about his education with "the finest professors" at the former Archbishop Quigley Preparatory and St. Joseph College seminaries in Chicago, where he was active in political issues.
Ordained in 1979, he entered parish ministry with a double major in psychology and theology.
"I had the privilege of hearing people's confessions for 11 years," McNicholas said.
"It's a most humbling, awesome experience when people come to tell you their sins. They come for comfort, peace, healing and forgiveness from the church."
But for McNicholas, the experience led to personal unrest.
"What I was obliged to tell people, in my opinion, often times caused more pain, more shame and more guilt. That troubled me because I didn't want to be part of causing people distress," he said.
He also was unhappy with the movement to slow down the progressive church.
"John Paul II was a marvelous human being, truly a saint. But many in the curia were real extreme conservatives, in my opinion," McNicholas said.
"They were trying to undo much of the spirit and very law of Vatican II. The call of the laity to places of leadership and authority was being given lip service. Women religious and women laity were marginalized in matters of authority, when in actuality, they embodied what a good priest is."
McNicholas said he was troubled by the church's positions on gay rights, abortion, birth control, divorce and other moral and social issues.
"When I disagree with the issues, to be a mouthpiece for the church creates much conflict," McNicholas said.
"It was unhealthy for me emotionally, psychologically and physically."
McNicholas said he moved out of the rectory, rented an apartment and discussed his inner conflict with Cardinal Joseph Bernardin at great length before resigning from parish life.
McNicholas said he did not request laicization from the Holy See.
Archdiocese spokesman James Accurso laicization is the process by which a priest loses the sacramental faculties of his priesthood and can no longer present himself as a priest publicly. But the ordained can never be unordained, Accurso said.
With assistance from Bernardin, McNicholas found work in social services with the Circuit Court of Cook County and continued his education. He has been involved in private practice at Well-Path Center Inc. for 12 years. He also counsels students at Hopewell Career Academy, an alternative high school in New Lenox.
Two years ago, McNicholas became affiliated with Rent A Priest, even though he finds the term offensive.
"I love the Catholic liturgy and sacramental theology. I am to the bone a Catholic. I truly miss being a priest," he said.
Condon's story
Condon is a Chicago native whose interest in the priesthood began during childhood with a makeshift altar, an egg cup and a Ritz cracker.
He entered the seminary after grade school, was ordained in 1967, and spent the bulk of his ministry in the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico.
Frustrated with missionary work, Condon left the Oblates of Mary Immaculate four years later and returned to the Chicago suburbs.
"I applied to Rome for a laicization to free me of my vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, but it doesn't deny I'm still a priest," Condon said.
Condon worked for a year as an education coordinator for the Illinois Migrant Council in Chicago Heights and spent the next 33 years at Respond Now, a nonprofit providing food, clothing and rental assistance for the poor.
Condon joined Rent A Priest in 1996 when a friend's son needed a minister to officiate at his wedding.
"I didn't realize there were opportunities to get back into ministry," Condon said.
"There are more than 100 married priests in the Chicago area, and some like the opportunity to still be of service. I'm still exercising my priesthood to the degree I'm able."
Condon, who retired from Respond Now in 2006, conducts up to 30 weddings a year. Some of the couples are of different faiths.
"They come to me, as well as many other married priests, because they have a relationship with the Catholic faith, through their own person or through their family, and want to get married in a park or banquet hall. A local priest wouldn't be able to do it, so they search me out," Condon said.
"A family with no connection to a parish may want to placate mom or grandma. We're there to maintain that Catholic connection the family has had for years and years."
Condon's wife, Magdalena, whom he married in 1992, designed and sewed his liturgical stoles.
She attends most Rent A Priest weddings, but does not help with the ceremony.
The Condons are members of St. Irenaeus Roman Catholic Church in Park Forest, and are affiliated with a home church group that conducts monthly communal liturgies.
By Rena Fulka, Staff Writer
The Southtown Star
February 17, 2008
The Rev. Terrance McNicholas left his position as an associate pastor in the Archdiocese of Chicago more than a decade ago.
Yet he continues to say Mass alone every day in his Hyde Park home.
"It's part of my routine. It's who I am," said the clinical social worker with a private practice in Chicago, Arlington Heights and Palos Heights.
He also conducts weddings and officiates at funerals through Rent A Priest, a service of Celibacy is the Issue Ministries.
Though he no longer is involved in parish life, McNicholas is licensed by the state to perform weddings.
"I believe I was called to the priesthood, not by any bishop, priest or pope, but by the spirit of God," he said.
Celibacy is the Issue was founded in 1992 when Louise Haggett was unable to find a local Catholic priest to visit her mother in a nursing home.
The international lay group's mission is to locate, recruit and promote resigned Roman Catholic priests to provide spiritual and sacramental ministry to the faithful who need it.
Two dozen Rent A Priests are on call in Illinois alone.
According to the group, a priest is a person engaged in a vocation of service, and a cleric occupies an organizational position in the institutional church.
During her research, Haggett said she uncovered 21 canon laws validating priesthood is for life, even if the ordained choose to marry.
The Rev. Dennis Condon, former executive director of Respond Now in Chicago Heights, is among the married men on the Rent A Priest roster. His ministry is certified by Celibacy is the Issue, Federation of Christian Ministries and Frankfort-based International Council of Community Churches.
The weddings, funerals, baptisms, home liturgies and marriage-vow renewals Condon conducts are not sanctioned by the Catholic Church, and all must take place outside an actual Catholic Church building.
"I tell people from the get-go that whatever I do for them is not recognized by the Catholic Church. I don't come off on any false pretenses," said Condon, who was a Spanish-speaking padre with the Oblates of Mary Immaculate in the late 1960s.
"For a wedding to be official in the eyes of the church, it must take place within the confines of a Catholic church."
There are many other requirements for a sanctioned marriage, some of which vary from one diocese to the next.
Those most likely to seek Rent A Priest services are Catholics who no longer attend Mass, a segment representing 73.3 percent of the American Catholic population, according to Celibacy is the Issue.
Loli and Al DiSanto, of Chicago's Lakeview community, wanted their wedding ceremony to be intimate and out-of-the-norm.
"We both grew up Catholic and went to Catholic schools, but we didn't have any one church we wanted to go to. And we don't go to church every Sunday," Loli DiSanto said.
"We thought it would be so romantic to be married on the lake next to the (Adler) Planetarium, but none of the priests we grew up with could marry us outside the church."
At their caterer's suggestion, the couple hired Condon, who offers an ecumenical, non-judgmental ministry throughout Chicago and Northwest Indiana.
"For us, our wedding wasn't a Catholic thing," DiSanto said. "It was about our relationship, the union of me and Al and committing our lives to each other. We wanted to get away from the 100-percent Catholic ceremony."
DiSanto said Condon sent them a packet of premarital information, met with them several times before the ceremony and allayed their pre-wedding jitters.
"We got to pick and choose and put together our entire ceremony ourselves, and we still get compliments on how beautiful, unique and touching our wedding was," she said.
Two years later, the couple hired Condon to baptize their daughter Lorelei.
"We had the baptism outside in the backyard with a fountain and a baptismal candle," DiSanto said.
"We had just moved into a new house we had built, and we had the house blessed and the baby baptized on the same day."
DiSanto refers Condon to relatives and friends and said she most likely will call on him again.
"We spent a lot of time with Rev. Condon, and we're getting to know his wife. He's part of our family now," DiSanto said.
"It's nice to be able to turn to a priest who's also married and who understands the ins and outs of daily living. Sometimes you can't turn to your parents or in-laws because they are no longer living. So it's nice to be able to turn to a person of faith who is married and can give advice."
But can the couple ever re-join the Catholic church?
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," DiSanto said.
"The Catholic church is supposed to be all-forgiving. If someone does not welcome me as a member of their community because my marriage was not sanctified inside the walls of the church, then I'm not sure I want to be a member of that community."
McNicholas' story
A native of Chicago's Southwest Side, McNicholas was born to an Irish Catholic father and a German Missouri Synod Lutheran mother.
"Ours was an ecumenical family, and we'd switch off between masses and services," he said.
McNicholas entered high school seminary after public grade school at the suggestion of his eighth-grade religion teacher, a Catholic sister whose twin was a religious, too.
"She thought it would be the coolest thing for my identical twin brother and I to be priests," he said.
"I bought it. My brother didn't."
McNicholas shared nothing but fond memories about his education with "the finest professors" at the former Archbishop Quigley Preparatory and St. Joseph College seminaries in Chicago, where he was active in political issues.
Ordained in 1979, he entered parish ministry with a double major in psychology and theology.
"I had the privilege of hearing people's confessions for 11 years," McNicholas said.
"It's a most humbling, awesome experience when people come to tell you their sins. They come for comfort, peace, healing and forgiveness from the church."
But for McNicholas, the experience led to personal unrest.
"What I was obliged to tell people, in my opinion, often times caused more pain, more shame and more guilt. That troubled me because I didn't want to be part of causing people distress," he said.
He also was unhappy with the movement to slow down the progressive church.
"John Paul II was a marvelous human being, truly a saint. But many in the curia were real extreme conservatives, in my opinion," McNicholas said.
"They were trying to undo much of the spirit and very law of Vatican II. The call of the laity to places of leadership and authority was being given lip service. Women religious and women laity were marginalized in matters of authority, when in actuality, they embodied what a good priest is."
McNicholas said he was troubled by the church's positions on gay rights, abortion, birth control, divorce and other moral and social issues.
"When I disagree with the issues, to be a mouthpiece for the church creates much conflict," McNicholas said.
"It was unhealthy for me emotionally, psychologically and physically."
McNicholas said he moved out of the rectory, rented an apartment and discussed his inner conflict with Cardinal Joseph Bernardin at great length before resigning from parish life.
McNicholas said he did not request laicization from the Holy See.
Archdiocese spokesman James Accurso laicization is the process by which a priest loses the sacramental faculties of his priesthood and can no longer present himself as a priest publicly. But the ordained can never be unordained, Accurso said.
With assistance from Bernardin, McNicholas found work in social services with the Circuit Court of Cook County and continued his education. He has been involved in private practice at Well-Path Center Inc. for 12 years. He also counsels students at Hopewell Career Academy, an alternative high school in New Lenox.
Two years ago, McNicholas became affiliated with Rent A Priest, even though he finds the term offensive.
"I love the Catholic liturgy and sacramental theology. I am to the bone a Catholic. I truly miss being a priest," he said.
Condon's story
Condon is a Chicago native whose interest in the priesthood began during childhood with a makeshift altar, an egg cup and a Ritz cracker.
He entered the seminary after grade school, was ordained in 1967, and spent the bulk of his ministry in the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico.
Frustrated with missionary work, Condon left the Oblates of Mary Immaculate four years later and returned to the Chicago suburbs.
"I applied to Rome for a laicization to free me of my vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, but it doesn't deny I'm still a priest," Condon said.
Condon worked for a year as an education coordinator for the Illinois Migrant Council in Chicago Heights and spent the next 33 years at Respond Now, a nonprofit providing food, clothing and rental assistance for the poor.
Condon joined Rent A Priest in 1996 when a friend's son needed a minister to officiate at his wedding.
"I didn't realize there were opportunities to get back into ministry," Condon said.
"There are more than 100 married priests in the Chicago area, and some like the opportunity to still be of service. I'm still exercising my priesthood to the degree I'm able."
Condon, who retired from Respond Now in 2006, conducts up to 30 weddings a year. Some of the couples are of different faiths.
"They come to me, as well as many other married priests, because they have a relationship with the Catholic faith, through their own person or through their family, and want to get married in a park or banquet hall. A local priest wouldn't be able to do it, so they search me out," Condon said.
"A family with no connection to a parish may want to placate mom or grandma. We're there to maintain that Catholic connection the family has had for years and years."
Condon's wife, Magdalena, whom he married in 1992, designed and sewed his liturgical stoles.
She attends most Rent A Priest weddings, but does not help with the ceremony.
The Condons are members of St. Irenaeus Roman Catholic Church in Park Forest, and are affiliated with a home church group that conducts monthly communal liturgies.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
BETTER OFF WED: FOR SOME PORTLAND PRIESTS, VOWS ARE MEANT TO BE BROKEN.
BY AMY ROE
Growing up in Cork, Ireland, Peter Cullen had his life's work laid out for him. "The greatest expectation for a male was to be a priest," he says. "And I always wanted to be the best."
Cullen achieved his dream. Ordained as a Franciscan in 1958, he came to America a year later and worked for the church, leading weekend retreats in Delaware and visiting parish schools. He recalls those days with fondness. He delighted children with his soccer skills, visited them in their homes and dined with their families. At the end of the evening Father Peter would go home alone to an empty rectory. To fill the silence, he'd flip on the TV. At 11 o'clock, he went to bed.
When he returned to Ireland in 1966 to visit his siblings and their children, he felt a pang of longing. A year later, he made the most difficult decision of his life.
"I left the priesthood because I decided to get married," Cullen says matter-of-factly. "My reason is so simple. Life was too lonely. I dreaded the thought of being an old, lonely priest."
Cullen, who lives in Southwest Portland, is one of as many as 100,000 men worldwide who have left the Roman Catholic priesthood, many of them in order to wed. He and many others find the church's latest sex scandals particularly insulting. Though they neither harmed children nor lied about their sexual choices, some married priests feel the church abandoned them at the same time it shielded sexual predators.
"That's one of the items that guys like me are very resentful about--the way we were treated," Cullen says, his Irish accent thickening in anger. He finds hypocrisy in the fact that priests who longed to start a family were cast out of the cloth, while those who lusted after children were protected. "The pedophiles not only did unnatural things, they committed crimes."
Today there are as many as 20,000 married priests in the United States (conservative estimates put the number lower; there exists no official figure). In Oregon and Southwest Washington, there are almost 100.
Priests often describe the decision to leave the clergy as the most difficult choice they've ever made. One likened the experience--without a trace of irony--to divorce.
Some, like Vince Fitzgerald, fall away from Catholicism once they turn in their collar. Fitzgerald attends First Unitarian Universalist Church in Portland with his wife, Linda.
"I still consider myself culturally Catholic," Fitzgerald says, "but spiritually, I find the Unitarian Universalist values and practices are most comfortable for me."
However, most of the married priests interviewed for this article remain devout Catholics. Some even retain the title of "father." Several petitioned Rome for "laicization," a decree which formally returns priests to the status of lay people, enabling them to marry within the church.
Though ordination into the priesthood is considered irrevocable, priests who marry can't officially represent the Catholic Church. They can no longer say mass, give communion or perform weddings, baptisms or last rites. Yet a few continue to perform some duties, such as officiating at weddings outside the church.
Other married priests take on less controversial roles as lay people. Denis Barrett-Dennehy, a former priest who taught at Jesuit High, is an active member of the St. Francis of Assisi parish in Southeast Portland. Jim Magmer, an 80-year-old married priest from Wilsonville, is a volunteer chaplain at Meridian Park Hospital in Tualatin.
Many are clearly frustrated by the church's insistence on mandatory celibacy for priests, but the overwhelming majority of these men still have hope for the church, even in the wake of devastating scandals that have eroded its moral authority. Such revelations have brought new, intense pressure to bear on an organization long resistant to change.
That resistance may be wavering. Gallup polls show that three in four Catholics in America believe the church has been handling the scandals badly. In June, at a conference in Dallas, the bishops' statements indicated church leaders are more mindful of public opinion than ever before.
Later this week, on July 20, Voice of the Faithful, an influential new lay organization, will hold a conference in Boston in an attempt to promote change, particularly optional celibacy for priests. Many Catholics predict that one day soon, bishops will allow pastors to exchange their vow of celibacy for the vow of matrimony.
"Married priests are a necessity," says the Rev. Robert Palladino, administrative pastor of St. John Church in Welches, who left the priesthood to marry and returned to the pulpit when his wife died. "When 100,000 priests leave, it should send a message to somebody."
The second Vatican Council, convened in 1963, was intended to demystify the Catholic Church, making it more accessible to the people. Vatican II was famous for its decisions to hold masses in English, rather than Latin, and to allow priests to face their congregations during services. Both moves helped to make priests more accessible to parishioners. But throughout this era of reform, one tradition remained firm: Priests must be celibate.
Celibacy is not required for most Christian clergy, including priests in the Eastern Orthodox and Episcopalian churches. Even the Roman Catholic church allowed priests to marry until 1139.
The vow of celibacy has nonetheless become a distinguishing characteristic of the Roman Catholic priesthood. Roman Catholics give various reasons for this. Many are taught that priests are supposed to emulate Christ by remaining single. The Apostle Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, wrote that unmarried men and women would be less distracted in their service to God.
Some historians, however, say the practice of mandatory celibacy may have had more to do with a desire by 12th-century church leaders to prevent priests from passing parish wealth on to their heirs. Critics of the vow say money and power continue to be the real obstacles to married clergy. For example, making celibacy optional today could force the church to pay its married priests a family wage and diminish its ability to transfer priests at will.
Others contend celibacy serves to protect the church's authority by maintaining an exclusive, obedient group of leaders while mystifying outsiders. "It's a cult," says Jeff Lidell, a former priest who now works as a mental-health counselor. "I don't mean in the Reverend Moon sense, but even in Vatican II documents, they call it the 'cult of the priesthood' because they consider it limited-access."
Despite varied views on celibacy, priests who leave the clergy take to heart canonical law: Once a priest, always a priest.
"My experience with priests who marry is a desire for honesty," says Richard Sipe, a former priest and author of Sex, Priests and Power. "They can't or won't lead a double life. They sacrifice the security of the priesthood, their employment, their livelihood, status--all of that."
Their sacrifices can be significant. Like many priests who left the priesthood, Cullen was at a loss when he walked away from his vocation in 1967. "In those days, if you left, you had no resources," he says. "I didn't have a clue as to what I was going to do. The day I left, I didn't even know where I was going to stay."
At first he worked with a government-sponsored program called Community Action, which was part of Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty. He networked with other priests in similar situations, founding a support group that exists to this day. "The biggest job was trying to convert my priest work into a résumé."
When a fellow married priest told him about his job at Merrill Lynch, Cullen teased him about taking up such a seemingly unpriestly profession. However, with a new wife and plans for a family, Cullen changed his mind and enrolled in Merrill Lynch's training program. "I was lucky to find a place that would train me," he says. "I'm forever grateful to Merrill Lynch. They gave me a whole career."
His ease with people made him a skillful manager. "My focus as a manager was to help people grow, and that's what a priest does." Cullen's job took him around the country and finally to Portland, where he retired as a senior vice president of First Interstate Bank.
Cullen's return to secular life shocked his family back in Ireland, particularly a brother who had also joined the priesthood. "They wondered whether the devil had gotten me. I arrived at the airport in a business suit. They were so stunned to see that I was the old Peter they always loved and knew."
While Cullen didn't trumpet his priesthood at work, he didn't hide it, either. Others are less candid. For example, one former priest who operates a suburban bar asked that WW not name him, as few of his patrons know of his past occupation. Another also requested anonymity to keep his previous vocation private, as he'd done throughout his legal career. He thought his priesthood was a secret, but one day, while he was living in Hawaii, there was a rare earthquake. "It was fairly severe," he chuckles, "and people were starting to line up outside my office and wanted absolution!"
Magmer was also apprehensive about revealing his past. "Initially I didn't identify myself as a former priest, or a married priest, unless I had to," he says.
After his ordination, he taught at various Catholic schools, including a stint teaching journalism at the University of Detroit. When he left the priesthood to get married in 1966, he moved to San Jose, Calif., where he'd been promised a reporting post. After the job fell through when a Catholic senior editor disapproved of hiring a married priest, he headed north to Portland. "I wanted to get as far away from where I was known as possible," Magmer says.
He got a job at The Oregonian and, later, a teaching post at Portland Community College. While a freelance writer for the Portland-based Catholic Sentinel, Magmer kept running into other married priests. He began collecting names, eventually compiling an extensive mailing list, known as "the Umbrella Group" to its more than 100 recipients, and sending out a monthly newsletter, with items of interest and job leads.
"I was lucky in that I had journalism training, which helped me get a job," he says. "A lot of other men really struggle."
Some never fully make the transition. "There's guys who left the priesthood, felt guilty, and went back," says Cullen. Unable to assimilate into society, yet alienated from the church, a few were devastated by their decision, he says. "They're pitiful, sad people."
For others, the anguish is compounded when the marriages for which they've sacrificed so much ultimately fail. When George Hardin left the Jesuit priesthood in Chicago to marry a nun from a neighboring parish, he was alienated to the point of leaving the state. "No church would have us," he says.
Today, at 74, he wheezes and strains to talk, the effect of Parkinson's disease. But Hardin insists on continuing, struggling for breath as he recounts when his first wife divorced him. "I don't believe in divorce," he says bitterly. He remarried 10 years ago, and both he and his wife attend a Portland-area discussion group for Catholics and occasionally socialize with other married priests. A retired high-school teacher, Hardin says he would've liked to have stayed in the priesthood: "I had a good job. Rome is pretty entrenched. I think it would be better if they made celibacy something you choose."
In a way, a few priests have been able to choose. Scores of married Anglican priests and Protestant clergy have been allowed to convert to Roman Catholicism even though they were already married.
"It's crazy," says Barrett-Dennehy. "It doesn't make any sense."
At St. Agatha Church in Southeast Portland, for example, Father Slider Steuernol was an ordained Presbyterian minister, with a wife and children, when he converted to Catholicism in 1994. He entered the priesthood in 1996 and remains married. While he's not celibate himself, Steuernol says, "I stand in awe of my fellow priests who make that commitment." At the same time, he notes that the Orthodox church has made celibacy voluntary for its priests. "I think both could work together," he says.
The church's reluctance to consider making celibacy voluntary is a sore point for some married priests, particularly given the nationwide shortage of priests.
In 1975, the United States had 60,000 Catholic priests; by 2001 there were just over 45,000. Their numbers continue to decline at a rate of about 12 percent a year.
In some parts of the country, the priest shortage is severe. Church officials in Oregon say the state is less strapped for clergy, though parishes in Roseburg and Reedsport have had to be combined. In Portland, one church, St. Francis in Southeast Portland, is without a parish priest, even as its parishioners include priests who left the clergy to marry.
The shortage could grow. Thousands of priests, including some in Portland, have come out of retirement to take over parishes, while enrollment in seminaries continues to decline. There were around 47,000 seminarians in 1965; in 1997 there were only 5,000 (according to figures cited by Chester Gillis in Roman Catholicism in America). Meanwhile, the ranks of Catholics in the United States are growing, swelling with an influx of Catholic immigrants from Latin America.
"The priesthood is going downhill fairly fast," says Dean Hoge, a former priest and sociologist at the Catholic University of America. "The crisis over sexual misconduct only makes things a little worse."
Hoge helped conduct a 1987 study that polled Catholic undergraduate students at Catholic schools around the country. "We concluded that you would have a fourfold increase in seminarians if you had optional celibacy," he says. "It's the biggest deterrent."
Not everyone agrees with this analysis, or even with the numbers. "I'm not denying it's a serious problem," says Mary Gautier, a senior research associate at Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. "I just don't think there's a crisis."
The sex scandal is crisis enough. Many innocent priests were stigmatized. Jeff Lidell remembers being taunted about pedophilia in the 1980s as he walked down the street in clerical clothing. "It was so disheartening," says the former priest, who is now married and lives in North Portland. "Even to date, my brothers have teased me. And I can't blame them," he says. "If I was on the other side, I'd feel the same."
The scandal also presents a platform for those who wish to question the vow of celibacy. On July 20, many of these reformists will be heard. Voice of the Faithful will gather such Catholics from across the nation in Boston's Hynes Convention Center in an attempt to move the church closer to the more open vision of Vatican II, as a church of the people.
Voice of the Faithful's primary goal is to push for the laity's inclusion in church governance. The laity's role is crucial: It's the central axis connecting a host of controversial issues for Catholic America--birth control, the ordination of women and optional celibacy for priests.
"The space holds 5,000, and we are expecting to fill it," says Mike Emerton, a VOTF spokesperson.
If the church is forced to listen to the laity, optional celibacy for Catholic priests, which massive numbers of Catholics have supported in numerous polls and surveys, is likely to be at the top of the agenda.
Portland priests and lay people await the outcome with interest, if not impatience. "The church is known to just kind of sit on it and pray about it," says Lidell. "I think we need to seize the moment."
A Sanctuary for Pedophiles?
Most advocates for reform within the Catholic Church view the current sex scandal as an opportunity to push for changes, including permission for priests to marry. A few former priests, however, find a direct link between forced celibacy and mounting allegations that priests abused young men.
Former priest Denis Barrett-Dennehy, a counselor who has a master's degree in psychology, says some men experience what is known as "arrested sexual development." Their emotional and sexual maturity stagnates in pre-pubescence.
For such men, Barrett-Dennehy says, the priesthood can be a dangerous sanctuary. "The atmosphere of enforced celibacy becomes a refuge for young men who have arrested sexuality," says Barrett-Dennehy. "They're unconsciously drawn to the priesthood because normal outlets for sexuality are forbidden in seminary."
As these men grow older, their sexual urges build, and they're attracted not to adults, but to young men--their peer group at the time their own sexuality stopped developing. "Being around all these pre-pubescent males becomes too much for them," he says.
Jim Magmer, a married priest living in Wilsonville, also agrees that the issues of celibacy and pedophilia are inextricable. "As long as you have mandatory celibacy, you're going to have problems," he says. "The church will continue to try and hide these men and cover up what they did because it makes so much of celibacy."--John Schrag
Michelle Chihara, a senior writer at AlterNet.org, an online magazine of the Independent Media Institute, contributed to this article. BETTER OFF WED
FOR SOME PORTLAND PRIESTS, VOWS ARE MEANT TO BE BROKEN.
BY AMY ROE
Growing up in Cork, Ireland, Peter Cullen had his life's work laid out for him. "The greatest expectation for a male was to be a priest," he says. "And I always wanted to be the best."
Cullen achieved his dream. Ordained as a Franciscan in 1958, he came to America a year later and worked for the church, leading weekend retreats in Delaware and visiting parish schools. He recalls those days with fondness. He delighted children with his soccer skills, visited them in their homes and dined with their families. At the end of the evening Father Peter would go home alone to an empty rectory. To fill the silence, he'd flip on the TV. At 11 o'clock, he went to bed.
When he returned to Ireland in 1966 to visit his siblings and their children, he felt a pang of longing. A year later, he made the most difficult decision of his life.
"I left the priesthood because I decided to get married," Cullen says matter-of-factly. "My reason is so simple. Life was too lonely. I dreaded the thought of being an old, lonely priest."
Cullen, who lives in Southwest Portland, is one of as many as 100,000 men worldwide who have left the Roman Catholic priesthood, many of them in order to wed. He and many others find the church's latest sex scandals particularly insulting. Though they neither harmed children nor lied about their sexual choices, some married priests feel the church abandoned them at the same time it shielded sexual predators.
"That's one of the items that guys like me are very resentful about--the way we were treated," Cullen says, his Irish accent thickening in anger. He finds hypocrisy in the fact that priests who longed to start a family were cast out of the cloth, while those who lusted after children were protected. "The pedophiles not only did unnatural things, they committed crimes."
Today there are as many as 20,000 married priests in the United States (conservative estimates put the number lower; there exists no official figure). In Oregon and Southwest Washington, there are almost 100.
Priests often describe the decision to leave the clergy as the most difficult choice they've ever made. One likened the experience--without a trace of irony--to divorce.
Some, like Vince Fitzgerald, fall away from Catholicism once they turn in their collar. Fitzgerald attends First Unitarian Universalist Church in Portland with his wife, Linda.
"I still consider myself culturally Catholic," Fitzgerald says, "but spiritually, I find the Unitarian Universalist values and practices are most comfortable for me."
However, most of the married priests interviewed for this article remain devout Catholics. Some even retain the title of "father." Several petitioned Rome for "laicization," a decree which formally returns priests to the status of lay people, enabling them to marry within the church.
Though ordination into the priesthood is considered irrevocable, priests who marry can't officially represent the Catholic Church. They can no longer say mass, give communion or perform weddings, baptisms or last rites. Yet a few continue to perform some duties, such as officiating at weddings outside the church.
Other married priests take on less controversial roles as lay people. Denis Barrett-Dennehy, a former priest who taught at Jesuit High, is an active member of the St. Francis of Assisi parish in Southeast Portland. Jim Magmer, an 80-year-old married priest from Wilsonville, is a volunteer chaplain at Meridian Park Hospital in Tualatin.
Many are clearly frustrated by the church's insistence on mandatory celibacy for priests, but the overwhelming majority of these men still have hope for the church, even in the wake of devastating scandals that have eroded its moral authority. Such revelations have brought new, intense pressure to bear on an organization long resistant to change.
That resistance may be wavering. Gallup polls show that three in four Catholics in America believe the church has been handling the scandals badly. In June, at a conference in Dallas, the bishops' statements indicated church leaders are more mindful of public opinion than ever before.
Later this week, on July 20, Voice of the Faithful, an influential new lay organization, will hold a conference in Boston in an attempt to promote change, particularly optional celibacy for priests. Many Catholics predict that one day soon, bishops will allow pastors to exchange their vow of celibacy for the vow of matrimony.
"Married priests are a necessity," says the Rev. Robert Palladino, administrative pastor of St. John Church in Welches, who left the priesthood to marry and returned to the pulpit when his wife died. "When 100,000 priests leave, it should send a message to somebody."
The second Vatican Council, convened in 1963, was intended to demystify the Catholic Church, making it more accessible to the people. Vatican II was famous for its decisions to hold masses in English, rather than Latin, and to allow priests to face their congregations during services. Both moves helped to make priests more accessible to parishioners. But throughout this era of reform, one tradition remained firm: Priests must be celibate.
Celibacy is not required for most Christian clergy, including priests in the Eastern Orthodox and Episcopalian churches. Even the Roman Catholic church allowed priests to marry until 1139.
The vow of celibacy has nonetheless become a distinguishing characteristic of the Roman Catholic priesthood. Roman Catholics give various reasons for this. Many are taught that priests are supposed to emulate Christ by remaining single. The Apostle Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, wrote that unmarried men and women would be less distracted in their service to God.
Some historians, however, say the practice of mandatory celibacy may have had more to do with a desire by 12th-century church leaders to prevent priests from passing parish wealth on to their heirs. Critics of the vow say money and power continue to be the real obstacles to married clergy. For example, making celibacy optional today could force the church to pay its married priests a family wage and diminish its ability to transfer priests at will.
Others contend celibacy serves to protect the church's authority by maintaining an exclusive, obedient group of leaders while mystifying outsiders. "It's a cult," says Jeff Lidell, a former priest who now works as a mental-health counselor. "I don't mean in the Reverend Moon sense, but even in Vatican II documents, they call it the 'cult of the priesthood' because they consider it limited-access."
Despite varied views on celibacy, priests who leave the clergy take to heart canonical law: Once a priest, always a priest.
"My experience with priests who marry is a desire for honesty," says Richard Sipe, a former priest and author of Sex, Priests and Power. "They can't or won't lead a double life. They sacrifice the security of the priesthood, their employment, their livelihood, status--all of that."
Their sacrifices can be significant. Like many priests who left the priesthood, Cullen was at a loss when he walked away from his vocation in 1967. "In those days, if you left, you had no resources," he says. "I didn't have a clue as to what I was going to do. The day I left, I didn't even know where I was going to stay."
At first he worked with a government-sponsored program called Community Action, which was part of Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty. He networked with other priests in similar situations, founding a support group that exists to this day. "The biggest job was trying to convert my priest work into a résumé."
When a fellow married priest told him about his job at Merrill Lynch, Cullen teased him about taking up such a seemingly unpriestly profession. However, with a new wife and plans for a family, Cullen changed his mind and enrolled in Merrill Lynch's training program. "I was lucky to find a place that would train me," he says. "I'm forever grateful to Merrill Lynch. They gave me a whole career."
His ease with people made him a skillful manager. "My focus as a manager was to help people grow, and that's what a priest does." Cullen's job took him around the country and finally to Portland, where he retired as a senior vice president of First Interstate Bank.
Cullen's return to secular life shocked his family back in Ireland, particularly a brother who had also joined the priesthood. "They wondered whether the devil had gotten me. I arrived at the airport in a business suit. They were so stunned to see that I was the old Peter they always loved and knew."
While Cullen didn't trumpet his priesthood at work, he didn't hide it, either. Others are less candid. For example, one former priest who operates a suburban bar asked that WW not name him, as few of his patrons know of his past occupation. Another also requested anonymity to keep his previous vocation private, as he'd done throughout his legal career. He thought his priesthood was a secret, but one day, while he was living in Hawaii, there was a rare earthquake. "It was fairly severe," he chuckles, "and people were starting to line up outside my office and wanted absolution!"
Magmer was also apprehensive about revealing his past. "Initially I didn't identify myself as a former priest, or a married priest, unless I had to," he says.
After his ordination, he taught at various Catholic schools, including a stint teaching journalism at the University of Detroit. When he left the priesthood to get married in 1966, he moved to San Jose, Calif., where he'd been promised a reporting post. After the job fell through when a Catholic senior editor disapproved of hiring a married priest, he headed north to Portland. "I wanted to get as far away from where I was known as possible," Magmer says.
He got a job at The Oregonian and, later, a teaching post at Portland Community College. While a freelance writer for the Portland-based Catholic Sentinel, Magmer kept running into other married priests. He began collecting names, eventually compiling an extensive mailing list, known as "the Umbrella Group" to its more than 100 recipients, and sending out a monthly newsletter, with items of interest and job leads.
"I was lucky in that I had journalism training, which helped me get a job," he says. "A lot of other men really struggle."
Some never fully make the transition. "There's guys who left the priesthood, felt guilty, and went back," says Cullen. Unable to assimilate into society, yet alienated from the church, a few were devastated by their decision, he says. "They're pitiful, sad people."
For others, the anguish is compounded when the marriages for which they've sacrificed so much ultimately fail. When George Hardin left the Jesuit priesthood in Chicago to marry a nun from a neighboring parish, he was alienated to the point of leaving the state. "No church would have us," he says.
Today, at 74, he wheezes and strains to talk, the effect of Parkinson's disease. But Hardin insists on continuing, struggling for breath as he recounts when his first wife divorced him. "I don't believe in divorce," he says bitterly. He remarried 10 years ago, and both he and his wife attend a Portland-area discussion group for Catholics and occasionally socialize with other married priests. A retired high-school teacher, Hardin says he would've liked to have stayed in the priesthood: "I had a good job. Rome is pretty entrenched. I think it would be better if they made celibacy something you choose."
In a way, a few priests have been able to choose. Scores of married Anglican priests and Protestant clergy have been allowed to convert to Roman Catholicism even though they were already married.
"It's crazy," says Barrett-Dennehy. "It doesn't make any sense."
At St. Agatha Church in Southeast Portland, for example, Father Slider Steuernol was an ordained Presbyterian minister, with a wife and children, when he converted to Catholicism in 1994. He entered the priesthood in 1996 and remains married. While he's not celibate himself, Steuernol says, "I stand in awe of my fellow priests who make that commitment." At the same time, he notes that the Orthodox church has made celibacy voluntary for its priests. "I think both could work together," he says.
The church's reluctance to consider making celibacy voluntary is a sore point for some married priests, particularly given the nationwide shortage of priests.
In 1975, the United States had 60,000 Catholic priests; by 2001 there were just over 45,000. Their numbers continue to decline at a rate of about 12 percent a year.
In some parts of the country, the priest shortage is severe. Church officials in Oregon say the state is less strapped for clergy, though parishes in Roseburg and Reedsport have had to be combined. In Portland, one church, St. Francis in Southeast Portland, is without a parish priest, even as its parishioners include priests who left the clergy to marry.
The shortage could grow. Thousands of priests, including some in Portland, have come out of retirement to take over parishes, while enrollment in seminaries continues to decline. There were around 47,000 seminarians in 1965; in 1997 there were only 5,000 (according to figures cited by Chester Gillis in Roman Catholicism in America). Meanwhile, the ranks of Catholics in the United States are growing, swelling with an influx of Catholic immigrants from Latin America.
"The priesthood is going downhill fairly fast," says Dean Hoge, a former priest and sociologist at the Catholic University of America. "The crisis over sexual misconduct only makes things a little worse."
Hoge helped conduct a 1987 study that polled Catholic undergraduate students at Catholic schools around the country. "We concluded that you would have a fourfold increase in seminarians if you had optional celibacy," he says. "It's the biggest deterrent."
Not everyone agrees with this analysis, or even with the numbers. "I'm not denying it's a serious problem," says Mary Gautier, a senior research associate at Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. "I just don't think there's a crisis."
The sex scandal is crisis enough. Many innocent priests were stigmatized. Jeff Lidell remembers being taunted about pedophilia in the 1980s as he walked down the street in clerical clothing. "It was so disheartening," says the former priest, who is now married and lives in North Portland. "Even to date, my brothers have teased me. And I can't blame them," he says. "If I was on the other side, I'd feel the same."
The scandal also presents a platform for those who wish to question the vow of celibacy. On July 20, many of these reformists will be heard. Voice of the Faithful will gather such Catholics from across the nation in Boston's Hynes Convention Center in an attempt to move the church closer to the more open vision of Vatican II, as a church of the people.
Voice of the Faithful's primary goal is to push for the laity's inclusion in church governance. The laity's role is crucial: It's the central axis connecting a host of controversial issues for Catholic America--birth control, the ordination of women and optional celibacy for priests.
"The space holds 5,000, and we are expecting to fill it," says Mike Emerton, a VOTF spokesperson.
If the church is forced to listen to the laity, optional celibacy for Catholic priests, which massive numbers of Catholics have supported in numerous polls and surveys, is likely to be at the top of the agenda.
Portland priests and lay people await the outcome with interest, if not impatience. "The church is known to just kind of sit on it and pray about it," says Lidell. "I think we need to seize the moment."
A Sanctuary for Pedophiles?
Most advocates for reform within the Catholic Church view the current sex scandal as an opportunity to push for changes, including permission for priests to marry. A few former priests, however, find a direct link between forced celibacy and mounting allegations that priests abused young men.
Former priest Denis Barrett-Dennehy, a counselor who has a master's degree in psychology, says some men experience what is known as "arrested sexual development." Their emotional and sexual maturity stagnates in pre-pubescence.
For such men, Barrett-Dennehy says, the priesthood can be a dangerous sanctuary. "The atmosphere of enforced celibacy becomes a refuge for young men who have arrested sexuality," says Barrett-Dennehy. "They're unconsciously drawn to the priesthood because normal outlets for sexuality are forbidden in seminary."
As these men grow older, their sexual urges build, and they're attracted not to adults, but to young men--their peer group at the time their own sexuality stopped developing. "Being around all these pre-pubescent males becomes too much for them," he says.
Jim Magmer, a married priest living in Wilsonville, also agrees that the issues of celibacy and pedophilia are inextricable. "As long as you have mandatory celibacy, you're going to have problems," he says. "The church will continue to try and hide these men and cover up what they did because it makes so much of celibacy."--John Schrag
Michelle Chihara, a senior writer at AlterNet.org, an online magazine of the Independent Media Institute, contributed to this article. Her own piece and similar stories about married priests published this week by various weekly newspapers across the nation can be viewed at www.alternet.org .
http://wweek.com/editorial/2837/2974/
Growing up in Cork, Ireland, Peter Cullen had his life's work laid out for him. "The greatest expectation for a male was to be a priest," he says. "And I always wanted to be the best."
Cullen achieved his dream. Ordained as a Franciscan in 1958, he came to America a year later and worked for the church, leading weekend retreats in Delaware and visiting parish schools. He recalls those days with fondness. He delighted children with his soccer skills, visited them in their homes and dined with their families. At the end of the evening Father Peter would go home alone to an empty rectory. To fill the silence, he'd flip on the TV. At 11 o'clock, he went to bed.
When he returned to Ireland in 1966 to visit his siblings and their children, he felt a pang of longing. A year later, he made the most difficult decision of his life.
"I left the priesthood because I decided to get married," Cullen says matter-of-factly. "My reason is so simple. Life was too lonely. I dreaded the thought of being an old, lonely priest."
Cullen, who lives in Southwest Portland, is one of as many as 100,000 men worldwide who have left the Roman Catholic priesthood, many of them in order to wed. He and many others find the church's latest sex scandals particularly insulting. Though they neither harmed children nor lied about their sexual choices, some married priests feel the church abandoned them at the same time it shielded sexual predators.
"That's one of the items that guys like me are very resentful about--the way we were treated," Cullen says, his Irish accent thickening in anger. He finds hypocrisy in the fact that priests who longed to start a family were cast out of the cloth, while those who lusted after children were protected. "The pedophiles not only did unnatural things, they committed crimes."
Today there are as many as 20,000 married priests in the United States (conservative estimates put the number lower; there exists no official figure). In Oregon and Southwest Washington, there are almost 100.
Priests often describe the decision to leave the clergy as the most difficult choice they've ever made. One likened the experience--without a trace of irony--to divorce.
Some, like Vince Fitzgerald, fall away from Catholicism once they turn in their collar. Fitzgerald attends First Unitarian Universalist Church in Portland with his wife, Linda.
"I still consider myself culturally Catholic," Fitzgerald says, "but spiritually, I find the Unitarian Universalist values and practices are most comfortable for me."
However, most of the married priests interviewed for this article remain devout Catholics. Some even retain the title of "father." Several petitioned Rome for "laicization," a decree which formally returns priests to the status of lay people, enabling them to marry within the church.
Though ordination into the priesthood is considered irrevocable, priests who marry can't officially represent the Catholic Church. They can no longer say mass, give communion or perform weddings, baptisms or last rites. Yet a few continue to perform some duties, such as officiating at weddings outside the church.
Other married priests take on less controversial roles as lay people. Denis Barrett-Dennehy, a former priest who taught at Jesuit High, is an active member of the St. Francis of Assisi parish in Southeast Portland. Jim Magmer, an 80-year-old married priest from Wilsonville, is a volunteer chaplain at Meridian Park Hospital in Tualatin.
Many are clearly frustrated by the church's insistence on mandatory celibacy for priests, but the overwhelming majority of these men still have hope for the church, even in the wake of devastating scandals that have eroded its moral authority. Such revelations have brought new, intense pressure to bear on an organization long resistant to change.
That resistance may be wavering. Gallup polls show that three in four Catholics in America believe the church has been handling the scandals badly. In June, at a conference in Dallas, the bishops' statements indicated church leaders are more mindful of public opinion than ever before.
Later this week, on July 20, Voice of the Faithful, an influential new lay organization, will hold a conference in Boston in an attempt to promote change, particularly optional celibacy for priests. Many Catholics predict that one day soon, bishops will allow pastors to exchange their vow of celibacy for the vow of matrimony.
"Married priests are a necessity," says the Rev. Robert Palladino, administrative pastor of St. John Church in Welches, who left the priesthood to marry and returned to the pulpit when his wife died. "When 100,000 priests leave, it should send a message to somebody."
The second Vatican Council, convened in 1963, was intended to demystify the Catholic Church, making it more accessible to the people. Vatican II was famous for its decisions to hold masses in English, rather than Latin, and to allow priests to face their congregations during services. Both moves helped to make priests more accessible to parishioners. But throughout this era of reform, one tradition remained firm: Priests must be celibate.
Celibacy is not required for most Christian clergy, including priests in the Eastern Orthodox and Episcopalian churches. Even the Roman Catholic church allowed priests to marry until 1139.
The vow of celibacy has nonetheless become a distinguishing characteristic of the Roman Catholic priesthood. Roman Catholics give various reasons for this. Many are taught that priests are supposed to emulate Christ by remaining single. The Apostle Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, wrote that unmarried men and women would be less distracted in their service to God.
Some historians, however, say the practice of mandatory celibacy may have had more to do with a desire by 12th-century church leaders to prevent priests from passing parish wealth on to their heirs. Critics of the vow say money and power continue to be the real obstacles to married clergy. For example, making celibacy optional today could force the church to pay its married priests a family wage and diminish its ability to transfer priests at will.
Others contend celibacy serves to protect the church's authority by maintaining an exclusive, obedient group of leaders while mystifying outsiders. "It's a cult," says Jeff Lidell, a former priest who now works as a mental-health counselor. "I don't mean in the Reverend Moon sense, but even in Vatican II documents, they call it the 'cult of the priesthood' because they consider it limited-access."
Despite varied views on celibacy, priests who leave the clergy take to heart canonical law: Once a priest, always a priest.
"My experience with priests who marry is a desire for honesty," says Richard Sipe, a former priest and author of Sex, Priests and Power. "They can't or won't lead a double life. They sacrifice the security of the priesthood, their employment, their livelihood, status--all of that."
Their sacrifices can be significant. Like many priests who left the priesthood, Cullen was at a loss when he walked away from his vocation in 1967. "In those days, if you left, you had no resources," he says. "I didn't have a clue as to what I was going to do. The day I left, I didn't even know where I was going to stay."
At first he worked with a government-sponsored program called Community Action, which was part of Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty. He networked with other priests in similar situations, founding a support group that exists to this day. "The biggest job was trying to convert my priest work into a résumé."
When a fellow married priest told him about his job at Merrill Lynch, Cullen teased him about taking up such a seemingly unpriestly profession. However, with a new wife and plans for a family, Cullen changed his mind and enrolled in Merrill Lynch's training program. "I was lucky to find a place that would train me," he says. "I'm forever grateful to Merrill Lynch. They gave me a whole career."
His ease with people made him a skillful manager. "My focus as a manager was to help people grow, and that's what a priest does." Cullen's job took him around the country and finally to Portland, where he retired as a senior vice president of First Interstate Bank.
Cullen's return to secular life shocked his family back in Ireland, particularly a brother who had also joined the priesthood. "They wondered whether the devil had gotten me. I arrived at the airport in a business suit. They were so stunned to see that I was the old Peter they always loved and knew."
While Cullen didn't trumpet his priesthood at work, he didn't hide it, either. Others are less candid. For example, one former priest who operates a suburban bar asked that WW not name him, as few of his patrons know of his past occupation. Another also requested anonymity to keep his previous vocation private, as he'd done throughout his legal career. He thought his priesthood was a secret, but one day, while he was living in Hawaii, there was a rare earthquake. "It was fairly severe," he chuckles, "and people were starting to line up outside my office and wanted absolution!"
Magmer was also apprehensive about revealing his past. "Initially I didn't identify myself as a former priest, or a married priest, unless I had to," he says.
After his ordination, he taught at various Catholic schools, including a stint teaching journalism at the University of Detroit. When he left the priesthood to get married in 1966, he moved to San Jose, Calif., where he'd been promised a reporting post. After the job fell through when a Catholic senior editor disapproved of hiring a married priest, he headed north to Portland. "I wanted to get as far away from where I was known as possible," Magmer says.
He got a job at The Oregonian and, later, a teaching post at Portland Community College. While a freelance writer for the Portland-based Catholic Sentinel, Magmer kept running into other married priests. He began collecting names, eventually compiling an extensive mailing list, known as "the Umbrella Group" to its more than 100 recipients, and sending out a monthly newsletter, with items of interest and job leads.
"I was lucky in that I had journalism training, which helped me get a job," he says. "A lot of other men really struggle."
Some never fully make the transition. "There's guys who left the priesthood, felt guilty, and went back," says Cullen. Unable to assimilate into society, yet alienated from the church, a few were devastated by their decision, he says. "They're pitiful, sad people."
For others, the anguish is compounded when the marriages for which they've sacrificed so much ultimately fail. When George Hardin left the Jesuit priesthood in Chicago to marry a nun from a neighboring parish, he was alienated to the point of leaving the state. "No church would have us," he says.
Today, at 74, he wheezes and strains to talk, the effect of Parkinson's disease. But Hardin insists on continuing, struggling for breath as he recounts when his first wife divorced him. "I don't believe in divorce," he says bitterly. He remarried 10 years ago, and both he and his wife attend a Portland-area discussion group for Catholics and occasionally socialize with other married priests. A retired high-school teacher, Hardin says he would've liked to have stayed in the priesthood: "I had a good job. Rome is pretty entrenched. I think it would be better if they made celibacy something you choose."
In a way, a few priests have been able to choose. Scores of married Anglican priests and Protestant clergy have been allowed to convert to Roman Catholicism even though they were already married.
"It's crazy," says Barrett-Dennehy. "It doesn't make any sense."
At St. Agatha Church in Southeast Portland, for example, Father Slider Steuernol was an ordained Presbyterian minister, with a wife and children, when he converted to Catholicism in 1994. He entered the priesthood in 1996 and remains married. While he's not celibate himself, Steuernol says, "I stand in awe of my fellow priests who make that commitment." At the same time, he notes that the Orthodox church has made celibacy voluntary for its priests. "I think both could work together," he says.
The church's reluctance to consider making celibacy voluntary is a sore point for some married priests, particularly given the nationwide shortage of priests.
In 1975, the United States had 60,000 Catholic priests; by 2001 there were just over 45,000. Their numbers continue to decline at a rate of about 12 percent a year.
In some parts of the country, the priest shortage is severe. Church officials in Oregon say the state is less strapped for clergy, though parishes in Roseburg and Reedsport have had to be combined. In Portland, one church, St. Francis in Southeast Portland, is without a parish priest, even as its parishioners include priests who left the clergy to marry.
The shortage could grow. Thousands of priests, including some in Portland, have come out of retirement to take over parishes, while enrollment in seminaries continues to decline. There were around 47,000 seminarians in 1965; in 1997 there were only 5,000 (according to figures cited by Chester Gillis in Roman Catholicism in America). Meanwhile, the ranks of Catholics in the United States are growing, swelling with an influx of Catholic immigrants from Latin America.
"The priesthood is going downhill fairly fast," says Dean Hoge, a former priest and sociologist at the Catholic University of America. "The crisis over sexual misconduct only makes things a little worse."
Hoge helped conduct a 1987 study that polled Catholic undergraduate students at Catholic schools around the country. "We concluded that you would have a fourfold increase in seminarians if you had optional celibacy," he says. "It's the biggest deterrent."
Not everyone agrees with this analysis, or even with the numbers. "I'm not denying it's a serious problem," says Mary Gautier, a senior research associate at Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. "I just don't think there's a crisis."
The sex scandal is crisis enough. Many innocent priests were stigmatized. Jeff Lidell remembers being taunted about pedophilia in the 1980s as he walked down the street in clerical clothing. "It was so disheartening," says the former priest, who is now married and lives in North Portland. "Even to date, my brothers have teased me. And I can't blame them," he says. "If I was on the other side, I'd feel the same."
The scandal also presents a platform for those who wish to question the vow of celibacy. On July 20, many of these reformists will be heard. Voice of the Faithful will gather such Catholics from across the nation in Boston's Hynes Convention Center in an attempt to move the church closer to the more open vision of Vatican II, as a church of the people.
Voice of the Faithful's primary goal is to push for the laity's inclusion in church governance. The laity's role is crucial: It's the central axis connecting a host of controversial issues for Catholic America--birth control, the ordination of women and optional celibacy for priests.
"The space holds 5,000, and we are expecting to fill it," says Mike Emerton, a VOTF spokesperson.
If the church is forced to listen to the laity, optional celibacy for Catholic priests, which massive numbers of Catholics have supported in numerous polls and surveys, is likely to be at the top of the agenda.
Portland priests and lay people await the outcome with interest, if not impatience. "The church is known to just kind of sit on it and pray about it," says Lidell. "I think we need to seize the moment."
A Sanctuary for Pedophiles?
Most advocates for reform within the Catholic Church view the current sex scandal as an opportunity to push for changes, including permission for priests to marry. A few former priests, however, find a direct link between forced celibacy and mounting allegations that priests abused young men.
Former priest Denis Barrett-Dennehy, a counselor who has a master's degree in psychology, says some men experience what is known as "arrested sexual development." Their emotional and sexual maturity stagnates in pre-pubescence.
For such men, Barrett-Dennehy says, the priesthood can be a dangerous sanctuary. "The atmosphere of enforced celibacy becomes a refuge for young men who have arrested sexuality," says Barrett-Dennehy. "They're unconsciously drawn to the priesthood because normal outlets for sexuality are forbidden in seminary."
As these men grow older, their sexual urges build, and they're attracted not to adults, but to young men--their peer group at the time their own sexuality stopped developing. "Being around all these pre-pubescent males becomes too much for them," he says.
Jim Magmer, a married priest living in Wilsonville, also agrees that the issues of celibacy and pedophilia are inextricable. "As long as you have mandatory celibacy, you're going to have problems," he says. "The church will continue to try and hide these men and cover up what they did because it makes so much of celibacy."--John Schrag
Michelle Chihara, a senior writer at AlterNet.org, an online magazine of the Independent Media Institute, contributed to this article. BETTER OFF WED
FOR SOME PORTLAND PRIESTS, VOWS ARE MEANT TO BE BROKEN.
BY AMY ROE
Growing up in Cork, Ireland, Peter Cullen had his life's work laid out for him. "The greatest expectation for a male was to be a priest," he says. "And I always wanted to be the best."
Cullen achieved his dream. Ordained as a Franciscan in 1958, he came to America a year later and worked for the church, leading weekend retreats in Delaware and visiting parish schools. He recalls those days with fondness. He delighted children with his soccer skills, visited them in their homes and dined with their families. At the end of the evening Father Peter would go home alone to an empty rectory. To fill the silence, he'd flip on the TV. At 11 o'clock, he went to bed.
When he returned to Ireland in 1966 to visit his siblings and their children, he felt a pang of longing. A year later, he made the most difficult decision of his life.
"I left the priesthood because I decided to get married," Cullen says matter-of-factly. "My reason is so simple. Life was too lonely. I dreaded the thought of being an old, lonely priest."
Cullen, who lives in Southwest Portland, is one of as many as 100,000 men worldwide who have left the Roman Catholic priesthood, many of them in order to wed. He and many others find the church's latest sex scandals particularly insulting. Though they neither harmed children nor lied about their sexual choices, some married priests feel the church abandoned them at the same time it shielded sexual predators.
"That's one of the items that guys like me are very resentful about--the way we were treated," Cullen says, his Irish accent thickening in anger. He finds hypocrisy in the fact that priests who longed to start a family were cast out of the cloth, while those who lusted after children were protected. "The pedophiles not only did unnatural things, they committed crimes."
Today there are as many as 20,000 married priests in the United States (conservative estimates put the number lower; there exists no official figure). In Oregon and Southwest Washington, there are almost 100.
Priests often describe the decision to leave the clergy as the most difficult choice they've ever made. One likened the experience--without a trace of irony--to divorce.
Some, like Vince Fitzgerald, fall away from Catholicism once they turn in their collar. Fitzgerald attends First Unitarian Universalist Church in Portland with his wife, Linda.
"I still consider myself culturally Catholic," Fitzgerald says, "but spiritually, I find the Unitarian Universalist values and practices are most comfortable for me."
However, most of the married priests interviewed for this article remain devout Catholics. Some even retain the title of "father." Several petitioned Rome for "laicization," a decree which formally returns priests to the status of lay people, enabling them to marry within the church.
Though ordination into the priesthood is considered irrevocable, priests who marry can't officially represent the Catholic Church. They can no longer say mass, give communion or perform weddings, baptisms or last rites. Yet a few continue to perform some duties, such as officiating at weddings outside the church.
Other married priests take on less controversial roles as lay people. Denis Barrett-Dennehy, a former priest who taught at Jesuit High, is an active member of the St. Francis of Assisi parish in Southeast Portland. Jim Magmer, an 80-year-old married priest from Wilsonville, is a volunteer chaplain at Meridian Park Hospital in Tualatin.
Many are clearly frustrated by the church's insistence on mandatory celibacy for priests, but the overwhelming majority of these men still have hope for the church, even in the wake of devastating scandals that have eroded its moral authority. Such revelations have brought new, intense pressure to bear on an organization long resistant to change.
That resistance may be wavering. Gallup polls show that three in four Catholics in America believe the church has been handling the scandals badly. In June, at a conference in Dallas, the bishops' statements indicated church leaders are more mindful of public opinion than ever before.
Later this week, on July 20, Voice of the Faithful, an influential new lay organization, will hold a conference in Boston in an attempt to promote change, particularly optional celibacy for priests. Many Catholics predict that one day soon, bishops will allow pastors to exchange their vow of celibacy for the vow of matrimony.
"Married priests are a necessity," says the Rev. Robert Palladino, administrative pastor of St. John Church in Welches, who left the priesthood to marry and returned to the pulpit when his wife died. "When 100,000 priests leave, it should send a message to somebody."
The second Vatican Council, convened in 1963, was intended to demystify the Catholic Church, making it more accessible to the people. Vatican II was famous for its decisions to hold masses in English, rather than Latin, and to allow priests to face their congregations during services. Both moves helped to make priests more accessible to parishioners. But throughout this era of reform, one tradition remained firm: Priests must be celibate.
Celibacy is not required for most Christian clergy, including priests in the Eastern Orthodox and Episcopalian churches. Even the Roman Catholic church allowed priests to marry until 1139.
The vow of celibacy has nonetheless become a distinguishing characteristic of the Roman Catholic priesthood. Roman Catholics give various reasons for this. Many are taught that priests are supposed to emulate Christ by remaining single. The Apostle Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, wrote that unmarried men and women would be less distracted in their service to God.
Some historians, however, say the practice of mandatory celibacy may have had more to do with a desire by 12th-century church leaders to prevent priests from passing parish wealth on to their heirs. Critics of the vow say money and power continue to be the real obstacles to married clergy. For example, making celibacy optional today could force the church to pay its married priests a family wage and diminish its ability to transfer priests at will.
Others contend celibacy serves to protect the church's authority by maintaining an exclusive, obedient group of leaders while mystifying outsiders. "It's a cult," says Jeff Lidell, a former priest who now works as a mental-health counselor. "I don't mean in the Reverend Moon sense, but even in Vatican II documents, they call it the 'cult of the priesthood' because they consider it limited-access."
Despite varied views on celibacy, priests who leave the clergy take to heart canonical law: Once a priest, always a priest.
"My experience with priests who marry is a desire for honesty," says Richard Sipe, a former priest and author of Sex, Priests and Power. "They can't or won't lead a double life. They sacrifice the security of the priesthood, their employment, their livelihood, status--all of that."
Their sacrifices can be significant. Like many priests who left the priesthood, Cullen was at a loss when he walked away from his vocation in 1967. "In those days, if you left, you had no resources," he says. "I didn't have a clue as to what I was going to do. The day I left, I didn't even know where I was going to stay."
At first he worked with a government-sponsored program called Community Action, which was part of Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty. He networked with other priests in similar situations, founding a support group that exists to this day. "The biggest job was trying to convert my priest work into a résumé."
When a fellow married priest told him about his job at Merrill Lynch, Cullen teased him about taking up such a seemingly unpriestly profession. However, with a new wife and plans for a family, Cullen changed his mind and enrolled in Merrill Lynch's training program. "I was lucky to find a place that would train me," he says. "I'm forever grateful to Merrill Lynch. They gave me a whole career."
His ease with people made him a skillful manager. "My focus as a manager was to help people grow, and that's what a priest does." Cullen's job took him around the country and finally to Portland, where he retired as a senior vice president of First Interstate Bank.
Cullen's return to secular life shocked his family back in Ireland, particularly a brother who had also joined the priesthood. "They wondered whether the devil had gotten me. I arrived at the airport in a business suit. They were so stunned to see that I was the old Peter they always loved and knew."
While Cullen didn't trumpet his priesthood at work, he didn't hide it, either. Others are less candid. For example, one former priest who operates a suburban bar asked that WW not name him, as few of his patrons know of his past occupation. Another also requested anonymity to keep his previous vocation private, as he'd done throughout his legal career. He thought his priesthood was a secret, but one day, while he was living in Hawaii, there was a rare earthquake. "It was fairly severe," he chuckles, "and people were starting to line up outside my office and wanted absolution!"
Magmer was also apprehensive about revealing his past. "Initially I didn't identify myself as a former priest, or a married priest, unless I had to," he says.
After his ordination, he taught at various Catholic schools, including a stint teaching journalism at the University of Detroit. When he left the priesthood to get married in 1966, he moved to San Jose, Calif., where he'd been promised a reporting post. After the job fell through when a Catholic senior editor disapproved of hiring a married priest, he headed north to Portland. "I wanted to get as far away from where I was known as possible," Magmer says.
He got a job at The Oregonian and, later, a teaching post at Portland Community College. While a freelance writer for the Portland-based Catholic Sentinel, Magmer kept running into other married priests. He began collecting names, eventually compiling an extensive mailing list, known as "the Umbrella Group" to its more than 100 recipients, and sending out a monthly newsletter, with items of interest and job leads.
"I was lucky in that I had journalism training, which helped me get a job," he says. "A lot of other men really struggle."
Some never fully make the transition. "There's guys who left the priesthood, felt guilty, and went back," says Cullen. Unable to assimilate into society, yet alienated from the church, a few were devastated by their decision, he says. "They're pitiful, sad people."
For others, the anguish is compounded when the marriages for which they've sacrificed so much ultimately fail. When George Hardin left the Jesuit priesthood in Chicago to marry a nun from a neighboring parish, he was alienated to the point of leaving the state. "No church would have us," he says.
Today, at 74, he wheezes and strains to talk, the effect of Parkinson's disease. But Hardin insists on continuing, struggling for breath as he recounts when his first wife divorced him. "I don't believe in divorce," he says bitterly. He remarried 10 years ago, and both he and his wife attend a Portland-area discussion group for Catholics and occasionally socialize with other married priests. A retired high-school teacher, Hardin says he would've liked to have stayed in the priesthood: "I had a good job. Rome is pretty entrenched. I think it would be better if they made celibacy something you choose."
In a way, a few priests have been able to choose. Scores of married Anglican priests and Protestant clergy have been allowed to convert to Roman Catholicism even though they were already married.
"It's crazy," says Barrett-Dennehy. "It doesn't make any sense."
At St. Agatha Church in Southeast Portland, for example, Father Slider Steuernol was an ordained Presbyterian minister, with a wife and children, when he converted to Catholicism in 1994. He entered the priesthood in 1996 and remains married. While he's not celibate himself, Steuernol says, "I stand in awe of my fellow priests who make that commitment." At the same time, he notes that the Orthodox church has made celibacy voluntary for its priests. "I think both could work together," he says.
The church's reluctance to consider making celibacy voluntary is a sore point for some married priests, particularly given the nationwide shortage of priests.
In 1975, the United States had 60,000 Catholic priests; by 2001 there were just over 45,000. Their numbers continue to decline at a rate of about 12 percent a year.
In some parts of the country, the priest shortage is severe. Church officials in Oregon say the state is less strapped for clergy, though parishes in Roseburg and Reedsport have had to be combined. In Portland, one church, St. Francis in Southeast Portland, is without a parish priest, even as its parishioners include priests who left the clergy to marry.
The shortage could grow. Thousands of priests, including some in Portland, have come out of retirement to take over parishes, while enrollment in seminaries continues to decline. There were around 47,000 seminarians in 1965; in 1997 there were only 5,000 (according to figures cited by Chester Gillis in Roman Catholicism in America). Meanwhile, the ranks of Catholics in the United States are growing, swelling with an influx of Catholic immigrants from Latin America.
"The priesthood is going downhill fairly fast," says Dean Hoge, a former priest and sociologist at the Catholic University of America. "The crisis over sexual misconduct only makes things a little worse."
Hoge helped conduct a 1987 study that polled Catholic undergraduate students at Catholic schools around the country. "We concluded that you would have a fourfold increase in seminarians if you had optional celibacy," he says. "It's the biggest deterrent."
Not everyone agrees with this analysis, or even with the numbers. "I'm not denying it's a serious problem," says Mary Gautier, a senior research associate at Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. "I just don't think there's a crisis."
The sex scandal is crisis enough. Many innocent priests were stigmatized. Jeff Lidell remembers being taunted about pedophilia in the 1980s as he walked down the street in clerical clothing. "It was so disheartening," says the former priest, who is now married and lives in North Portland. "Even to date, my brothers have teased me. And I can't blame them," he says. "If I was on the other side, I'd feel the same."
The scandal also presents a platform for those who wish to question the vow of celibacy. On July 20, many of these reformists will be heard. Voice of the Faithful will gather such Catholics from across the nation in Boston's Hynes Convention Center in an attempt to move the church closer to the more open vision of Vatican II, as a church of the people.
Voice of the Faithful's primary goal is to push for the laity's inclusion in church governance. The laity's role is crucial: It's the central axis connecting a host of controversial issues for Catholic America--birth control, the ordination of women and optional celibacy for priests.
"The space holds 5,000, and we are expecting to fill it," says Mike Emerton, a VOTF spokesperson.
If the church is forced to listen to the laity, optional celibacy for Catholic priests, which massive numbers of Catholics have supported in numerous polls and surveys, is likely to be at the top of the agenda.
Portland priests and lay people await the outcome with interest, if not impatience. "The church is known to just kind of sit on it and pray about it," says Lidell. "I think we need to seize the moment."
A Sanctuary for Pedophiles?
Most advocates for reform within the Catholic Church view the current sex scandal as an opportunity to push for changes, including permission for priests to marry. A few former priests, however, find a direct link between forced celibacy and mounting allegations that priests abused young men.
Former priest Denis Barrett-Dennehy, a counselor who has a master's degree in psychology, says some men experience what is known as "arrested sexual development." Their emotional and sexual maturity stagnates in pre-pubescence.
For such men, Barrett-Dennehy says, the priesthood can be a dangerous sanctuary. "The atmosphere of enforced celibacy becomes a refuge for young men who have arrested sexuality," says Barrett-Dennehy. "They're unconsciously drawn to the priesthood because normal outlets for sexuality are forbidden in seminary."
As these men grow older, their sexual urges build, and they're attracted not to adults, but to young men--their peer group at the time their own sexuality stopped developing. "Being around all these pre-pubescent males becomes too much for them," he says.
Jim Magmer, a married priest living in Wilsonville, also agrees that the issues of celibacy and pedophilia are inextricable. "As long as you have mandatory celibacy, you're going to have problems," he says. "The church will continue to try and hide these men and cover up what they did because it makes so much of celibacy."--John Schrag
Michelle Chihara, a senior writer at AlterNet.org, an online magazine of the Independent Media Institute, contributed to this article. Her own piece and similar stories about married priests published this week by various weekly newspapers across the nation can be viewed at www.alternet.org .
http://wweek.com/editorial/2837/2974/
The Faithful Departed:The Collapse of Boston's Catholic Culture
by Philip F. Lawler
The following is the introductory chapter of Phil Lawler's book, which will be formally released next month-- February 2008-- by Encounter books. It is available now for pre-release orders on Amazon.com.
THE GOOD OF THE CHURCH
Governor James Michael Curley wanted a lottery. It was the spring of 1935, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was facing a budget crunch, and Curley saw the lottery as a painless alternative to tax hikes. At the State House on Boston's historic Beacon Hill, most legislators agreed. Debate had been perfunctory. Support for the proposal was overwhelming; passage of the enabling legislation seemed assured.
Then on May 20, Cardinal William O'Connell weighed in. "I am opposed to a state lottery," announced the powerful head of the Boston archdiocese. A lottery would bring "out-and-out gambling" to Massachusetts, he said, and this would be "a tremendous source of corruption and demoralization."
Within 24 hours the lottery was dead.
On May 21 the House of Representatives-- where majority support for the measure had previously been unquestioned-- voted 187- 40 against the legislation. Prior to the vote, one lawmaker after another took the rostrum to explain that when he had spoken earlier in favor of the lottery, he had not fully considered the implications. Governor Curley admitted that he could not withstand the political juggernaut, and dropped his plan. The most prominent Boston politician who kept fighting for the initiative was tagged with the dismissive nickname "Sweepstakes" Kelly. The idea of a state lottery would not be taken seriously again in Massachusetts for nearly 35 years.
That display of Cardinal O'Connell's clout was dramatic, but not terribly unusual. The cardinal had single-handedly turned the political tide against child-labor restrictions that he saw as tinged with "Bolshevism." He would later crush a move to legalize the distribution of information about birth control. When politicians asked what "Number 1" thought of a proposal, they were referring not to the governor or the mayor, but to the cardinal.
In 1937, Curley was again the victim of the cardinal's influence. Running to regain his post as Mayor of Boston, he faced spirited opposition from Maurice Tobin. On election day, the Tobin forces placed a front-page ad in the Boston Post, quoting Cardinal O'Connell's lament: "The walls are raised against honest men in public life." The ad was framed to suggest that the cardinal was endorsing Tobin, and despite frantic last-minute protests from Curley's supporters, O'Connell did nothing to discourage that impression. Tobin rolled up a comfortable margin of victory.
The political power that Cardinal O'Connell enjoyed was not merely the product of his formidable personality. His stature reflected the public dominance of a robust community that, after generations as a scorned minority, had grown to become the single most important social influence in Boston. Soon Catholics would account for the majority of voters in Massachusetts.
Among those Catholics, about 80% attended Mass every week, and heard the doctrine of the Church proclaimed in sermons regularly. Many attended parochial schools, where their attitudes toward the world were shaped by the Sisters of St. Joseph and other religious orders. When the Holy Name Society organized a parade, 10,000 men marched through the streets of downtown Boston. A growing number attended Catholic colleges; Boston College and Holy Cross were attracting some of the brightest young men from the families of Irish and Italian immigrants. Lay Catholics joined the Knights of Columbus, the Women's Sodality and the Altar Guild. They met their future spouses at CYO dances and Newman Club social hours. They identified themselves readily as Catholics, and on religious matters they identified Cardinal O'Connell as their leader.
In 1948 Catholics became a majority in the lower house of the state legislature; in 1958 they captured the upper house as well. Moreover, Catholic social influence was still on the rise. When Cardinal O'Connell died in 1944, he left his successor with 323 parishes: 98 more than O'Connell had inherited when he took the reins of the archdiocese in 1907. Boston's new Catholic leader, Archbishop (later Cardinal) Richard Cushing, quickly embarked on an even more aggressive building campaign, in Boston and out into the distant suburbs, throwing up new Catholic churches and rectories, new schools and hospitals.
The engine of Catholic growth was running smoothly. Catholic parents had large families, and sent their children to parochial schools. From there, the religious orders attracted enough young women to supply teachers for the next generation, and the seminary drew enough young men to staff the parishes. When Cardinal Cushing announced that he hoped someday to ordain 100 new priests for the Boston archdiocese in a single year-- a level that no diocese in the world had ever reached-- his ambition did not seem unrealistic. As the number of annual ordinations crept up through the 60s and 70s and into the 80s, it seemed to be only a matter of time before it broke into the 3-figure category. By every available measure the Church was still rapidly growing, and Catholic influence in the Boston area was still increasing.
And now?
In 2006, the Catholic proportion of the population within the geographical area covered by the archdiocese dipped below 50% for the first time in since World War I. Among those Catholics about 35% now attend Mass in any given week; the number who attend every Sunday (as required by Church law) is much lower.
The Boston archdiocese has sharply contracted, giving back the gains of the past generation. There are 298 parishes in the archdiocese today: 25 fewer than Cardinal Cushing inherited in 1944. More than 60 parishes have been closed since 2002, as part of an unprecedented "reconfiguration" designed to ease a steadily mounting deficit in the archdiocesan budget. The palatial residence built for Cardinal O'Connell has been sold, along with the adjoining grounds. Twenty parish church buildings have already been sold, and a dozen more will soon go on the market. Still the deficit looms, and unless there is some unexpected reversal of current trends more parishes will be closed within the next decade.
There are more Catholics in Greater Boston (in absolute terms) than there were a generation ago. But the affluent young Catholics of the early 21st century have not been visiting their parishes often enough, or tossing enough money in the collection baskets, to pay the heating bills on churches that their working-class ancestors sacrificed to build.
Nor are they sending their sons to the seminary, or their daughters to the convents. In 2006 just 5 men were ordained to the priesthood for the Boston archdiocese: one-twentieth of the figure that Cardinal Cushing had set as his goal. Even if every parish could pay its own bills, the archdiocese would necessarily not have enough priests to staff them. The corps of clergy is aging as well as shrinking. Elderly priests are being asked to postpone retirement; there are not enough younger priests to replace them. And this problem is quickly becoming acute; in 2004 there were 130 parishes with a pastor above the age of 70.
Since most of them are not regularly practicing their faith, or supporting their faith, it would be unrealistic to expect today's Catholics to identify with the teachings of their faith-- especially when those teachings clash with the norms of popular culture. (Younger priests have been cautioned by their seminary instructors to avoid preaching about doctrine, particularly controversial doctrine, and so perhaps many Catholics do not even know what the Church teaches.) Sure enough, Catholics divorce and remarry, obtain abortions and sterilizations, use birth control and in vitro fertilization techniques, all at rates indistinguishable from those of their non-Catholic neighbors.
In the mid-20th century Catholics had established their own distinct culture in Boston. That culture molded their attitudes toward social and political life, and since Catholics were a majority, their cultural influence thoroughly shaped the society in which they lived. Now somehow that Catholic culture has dissipated.
Although they are no longer an absolute majority, Catholic voters still command by far the largest religious bloc among voters in Massachusetts. Yet the state's Congressional delegation in Washington is rock-solid in support of legal abortion. Self-identified Catholics still constitute a majority of the politicians in both chambers of the state legislature. Yet in recent months the legislature has repeatedly passed bills that the Catholic bishops opposed-- in more than one case, without a single dissenting vote.
The collapse of Catholic influence was most painfully evident in 2004, when Massachusetts became the only state in the Union to give homosexual partnerships the full legal status of marriages. To be sure, the decision in favor of same-sex marriage was made by the state's highest court; but it took effect only after a legislature dominated by self-described Catholics acquiesced in the decision.
What happened?
Glossary Terms: None
How did the Catholic faith, which had built up its public influence so steadily during the 20th century, lose all that influence within the span of a generation? That is the question this book seeks to answer.
The most obvious answer is that the sex-abuse scandal that shook the Boston archdiocese in 2002 sapped the credibility of the Catholic hierarchy. The faithful, according to this explanation, would no longer follow the orders issued by bishops who had allowed their priests to prey on altar boys.
That theory seems compelling at first glance. There can be no doubt that the prestige of Catholicism has suffered enormously as a result of the scandal. But as an explanation of how the Church lost public influence, the theory fails in two respects. First, the decline in Catholic clout was underway long before the first shocking stories of sexual abuse hit the headlines. Second, the sex-abuse crisis hit several other cities before it struck Boston. If the scandal itself could cause a major shift in political alignments, we should have seen the same changes in other communities. But the "People's Republic of Massachusetts" is unique.
Clerical abuse was not a factor in the presidential election of 1972, when Massachusetts was the only state in the Union to cast its electoral votes for George McGovern, a candidate too liberal to suit the voters of the other 49 states. The scandal still had not touched public consciousness in 1986, when Massachusetts voters decisively rejected two proposed constitutional amendments: one that would have allowed restrictions on abortion and another that would have authorized public aid to parochial schools. Before the first stories on priestly pedophilia crept into the headlines, Massachusetts had already completed its transformation from a bastion of social conservatism to the most liberal state in the nation, with the Catholic community of Boston in the vanguard.
It has become commonplace to say that the sex-abuse scandal that has shaken the foundations of American Catholicism first erupted in Boston in 2002. That too is inaccurate. The first hints of an emerging scandal had been dropped more than 15 years earlier, and other dioceses had already been hit by devastating lawsuits before the focus of national attention shifted to Boston.
In 1985 the US bishops received a confidential report on sexual abuse by clerics, warning them that there was "simply too much at stake for the Church" for the hierarchy to ignore the issue. It was 1998 when the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana, was ordered to pay an $18 million legal judgment brought on by the multiple molestations of the former priest Gilbert Gauthe. That same year a Texas jury ordered the Dallas diocese to pay over $100 million (later reduced to $31 million) to the victims of another former priest, Rudy Kos. Even in Massachusetts, the revelations about disgraced priests like John Geoghan and Paul Shanley in the Boston archdiocese had been preceded, nearly a full decade earlier, by the trial of James Porter, a defrocked priest who had molested dozens of children while serving in the adjacent Fall River diocese.
Still it is true that 2002 was a watershed year. During that year American Catholics shuddered over one ugly revelation after another, as the breadth and the depth of the scandal became ever more devastatingly apparent. And as the tragedy unfolded that year, Boston occupied center stage.
In one sense it was almost happenstance that gave Boston this central role. A Massachusetts judge was the first to order public release of Church records that had previously been confidential, thereby providing the public with undeniable evidence of priests' misconduct and bishops' complicity. When other dioceses were later exposed to the same scrutiny the results were depressingly similar. After those first staggering disclosures in Boston, the revelations elsewhere sounded familiar, and therefore less shocking. But the pattern of corruption that was first exposed in Boston has subsequently come to light in other cities. So it is not unreasonable to fear that the collapse of a traditional Catholic culture, now so evident in Boston, may be coming soon to other American cities.
In Boston, too, the crisis took on added drama because a powerful prelate became the target of public outrage about the scandal, and ultimately Cardinal Bernard Law resigned in disgrace. Although many other American bishops have subsequently been forced to step down because of revelations about their own behavior, to date Cardinal Law is the only one who has been ousted because of a failure to curb other clerics' misconduct.
Once the cardinal had resigned, and reporters at the Boston Globe had pocketed their Pulitzer Prize awards for the investigative series that led to his downfall, public interest in the scandal began to evaporate. The tawdry facts of the case were too painful; readers tired of the story, and wanted closure. Cardinal Law's resignation provided a convenient sort of punctuation, and the public gaze turned to other subjects.
The cardinal stepped down, and the headlines gradually stopped. So it would not be unnatural to conclude that this one man, Bernard Law, was the source of the problem. But that conclusion is wrong, and in hastily accepting it, most observers have missed the opportunity to probe deeper into the real reasons for the tragedy that has shaken the Catholic Church.
Convenient though it may be to cast Cardinal Law as the leading villain in the nationwide drama of sexual abuse, that characterization is grossly unfair. The cardinal was steadfast in upholding Church teachings, and critics of those teachings were fond of depicting him as a stern, unyielding dogmatist, impervious to human feelings. But those of us who saw him at work in Boston-- who knew about the countless late-night hours he devoted to visiting the sick, the hundreds of unexpected phone calls he made to comfort the bereaved, his willingness to let paperwork pile up on his desk while he helped a troubled soul work through a personal problem-- could never recognize him as the callous tyrant depicted in so many headline stories.
Furthermore, if Cardinal Law had been unusually malicious, or uniquely incompetent in handling the crisis, then his behavior should have been markedly different from that of other American Catholic bishops. It was not. He did what other bishops had done, were doing, and would do. All those bishops who had shirked their responsibility were guilty, but Law's guilt was exposed first.
In fact, in retrospect the resignation of an influential cardinal is the only aspect of the story that makes Boston's role unique. The dimensions of the scandal in Boston are not especially remarkable; other dioceses have shown the same pattern of protecting predatory priests and ignoring the suffering of their victims. But the response to the crisis, in a region where the Church was already suffering from dwindling attendance at Mass and widespread indifference to Catholic teachings, makes Boston's experience a fascinating case study.
To understand the impact of the sex-abuse crisis, one must first understand the nature of the scandal-- or rather, to be more accurate, of three scandals that emerged simultaneously. Yes, there are three scandals-- closely intertwined, but easily distinguishable-- that have combined to ravage American Catholicism at the dawn of the 21st century. For the sake of convenience we can conflate these three problems, making use of a single rubric, the "sex-abuse crisis," as I do throughout this book. But at the outset it is important to distinguish among them.
The first scandal is the sexual abuse of young people by Catholic priests. The depravity of their behavior, the betrayal of a fundamental trust that had been placed in them, the corruption of innocence: all these factors made their crime repellent, and the public exposure of their hypocrisy understandably caused a nationwide sensation. Still, as difficult as it is to overstate the harm done by these priests, it is necessary to keep their crimes in some perspective.
Although the absolute number of priests engaged in this vile activity was shocking, the predators composed only a very small percentage of the priests serving in the US. Their sins, loathsome as they were, are still understandable. Anyone who accepts the Christian understanding of Original Sin realizes that all of us are capable of the most degrading, vile transgressions. And while we expect priests to adhere to a higher code of ethical behavior, every Catholic moralist knows the principle, Corruptio optimi pessima est: the corruption of the best is the worst of all. Furthermore, Church leaders have finally recognized the scandal of clerical abuse and taken aggressive action to remove predators from the priesthood. From all available indications, the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests is much less widespread today than it was 10 or 20 years ago.
The second scandal is the prevalence of homosexuality among Catholic priests. When the first stories about clerical misconduct began to emerge, ordinary Catholics began asking questions about the sexual predilections of American priests, and they naively continued to ask those questions, no matter how frequently they were told-- not quite accurately-- that the issue under discussion was pedophilia rather than homosexuality. The answers to their persistent questions suggested that the number of Catholic priests with homosexual inclinations was far out of proportion to the number of homosexuals in society at large. Moreover, there was circumstantial evidence that homosexual priests formed an influential clique that actively discouraged priests from exposing their colleagues' peccadilloes. The existence of such a "lavender mafia" could help to explain why Church officials failed to discipline priests who molested children.
When leaders of the US bishops' conference traveled to Rome in April 2002 to discuss the crisis with top Vatican officials, they acknowledged the importance of grappling with the influence of homosexuality, especially in the seminaries, where the habits and attitudes of future priests are formed. But even before they left Rome the American bishops were backing away from that recognition, retreating in the face of critics who would not countenance any criticism of homosexual priests. The question of homosexual influence soon was removed from the agenda of the American hierarchy, and in their later public statements the leaders of the US bishops' conference actually sought to deny what they had acknowledged during those talks in Rome, arguing, against all available evidence, that the sex-abuse crisis could not be attributed primarily to homosexual priests.
The third scandal is the abdication of authority-- or worse, the complicity-- of American bishops when they were confronted with the evidence of clerical abuse. The bishops could have, and should have, ensured that a priest who molested children or traduced adolescents would not have the opportunity to commit that crime again. Instead, as the dreary public revelations of the last decade have shown, scores of American bishops chose to ignore complaints about abuse, to conceal the evidence that was brought to their attention, and to give predatory priests one opportunity after another.
The first aspect of the scandal, the sexual abuse of children, has been acknowledged and addressed. The second aspect, the rampant homosexuality among Catholic priests, has been acknowledged but not addressed, and later even denied. As a result the homosexual influence within the American clergy is even stronger today than it was before the sex-abuse scandal erupted. But the third aspect of the scandal has never even been acknowledged by American Church leaders.
While a small minority of American priests have been involved in sexual abuse, a clear majority of bishops were party to the cover-up. The priests who have been found guilty of sexual abuse have been removed from ministry, but bishops who betrayed their own sacred trust by countenancing sexual abuse remain in office. Whereas the misconduct by priests has been acknowledged and addressed, the administrative malfeasance of American bishops has still not been acknowledged-- at least not by the bishops themselves-- and not remedied. For all those reasons the third scandal, the scandal of episcopal misconduct, is today the most serious of all.
When they gathered in Dallas in June of 2002, to devise a nationwide response to the sex-abuse scandal, the American bishops devoted their attention exclusively to the first of these three interrelated scandals. Efforts by a few isolated bishops to recognize the other important dimensions of the scandal-- the influence of homosexuality and the negligence of bishops-- were quickly rejected. Consequently the policies that the bishops established, promising prompt suspension of any priest credibly accused of molesting a child, did nothing to restore public trust in the hierarchy itself. Bishops who showed an icy insensitivity to the suffering of young victims, and lied repeatedly to conceal their own guilt, remain in power today. Even those bishops who were themselves caught up in compromising sexual activity have been allowed to resign quietly, preserved from public criticism by their colleagues-- or even allowed to remain in office despite clear evidence of personal wrongdoing.
In short the US bishops have responded to these crises by protecting each other. But why have they done so? Why has there been no move-- not even by a reforming minority-- to root out the corruption that has been so clearly exposed in the American hierarchy?
For that matter, when they first encountered the evidence that priests were abusing children and corrupting adolescents, why did so many bishops fail to take prompt and decisive action? What possible incentive did they have to cover up the evidence of such appalling crimes?
Certainly there is nothing in the teaching or traditional discipline of the Catholic Church to justify such a lackadaisical response to clerical abuse. Catholic morality is notoriously strict in regard to sexual sins. And very few passages in the Gospels are as strongly worded as that one in which Jesus condemns those who corrupt innocent youth: "It would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round his neck and he were thrown into the sea."
For centuries Church leaders acted on that understanding. St. Basil, a 4th-century pioneer of monasticism in the Eastern Church, ruled that any monk who molested young men should be monitored for the rest of his life to ensure that he never had the opportunity to repeat his crimes. St. Peter Damien wrote in his Book of Gomorra (1096): ?"We conclude that just as the sacrilegious violator of a virgin is deposed by law, so the prostitutor of a spiritual son must be barred from his ecclesiastical office by every means possible." The Code of Canon Law, the Church's internal legislation, reflects the wisdom that the Church has accumulated through 20 centuries of observing human frailty; the Code sets out a procedure to be followed when priests were accused of sexual abuse, and stipulates harsh penalties for those who are found guilty. But in practice the American bishops almost never invoked the provisions of canon law in recent years; they handled the priests' transgressions informally-- even when the same priests were accused again and again.
In some ways it would seem easier to explain this remarkable failure of leaders by starting with the premise that the American bishops were moral monsters: that they had no interest at all in the welfare of young people or the teaching of the faith. But even that extreme hypothesis does not afford a satisfactory explanation. If a bishop were motivated by nothing but the basest sort of cynical self-interest, he would still have every incentive to remove a priest who threatened to molest children. That priest was likely to create problems; a purely selfish bishop would want to be rid of him.
So the question persists: Why did Church leaders ignore the clear message of the Gospel, the undeniable thrust of Catholic moral teaching, and the institutional wisdom that had been collected over 2,000 years and codified in Church law?
The few prelates who have bothered to explain their conduct have said that they thought were acting for the good of the Church. Now at first glance, that explanationis simply incredible. How could "the good of the Church" possibly be served by the exploitation of children, by betrayal and lies? The Catholic Church sees herself as the mystical Body of Christ; how could it be helpful to the body to ignore a cancerous growth within?
Clearly, any bishop who tolerated abusive priests, covering up the evidence of their crimes, was guided by a very strange, unhealthy understanding of his own pastoral responsibilities. These prelates were, at best, protecting the public reputation of Catholicism. But the engine of the Church runs on God's grace, not on public acclaim; the Church has been most vigorous at times when the faith was held in contempt and even openly persecuted. The Body of Christ does not need a clumsy public-relations campaign. As St. Augustine tersely put it, "God does not need my lie."
The effort to keep ugly secrets from public view would make more sense if the Church saw herself as a purely human institution, depending on public support for her strength. If some isolated scandal arose within a local branch of the Rotary Club we might all agree to keep the matter quiet, to preserve the club's image. Rotarians are good people, after all, and their clubs do a great deal of good work within the communities. If they ever lost their reputation for these good works, the Rotary Clubs would be doomed, because they have no other source of strength.
Not so with the Catholic Church. Anyone who embraces the faith-- or even understands Catholicism from an outsider's perspective-- knows that the Church relies on Christ, and models herself after a Savior who died in ignominy. Faithful Catholics should never allow superficial concerns about public perception to trump an unmistakably clear moral imperative. Yet many American bishops did exactly that.
Nor were they alone in doing it. Scores of the priests who have now been convicted as molesters were known to the police years ago, but never formally charged with any crime. Police and prosecutors sloughed off their own responsibilities many times, accepting a bishop’s promise that the offending cleric would be “taken care of,” and agreeing to keep the case quiet. These law-enforcement officials evidently believed, as the bishops believed, that pressing charges would not be good for the Church; and since the Church was a pillar of the community, it followed that prosecution would not be good for the community.
How did public officials come to such an understanding? They learned it, I will argue, from their pastors, and ultimately from their bishops. For more than a generation, the American hierarchy has done its best to convey the impression that the Church is a noble civic institution— that the demands of Catholicism will never clash with the claims of a democratic government. (You might say that this argument is the ecclesiastical equivalent of the Charles Wilson’s belief that “what was good for General Motors was good for the country, and vice versa.”) When Church-state conflicts did arise, many Catholic leaders were quite willing to sacrifice the claims of their faith in order to minimize the conflict and preserve their privileged status as community leaders.
Yet again, the most conspicuous examples of this attitude have been shown in Massachusetts. In the 1950s, an Archbishop of Boston discouraged a priest from his energetic public preaching of a defined Catholic dogma, because some people found that dogma offensive. A decade later the same archbishop— now a cardinal— announced that Catholic legislators should feel free to vote in favor of legislation that violated the precepts of the Church. In 1974 his successor encouraged Catholic parents not to send their children to parochial schools. And in 1993 yet another Boston archbishop instructed the faithful that they should not pray outside abortion clinics. In each of these remarkable cases, the Archbishop of Boston obviously thought that he was serving the cause of community peace. But just as obviously, he was yielding ground, and encouraging the Catholic faithful to yield as well.
And to what end? Today the bill for the sex-abuse scandal(s) has come due, and the Church is paying a frightful cost-- in public stature as well as in cash-- for the bishops' pastoral failures. With their efforts to preserve the Church from criticism, they succeeded only in bringing down much greater obloquy upon the Church. If Church leaders had acted decisively and forthrightly to discipline the priests who molested young people, and remedy the defects in clerical discipline that had allowed this sort of aberrant behavior, the faithful might have been shocked, but at least the public revulsion would have been directed where it belonged: at the erring individuals. Instead, by becoming silent partners in the scandal, the bishops have jeopardized the credibility of the Catholic faith itself.
The bishops made a fool's bargain. They were prepared to sacrifice the essential elements of the Catholic faith: the moral teaching, the clerical discipline, even the loving care for the faithful. In return, they hoped to prop up the prestige of the institutional Church. But whatever prestige the Church enjoys is based on public respect for those essential elements of religious faith. When the disgraceful stories eventually hit the headlines, the bishops could no longer fall back on the conventional respect they had once taken for granted. They were willing to sacrifice their apostolic mission to preserve their prestige; in the end they were left with neither mission nor prestige.
Critics of Catholicism, seeing this disaster as evidence to support their own views, have often observed that the bishops erred by devoting their attention to the institutional Church rather than the needs of the faithful. That explanation is misleading because it assumes that the Catholic faith can somehow be separated from the Catholic Church. It cannot.
The Catholic Church is an institution. To draw a distinction between an abstract body called "the Church" and the individual persons who hold the faith is to deny a fundamental tenet of the faith passed down from the apostles: that the Catholic community forms a single body, united across time and space. Like any other organization comprised of human beings, the Church has concrete needs: for buildings in which to worship, and administrative structures to organize activities and resolve conflicts. The buildings and the bureaucracies may come and go; the man-made structures may change with time. Yet these structures belong to the Christian community-- which is to say, they belong to all believers.
Has the leadership of the Catholic Church served the interests of that community of believers? Of course there could be as many different answers to that question as there are different ways to define the interests of the Christian faithful. Someone who disagrees with Church teaching on one or more key points might believe that the faithful would best be served by a change in doctrine. Or to take a more extreme case, a zealous Protestant who sees the Vatican as the Whore of Bablyon would presumably argue that Catholics would all be better off it they simply left the Church. These might be reasonable arguments, which should be address reasonably: but not here. This book is not primarily a work of apologetics, and I do not directly address the arguments of those who reject Catholicism, in whole or in part, on theological or ideological grounds. My goal, instead, is to help the reader understand the interests of the faithful from an orthodox Catholic perspective. Whether or not he accepts the Catholic faith, a fair-minded observer should see the logic of judging the Church by the standards she has set for herself, in authoritative statements like the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Christianity is an incarnational religion: a faith that teaches that the birth of Jesus Christ did not abolish human nature, but raised it to a new dignity. Some religions disdain the body; they see the concrete world is an illusive trap, ensnaring souls that should be liberated to enjoy some sort of disembodied bliss. Not so the Catholic Church, which has always insisted that the spiritual world cannot be neatly severed from the physical world, and has always venerated those who, like Mother Teresa of Calcutta, devote themselves to serving the material needs of others. The spiritual mission of the Church is inextricably linked to her worldly mission.
Still it is only natural to make some common-sense distinctions between the sacramental life of the Church and the pedestrian work of the bureaucracy-- between the missionary who preaches the Gospel and the diocesan clerk who handles the paperwork. Every believing Catholic supports the life of prayer, but the routine work of the ecclesiastical bureaucracy is not easy to love.
In everyday English usage, Catholics make this distinction-- often without noticing it-- by referring to the Church as "she" or as "it." "She" is the spotless Bride of Christ; "it" is the administrative machinery. "She" is the community of believers at prayer. "It" is the jumbled collection of buildings and budgets. "She" is a living body of faith. "It" is a deadening bureaucracy. For most practical purposes this distinction may be useful (and careful readers will notice that I use it throughout this book), but it must be handled with care.
Consider, for example, my own relationship with my wife. I am very happily married. Leila is my best friend, the love of my life, my soul-mate, and my spouse. She also does the cooking. Each year I claim her as a dependent on my income-tax return. The woman who serves dinner is not different from the woman I married; the woman who affords me a tax exemption is the same one who bore our children. There is only one person here, playing different roles; there is no distinction to be made. But if I were to begin thinking of my wife primarily as a cook and a tax-deduction, our marriage would quickly be in trouble.
So too with the Catholic Church. The "institutional Church" that critics disdain cannot be neatly separated from some idealized, disembodied community. There is only one Church, indivisible. But it would be foolish to pretend that the Church does not have different facets: different faces that she shows to the world. Some aspects of life in the Church have transcendent purpose and infinite value. Others are merelynecessities and undeniably mundane, they have meaning only insofar as they serve the transcendent purpose. If Church leaders concentrate on the mundane to the exclusion of the transcendent, the faith will suffer.
In Boston, the faith has suffered.
The thesis of this book is that the sex-abuse scandal in American Catholicism was not only aggravated but actually caused by the willingness of Church leaders to sacrifice the essential for the inessential: to build up the human institution even to the detriment of the divine mandate. I argue that in Boston, Catholic culture lost first its integrity and then its power because Church leaders made the same fatal mistake, offering their first fealty to the church that is "it" rather than the Church that is "she." If my thesis is correct-- if American Catholicism has been corrupted because Church leaders were pursuing the wrong goals-- then it should not be surprising that the results have been most disastrous in the Boston archdiocese, where Church leaders had been must successful in pursuing those goals.
In 2002, when the sex-abuse scandal was in the headlines daily, Senator Rick Santorum, a Republican from Pennsylvania, made an interesting observation about the turmoil in Massachusetts. "When a culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected," the conservative lawmaker said. "While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston-- a seat of academic, political, and cultural liberalism in America-- lies at the center of the storm."
Santorum's effort to draw a causal link between liberal attitudes and sexual abuse drew howls of outrage from his ideological rivals. (The outrage arose nearly three years after the publication of the column in which Santorum made that statement, but the tardiness of the response-- obviously timed to damage senator's re-election campaign-- is irrelevant to our purposes here.) They pointed out, quite accurately, that sex-abuse scandals have been exposed in many more conservative communities, so that liberalism cannot be the cause.
Still Senator Santorum was more than half right. Liberalism did not cause sexual abuse. But at least in Massachusetts, the triumph of political liberalism in the late 20th century was not unrelated to the emergence of the sex-abuse scandal early in the 21st. Both trends were symptoms of the same underlying cause: a corruption that began when Church leaders betrayed their primary responsibilities.
What has happened in Boston can happen elsewhere. Throughout this book I will offer comparisons between the situation in Massachusetts today and the situation that other Catholic communities are facing, or may face in the near future. In Dallas, in Philadelphia, and in Los Angeles (to name only a few cities) the full dimensions of the sex-abuse scandal have not yet been explored, and the results could ultimately be as catastrophic as they have been in Boston already.
And what has happened to the Catholic Church can happen to other religious denominations. This book should serve as a cautionary tale. Any conservative Christian body, fighting to preserve the integrity of the Gospel message against the advance of secularization, should be wary of the same dangers. The faith will always face resistance, and Church leaders will always be tempted to tailor their messages to suit the latest fashions. But when the quest for public affirmation takes precedence over the demand for integrity to the apostolic tradition, the results are predictable. The church that caters to public opinion may enjoy a short burst of superficial success, but in the long run it will lose both integrity and popularity.
The harshest critics of the Church might say that the steady erosion of Catholic influence in Boston was caused not by strategic errors on the part of Church leaders, but by the inadequacy of their message. Enlightened believers (they might say) threw off the shackles of Roman authority to embrace a more modern approach. But it is only fair to point out that not even the most vociferous anti-Catholic bigots ever envisioned the sex-abuse scandal; no one suggested that the disintegration of Catholic authority would occur in this spectacular fashion; so no one should claim that the debacle has vindicated his theory.
No doubt there are many people rejoicing at the demise of Catholic influence, in Boston and elsewhere. Many people would argue that the Catholics of the early 21st century have come to a new maturity, adopting a more modern approach to the faith. But that argument, too, begs the question. If the model of Catholicism that prevailed in the mid-20th century is no longer valid, what is the best model for public Catholicism today?
If the Church should have any public influence, what should that influence be? To say that the Church should accept the norms of secular society on the most hotly contested issues of our day-- such as abortion and contraception, divorce and same-sex marriage, sterilization and in vitro fertilization, stem-cell research and assisted suicide-- is to say that Catholicism should have no public influence at all. Even those anti-Catholic bigots who embrace that view, if they are honest, should admit that their recent advances in these political debates have come not when they defeated the Catholic opposition in intellectual combat, but when their rivals left the field without a fight.
Again, in recent decades the rout of Catholic social thought has been most complete in Greater Boston. In the space of my lifetime, from 1950 to the present, Catholic influence in public life has plummeted, from a position of seemingly absolute dominance to one of near-universal contempt.
No, the collapse of Catholicism in Boston did not begin with the sex-abuse crisis of 2002. That crisis itself was the manifestation of corruption that had begun long, long ago. The corruption was evident decades ago, when Cardinal O'Connell-- the same powerful prelate who could scuttle a popular legislative initiative with a single statement-- learned that a prominent priest was engaged in gross sexual misconduct. The cardinal chose to leave that priest in office, and cover up the evidence of his transgressions. No doubt he told himself that he was acting "for the good of the Church."
The following is the introductory chapter of Phil Lawler's book, which will be formally released next month-- February 2008-- by Encounter books. It is available now for pre-release orders on Amazon.com.
THE GOOD OF THE CHURCH
Governor James Michael Curley wanted a lottery. It was the spring of 1935, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was facing a budget crunch, and Curley saw the lottery as a painless alternative to tax hikes. At the State House on Boston's historic Beacon Hill, most legislators agreed. Debate had been perfunctory. Support for the proposal was overwhelming; passage of the enabling legislation seemed assured.
Then on May 20, Cardinal William O'Connell weighed in. "I am opposed to a state lottery," announced the powerful head of the Boston archdiocese. A lottery would bring "out-and-out gambling" to Massachusetts, he said, and this would be "a tremendous source of corruption and demoralization."
Within 24 hours the lottery was dead.
On May 21 the House of Representatives-- where majority support for the measure had previously been unquestioned-- voted 187- 40 against the legislation. Prior to the vote, one lawmaker after another took the rostrum to explain that when he had spoken earlier in favor of the lottery, he had not fully considered the implications. Governor Curley admitted that he could not withstand the political juggernaut, and dropped his plan. The most prominent Boston politician who kept fighting for the initiative was tagged with the dismissive nickname "Sweepstakes" Kelly. The idea of a state lottery would not be taken seriously again in Massachusetts for nearly 35 years.
That display of Cardinal O'Connell's clout was dramatic, but not terribly unusual. The cardinal had single-handedly turned the political tide against child-labor restrictions that he saw as tinged with "Bolshevism." He would later crush a move to legalize the distribution of information about birth control. When politicians asked what "Number 1" thought of a proposal, they were referring not to the governor or the mayor, but to the cardinal.
In 1937, Curley was again the victim of the cardinal's influence. Running to regain his post as Mayor of Boston, he faced spirited opposition from Maurice Tobin. On election day, the Tobin forces placed a front-page ad in the Boston Post, quoting Cardinal O'Connell's lament: "The walls are raised against honest men in public life." The ad was framed to suggest that the cardinal was endorsing Tobin, and despite frantic last-minute protests from Curley's supporters, O'Connell did nothing to discourage that impression. Tobin rolled up a comfortable margin of victory.
The political power that Cardinal O'Connell enjoyed was not merely the product of his formidable personality. His stature reflected the public dominance of a robust community that, after generations as a scorned minority, had grown to become the single most important social influence in Boston. Soon Catholics would account for the majority of voters in Massachusetts.
Among those Catholics, about 80% attended Mass every week, and heard the doctrine of the Church proclaimed in sermons regularly. Many attended parochial schools, where their attitudes toward the world were shaped by the Sisters of St. Joseph and other religious orders. When the Holy Name Society organized a parade, 10,000 men marched through the streets of downtown Boston. A growing number attended Catholic colleges; Boston College and Holy Cross were attracting some of the brightest young men from the families of Irish and Italian immigrants. Lay Catholics joined the Knights of Columbus, the Women's Sodality and the Altar Guild. They met their future spouses at CYO dances and Newman Club social hours. They identified themselves readily as Catholics, and on religious matters they identified Cardinal O'Connell as their leader.
In 1948 Catholics became a majority in the lower house of the state legislature; in 1958 they captured the upper house as well. Moreover, Catholic social influence was still on the rise. When Cardinal O'Connell died in 1944, he left his successor with 323 parishes: 98 more than O'Connell had inherited when he took the reins of the archdiocese in 1907. Boston's new Catholic leader, Archbishop (later Cardinal) Richard Cushing, quickly embarked on an even more aggressive building campaign, in Boston and out into the distant suburbs, throwing up new Catholic churches and rectories, new schools and hospitals.
The engine of Catholic growth was running smoothly. Catholic parents had large families, and sent their children to parochial schools. From there, the religious orders attracted enough young women to supply teachers for the next generation, and the seminary drew enough young men to staff the parishes. When Cardinal Cushing announced that he hoped someday to ordain 100 new priests for the Boston archdiocese in a single year-- a level that no diocese in the world had ever reached-- his ambition did not seem unrealistic. As the number of annual ordinations crept up through the 60s and 70s and into the 80s, it seemed to be only a matter of time before it broke into the 3-figure category. By every available measure the Church was still rapidly growing, and Catholic influence in the Boston area was still increasing.
And now?
In 2006, the Catholic proportion of the population within the geographical area covered by the archdiocese dipped below 50% for the first time in since World War I. Among those Catholics about 35% now attend Mass in any given week; the number who attend every Sunday (as required by Church law) is much lower.
The Boston archdiocese has sharply contracted, giving back the gains of the past generation. There are 298 parishes in the archdiocese today: 25 fewer than Cardinal Cushing inherited in 1944. More than 60 parishes have been closed since 2002, as part of an unprecedented "reconfiguration" designed to ease a steadily mounting deficit in the archdiocesan budget. The palatial residence built for Cardinal O'Connell has been sold, along with the adjoining grounds. Twenty parish church buildings have already been sold, and a dozen more will soon go on the market. Still the deficit looms, and unless there is some unexpected reversal of current trends more parishes will be closed within the next decade.
There are more Catholics in Greater Boston (in absolute terms) than there were a generation ago. But the affluent young Catholics of the early 21st century have not been visiting their parishes often enough, or tossing enough money in the collection baskets, to pay the heating bills on churches that their working-class ancestors sacrificed to build.
Nor are they sending their sons to the seminary, or their daughters to the convents. In 2006 just 5 men were ordained to the priesthood for the Boston archdiocese: one-twentieth of the figure that Cardinal Cushing had set as his goal. Even if every parish could pay its own bills, the archdiocese would necessarily not have enough priests to staff them. The corps of clergy is aging as well as shrinking. Elderly priests are being asked to postpone retirement; there are not enough younger priests to replace them. And this problem is quickly becoming acute; in 2004 there were 130 parishes with a pastor above the age of 70.
Since most of them are not regularly practicing their faith, or supporting their faith, it would be unrealistic to expect today's Catholics to identify with the teachings of their faith-- especially when those teachings clash with the norms of popular culture. (Younger priests have been cautioned by their seminary instructors to avoid preaching about doctrine, particularly controversial doctrine, and so perhaps many Catholics do not even know what the Church teaches.) Sure enough, Catholics divorce and remarry, obtain abortions and sterilizations, use birth control and in vitro fertilization techniques, all at rates indistinguishable from those of their non-Catholic neighbors.
In the mid-20th century Catholics had established their own distinct culture in Boston. That culture molded their attitudes toward social and political life, and since Catholics were a majority, their cultural influence thoroughly shaped the society in which they lived. Now somehow that Catholic culture has dissipated.
Although they are no longer an absolute majority, Catholic voters still command by far the largest religious bloc among voters in Massachusetts. Yet the state's Congressional delegation in Washington is rock-solid in support of legal abortion. Self-identified Catholics still constitute a majority of the politicians in both chambers of the state legislature. Yet in recent months the legislature has repeatedly passed bills that the Catholic bishops opposed-- in more than one case, without a single dissenting vote.
The collapse of Catholic influence was most painfully evident in 2004, when Massachusetts became the only state in the Union to give homosexual partnerships the full legal status of marriages. To be sure, the decision in favor of same-sex marriage was made by the state's highest court; but it took effect only after a legislature dominated by self-described Catholics acquiesced in the decision.
What happened?
Glossary Terms: None
How did the Catholic faith, which had built up its public influence so steadily during the 20th century, lose all that influence within the span of a generation? That is the question this book seeks to answer.
The most obvious answer is that the sex-abuse scandal that shook the Boston archdiocese in 2002 sapped the credibility of the Catholic hierarchy. The faithful, according to this explanation, would no longer follow the orders issued by bishops who had allowed their priests to prey on altar boys.
That theory seems compelling at first glance. There can be no doubt that the prestige of Catholicism has suffered enormously as a result of the scandal. But as an explanation of how the Church lost public influence, the theory fails in two respects. First, the decline in Catholic clout was underway long before the first shocking stories of sexual abuse hit the headlines. Second, the sex-abuse crisis hit several other cities before it struck Boston. If the scandal itself could cause a major shift in political alignments, we should have seen the same changes in other communities. But the "People's Republic of Massachusetts" is unique.
Clerical abuse was not a factor in the presidential election of 1972, when Massachusetts was the only state in the Union to cast its electoral votes for George McGovern, a candidate too liberal to suit the voters of the other 49 states. The scandal still had not touched public consciousness in 1986, when Massachusetts voters decisively rejected two proposed constitutional amendments: one that would have allowed restrictions on abortion and another that would have authorized public aid to parochial schools. Before the first stories on priestly pedophilia crept into the headlines, Massachusetts had already completed its transformation from a bastion of social conservatism to the most liberal state in the nation, with the Catholic community of Boston in the vanguard.
It has become commonplace to say that the sex-abuse scandal that has shaken the foundations of American Catholicism first erupted in Boston in 2002. That too is inaccurate. The first hints of an emerging scandal had been dropped more than 15 years earlier, and other dioceses had already been hit by devastating lawsuits before the focus of national attention shifted to Boston.
In 1985 the US bishops received a confidential report on sexual abuse by clerics, warning them that there was "simply too much at stake for the Church" for the hierarchy to ignore the issue. It was 1998 when the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana, was ordered to pay an $18 million legal judgment brought on by the multiple molestations of the former priest Gilbert Gauthe. That same year a Texas jury ordered the Dallas diocese to pay over $100 million (later reduced to $31 million) to the victims of another former priest, Rudy Kos. Even in Massachusetts, the revelations about disgraced priests like John Geoghan and Paul Shanley in the Boston archdiocese had been preceded, nearly a full decade earlier, by the trial of James Porter, a defrocked priest who had molested dozens of children while serving in the adjacent Fall River diocese.
Still it is true that 2002 was a watershed year. During that year American Catholics shuddered over one ugly revelation after another, as the breadth and the depth of the scandal became ever more devastatingly apparent. And as the tragedy unfolded that year, Boston occupied center stage.
In one sense it was almost happenstance that gave Boston this central role. A Massachusetts judge was the first to order public release of Church records that had previously been confidential, thereby providing the public with undeniable evidence of priests' misconduct and bishops' complicity. When other dioceses were later exposed to the same scrutiny the results were depressingly similar. After those first staggering disclosures in Boston, the revelations elsewhere sounded familiar, and therefore less shocking. But the pattern of corruption that was first exposed in Boston has subsequently come to light in other cities. So it is not unreasonable to fear that the collapse of a traditional Catholic culture, now so evident in Boston, may be coming soon to other American cities.
In Boston, too, the crisis took on added drama because a powerful prelate became the target of public outrage about the scandal, and ultimately Cardinal Bernard Law resigned in disgrace. Although many other American bishops have subsequently been forced to step down because of revelations about their own behavior, to date Cardinal Law is the only one who has been ousted because of a failure to curb other clerics' misconduct.
Once the cardinal had resigned, and reporters at the Boston Globe had pocketed their Pulitzer Prize awards for the investigative series that led to his downfall, public interest in the scandal began to evaporate. The tawdry facts of the case were too painful; readers tired of the story, and wanted closure. Cardinal Law's resignation provided a convenient sort of punctuation, and the public gaze turned to other subjects.
The cardinal stepped down, and the headlines gradually stopped. So it would not be unnatural to conclude that this one man, Bernard Law, was the source of the problem. But that conclusion is wrong, and in hastily accepting it, most observers have missed the opportunity to probe deeper into the real reasons for the tragedy that has shaken the Catholic Church.
Convenient though it may be to cast Cardinal Law as the leading villain in the nationwide drama of sexual abuse, that characterization is grossly unfair. The cardinal was steadfast in upholding Church teachings, and critics of those teachings were fond of depicting him as a stern, unyielding dogmatist, impervious to human feelings. But those of us who saw him at work in Boston-- who knew about the countless late-night hours he devoted to visiting the sick, the hundreds of unexpected phone calls he made to comfort the bereaved, his willingness to let paperwork pile up on his desk while he helped a troubled soul work through a personal problem-- could never recognize him as the callous tyrant depicted in so many headline stories.
Furthermore, if Cardinal Law had been unusually malicious, or uniquely incompetent in handling the crisis, then his behavior should have been markedly different from that of other American Catholic bishops. It was not. He did what other bishops had done, were doing, and would do. All those bishops who had shirked their responsibility were guilty, but Law's guilt was exposed first.
In fact, in retrospect the resignation of an influential cardinal is the only aspect of the story that makes Boston's role unique. The dimensions of the scandal in Boston are not especially remarkable; other dioceses have shown the same pattern of protecting predatory priests and ignoring the suffering of their victims. But the response to the crisis, in a region where the Church was already suffering from dwindling attendance at Mass and widespread indifference to Catholic teachings, makes Boston's experience a fascinating case study.
To understand the impact of the sex-abuse crisis, one must first understand the nature of the scandal-- or rather, to be more accurate, of three scandals that emerged simultaneously. Yes, there are three scandals-- closely intertwined, but easily distinguishable-- that have combined to ravage American Catholicism at the dawn of the 21st century. For the sake of convenience we can conflate these three problems, making use of a single rubric, the "sex-abuse crisis," as I do throughout this book. But at the outset it is important to distinguish among them.
The first scandal is the sexual abuse of young people by Catholic priests. The depravity of their behavior, the betrayal of a fundamental trust that had been placed in them, the corruption of innocence: all these factors made their crime repellent, and the public exposure of their hypocrisy understandably caused a nationwide sensation. Still, as difficult as it is to overstate the harm done by these priests, it is necessary to keep their crimes in some perspective.
Although the absolute number of priests engaged in this vile activity was shocking, the predators composed only a very small percentage of the priests serving in the US. Their sins, loathsome as they were, are still understandable. Anyone who accepts the Christian understanding of Original Sin realizes that all of us are capable of the most degrading, vile transgressions. And while we expect priests to adhere to a higher code of ethical behavior, every Catholic moralist knows the principle, Corruptio optimi pessima est: the corruption of the best is the worst of all. Furthermore, Church leaders have finally recognized the scandal of clerical abuse and taken aggressive action to remove predators from the priesthood. From all available indications, the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests is much less widespread today than it was 10 or 20 years ago.
The second scandal is the prevalence of homosexuality among Catholic priests. When the first stories about clerical misconduct began to emerge, ordinary Catholics began asking questions about the sexual predilections of American priests, and they naively continued to ask those questions, no matter how frequently they were told-- not quite accurately-- that the issue under discussion was pedophilia rather than homosexuality. The answers to their persistent questions suggested that the number of Catholic priests with homosexual inclinations was far out of proportion to the number of homosexuals in society at large. Moreover, there was circumstantial evidence that homosexual priests formed an influential clique that actively discouraged priests from exposing their colleagues' peccadilloes. The existence of such a "lavender mafia" could help to explain why Church officials failed to discipline priests who molested children.
When leaders of the US bishops' conference traveled to Rome in April 2002 to discuss the crisis with top Vatican officials, they acknowledged the importance of grappling with the influence of homosexuality, especially in the seminaries, where the habits and attitudes of future priests are formed. But even before they left Rome the American bishops were backing away from that recognition, retreating in the face of critics who would not countenance any criticism of homosexual priests. The question of homosexual influence soon was removed from the agenda of the American hierarchy, and in their later public statements the leaders of the US bishops' conference actually sought to deny what they had acknowledged during those talks in Rome, arguing, against all available evidence, that the sex-abuse crisis could not be attributed primarily to homosexual priests.
The third scandal is the abdication of authority-- or worse, the complicity-- of American bishops when they were confronted with the evidence of clerical abuse. The bishops could have, and should have, ensured that a priest who molested children or traduced adolescents would not have the opportunity to commit that crime again. Instead, as the dreary public revelations of the last decade have shown, scores of American bishops chose to ignore complaints about abuse, to conceal the evidence that was brought to their attention, and to give predatory priests one opportunity after another.
The first aspect of the scandal, the sexual abuse of children, has been acknowledged and addressed. The second aspect, the rampant homosexuality among Catholic priests, has been acknowledged but not addressed, and later even denied. As a result the homosexual influence within the American clergy is even stronger today than it was before the sex-abuse scandal erupted. But the third aspect of the scandal has never even been acknowledged by American Church leaders.
While a small minority of American priests have been involved in sexual abuse, a clear majority of bishops were party to the cover-up. The priests who have been found guilty of sexual abuse have been removed from ministry, but bishops who betrayed their own sacred trust by countenancing sexual abuse remain in office. Whereas the misconduct by priests has been acknowledged and addressed, the administrative malfeasance of American bishops has still not been acknowledged-- at least not by the bishops themselves-- and not remedied. For all those reasons the third scandal, the scandal of episcopal misconduct, is today the most serious of all.
When they gathered in Dallas in June of 2002, to devise a nationwide response to the sex-abuse scandal, the American bishops devoted their attention exclusively to the first of these three interrelated scandals. Efforts by a few isolated bishops to recognize the other important dimensions of the scandal-- the influence of homosexuality and the negligence of bishops-- were quickly rejected. Consequently the policies that the bishops established, promising prompt suspension of any priest credibly accused of molesting a child, did nothing to restore public trust in the hierarchy itself. Bishops who showed an icy insensitivity to the suffering of young victims, and lied repeatedly to conceal their own guilt, remain in power today. Even those bishops who were themselves caught up in compromising sexual activity have been allowed to resign quietly, preserved from public criticism by their colleagues-- or even allowed to remain in office despite clear evidence of personal wrongdoing.
In short the US bishops have responded to these crises by protecting each other. But why have they done so? Why has there been no move-- not even by a reforming minority-- to root out the corruption that has been so clearly exposed in the American hierarchy?
For that matter, when they first encountered the evidence that priests were abusing children and corrupting adolescents, why did so many bishops fail to take prompt and decisive action? What possible incentive did they have to cover up the evidence of such appalling crimes?
Certainly there is nothing in the teaching or traditional discipline of the Catholic Church to justify such a lackadaisical response to clerical abuse. Catholic morality is notoriously strict in regard to sexual sins. And very few passages in the Gospels are as strongly worded as that one in which Jesus condemns those who corrupt innocent youth: "It would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round his neck and he were thrown into the sea."
For centuries Church leaders acted on that understanding. St. Basil, a 4th-century pioneer of monasticism in the Eastern Church, ruled that any monk who molested young men should be monitored for the rest of his life to ensure that he never had the opportunity to repeat his crimes. St. Peter Damien wrote in his Book of Gomorra (1096): ?"We conclude that just as the sacrilegious violator of a virgin is deposed by law, so the prostitutor of a spiritual son must be barred from his ecclesiastical office by every means possible." The Code of Canon Law, the Church's internal legislation, reflects the wisdom that the Church has accumulated through 20 centuries of observing human frailty; the Code sets out a procedure to be followed when priests were accused of sexual abuse, and stipulates harsh penalties for those who are found guilty. But in practice the American bishops almost never invoked the provisions of canon law in recent years; they handled the priests' transgressions informally-- even when the same priests were accused again and again.
In some ways it would seem easier to explain this remarkable failure of leaders by starting with the premise that the American bishops were moral monsters: that they had no interest at all in the welfare of young people or the teaching of the faith. But even that extreme hypothesis does not afford a satisfactory explanation. If a bishop were motivated by nothing but the basest sort of cynical self-interest, he would still have every incentive to remove a priest who threatened to molest children. That priest was likely to create problems; a purely selfish bishop would want to be rid of him.
So the question persists: Why did Church leaders ignore the clear message of the Gospel, the undeniable thrust of Catholic moral teaching, and the institutional wisdom that had been collected over 2,000 years and codified in Church law?
The few prelates who have bothered to explain their conduct have said that they thought were acting for the good of the Church. Now at first glance, that explanationis simply incredible. How could "the good of the Church" possibly be served by the exploitation of children, by betrayal and lies? The Catholic Church sees herself as the mystical Body of Christ; how could it be helpful to the body to ignore a cancerous growth within?
Clearly, any bishop who tolerated abusive priests, covering up the evidence of their crimes, was guided by a very strange, unhealthy understanding of his own pastoral responsibilities. These prelates were, at best, protecting the public reputation of Catholicism. But the engine of the Church runs on God's grace, not on public acclaim; the Church has been most vigorous at times when the faith was held in contempt and even openly persecuted. The Body of Christ does not need a clumsy public-relations campaign. As St. Augustine tersely put it, "God does not need my lie."
The effort to keep ugly secrets from public view would make more sense if the Church saw herself as a purely human institution, depending on public support for her strength. If some isolated scandal arose within a local branch of the Rotary Club we might all agree to keep the matter quiet, to preserve the club's image. Rotarians are good people, after all, and their clubs do a great deal of good work within the communities. If they ever lost their reputation for these good works, the Rotary Clubs would be doomed, because they have no other source of strength.
Not so with the Catholic Church. Anyone who embraces the faith-- or even understands Catholicism from an outsider's perspective-- knows that the Church relies on Christ, and models herself after a Savior who died in ignominy. Faithful Catholics should never allow superficial concerns about public perception to trump an unmistakably clear moral imperative. Yet many American bishops did exactly that.
Nor were they alone in doing it. Scores of the priests who have now been convicted as molesters were known to the police years ago, but never formally charged with any crime. Police and prosecutors sloughed off their own responsibilities many times, accepting a bishop’s promise that the offending cleric would be “taken care of,” and agreeing to keep the case quiet. These law-enforcement officials evidently believed, as the bishops believed, that pressing charges would not be good for the Church; and since the Church was a pillar of the community, it followed that prosecution would not be good for the community.
How did public officials come to such an understanding? They learned it, I will argue, from their pastors, and ultimately from their bishops. For more than a generation, the American hierarchy has done its best to convey the impression that the Church is a noble civic institution— that the demands of Catholicism will never clash with the claims of a democratic government. (You might say that this argument is the ecclesiastical equivalent of the Charles Wilson’s belief that “what was good for General Motors was good for the country, and vice versa.”) When Church-state conflicts did arise, many Catholic leaders were quite willing to sacrifice the claims of their faith in order to minimize the conflict and preserve their privileged status as community leaders.
Yet again, the most conspicuous examples of this attitude have been shown in Massachusetts. In the 1950s, an Archbishop of Boston discouraged a priest from his energetic public preaching of a defined Catholic dogma, because some people found that dogma offensive. A decade later the same archbishop— now a cardinal— announced that Catholic legislators should feel free to vote in favor of legislation that violated the precepts of the Church. In 1974 his successor encouraged Catholic parents not to send their children to parochial schools. And in 1993 yet another Boston archbishop instructed the faithful that they should not pray outside abortion clinics. In each of these remarkable cases, the Archbishop of Boston obviously thought that he was serving the cause of community peace. But just as obviously, he was yielding ground, and encouraging the Catholic faithful to yield as well.
And to what end? Today the bill for the sex-abuse scandal(s) has come due, and the Church is paying a frightful cost-- in public stature as well as in cash-- for the bishops' pastoral failures. With their efforts to preserve the Church from criticism, they succeeded only in bringing down much greater obloquy upon the Church. If Church leaders had acted decisively and forthrightly to discipline the priests who molested young people, and remedy the defects in clerical discipline that had allowed this sort of aberrant behavior, the faithful might have been shocked, but at least the public revulsion would have been directed where it belonged: at the erring individuals. Instead, by becoming silent partners in the scandal, the bishops have jeopardized the credibility of the Catholic faith itself.
The bishops made a fool's bargain. They were prepared to sacrifice the essential elements of the Catholic faith: the moral teaching, the clerical discipline, even the loving care for the faithful. In return, they hoped to prop up the prestige of the institutional Church. But whatever prestige the Church enjoys is based on public respect for those essential elements of religious faith. When the disgraceful stories eventually hit the headlines, the bishops could no longer fall back on the conventional respect they had once taken for granted. They were willing to sacrifice their apostolic mission to preserve their prestige; in the end they were left with neither mission nor prestige.
Critics of Catholicism, seeing this disaster as evidence to support their own views, have often observed that the bishops erred by devoting their attention to the institutional Church rather than the needs of the faithful. That explanation is misleading because it assumes that the Catholic faith can somehow be separated from the Catholic Church. It cannot.
The Catholic Church is an institution. To draw a distinction between an abstract body called "the Church" and the individual persons who hold the faith is to deny a fundamental tenet of the faith passed down from the apostles: that the Catholic community forms a single body, united across time and space. Like any other organization comprised of human beings, the Church has concrete needs: for buildings in which to worship, and administrative structures to organize activities and resolve conflicts. The buildings and the bureaucracies may come and go; the man-made structures may change with time. Yet these structures belong to the Christian community-- which is to say, they belong to all believers.
Has the leadership of the Catholic Church served the interests of that community of believers? Of course there could be as many different answers to that question as there are different ways to define the interests of the Christian faithful. Someone who disagrees with Church teaching on one or more key points might believe that the faithful would best be served by a change in doctrine. Or to take a more extreme case, a zealous Protestant who sees the Vatican as the Whore of Bablyon would presumably argue that Catholics would all be better off it they simply left the Church. These might be reasonable arguments, which should be address reasonably: but not here. This book is not primarily a work of apologetics, and I do not directly address the arguments of those who reject Catholicism, in whole or in part, on theological or ideological grounds. My goal, instead, is to help the reader understand the interests of the faithful from an orthodox Catholic perspective. Whether or not he accepts the Catholic faith, a fair-minded observer should see the logic of judging the Church by the standards she has set for herself, in authoritative statements like the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Christianity is an incarnational religion: a faith that teaches that the birth of Jesus Christ did not abolish human nature, but raised it to a new dignity. Some religions disdain the body; they see the concrete world is an illusive trap, ensnaring souls that should be liberated to enjoy some sort of disembodied bliss. Not so the Catholic Church, which has always insisted that the spiritual world cannot be neatly severed from the physical world, and has always venerated those who, like Mother Teresa of Calcutta, devote themselves to serving the material needs of others. The spiritual mission of the Church is inextricably linked to her worldly mission.
Still it is only natural to make some common-sense distinctions between the sacramental life of the Church and the pedestrian work of the bureaucracy-- between the missionary who preaches the Gospel and the diocesan clerk who handles the paperwork. Every believing Catholic supports the life of prayer, but the routine work of the ecclesiastical bureaucracy is not easy to love.
In everyday English usage, Catholics make this distinction-- often without noticing it-- by referring to the Church as "she" or as "it." "She" is the spotless Bride of Christ; "it" is the administrative machinery. "She" is the community of believers at prayer. "It" is the jumbled collection of buildings and budgets. "She" is a living body of faith. "It" is a deadening bureaucracy. For most practical purposes this distinction may be useful (and careful readers will notice that I use it throughout this book), but it must be handled with care.
Consider, for example, my own relationship with my wife. I am very happily married. Leila is my best friend, the love of my life, my soul-mate, and my spouse. She also does the cooking. Each year I claim her as a dependent on my income-tax return. The woman who serves dinner is not different from the woman I married; the woman who affords me a tax exemption is the same one who bore our children. There is only one person here, playing different roles; there is no distinction to be made. But if I were to begin thinking of my wife primarily as a cook and a tax-deduction, our marriage would quickly be in trouble.
So too with the Catholic Church. The "institutional Church" that critics disdain cannot be neatly separated from some idealized, disembodied community. There is only one Church, indivisible. But it would be foolish to pretend that the Church does not have different facets: different faces that she shows to the world. Some aspects of life in the Church have transcendent purpose and infinite value. Others are merelynecessities and undeniably mundane, they have meaning only insofar as they serve the transcendent purpose. If Church leaders concentrate on the mundane to the exclusion of the transcendent, the faith will suffer.
In Boston, the faith has suffered.
The thesis of this book is that the sex-abuse scandal in American Catholicism was not only aggravated but actually caused by the willingness of Church leaders to sacrifice the essential for the inessential: to build up the human institution even to the detriment of the divine mandate. I argue that in Boston, Catholic culture lost first its integrity and then its power because Church leaders made the same fatal mistake, offering their first fealty to the church that is "it" rather than the Church that is "she." If my thesis is correct-- if American Catholicism has been corrupted because Church leaders were pursuing the wrong goals-- then it should not be surprising that the results have been most disastrous in the Boston archdiocese, where Church leaders had been must successful in pursuing those goals.
In 2002, when the sex-abuse scandal was in the headlines daily, Senator Rick Santorum, a Republican from Pennsylvania, made an interesting observation about the turmoil in Massachusetts. "When a culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected," the conservative lawmaker said. "While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston-- a seat of academic, political, and cultural liberalism in America-- lies at the center of the storm."
Santorum's effort to draw a causal link between liberal attitudes and sexual abuse drew howls of outrage from his ideological rivals. (The outrage arose nearly three years after the publication of the column in which Santorum made that statement, but the tardiness of the response-- obviously timed to damage senator's re-election campaign-- is irrelevant to our purposes here.) They pointed out, quite accurately, that sex-abuse scandals have been exposed in many more conservative communities, so that liberalism cannot be the cause.
Still Senator Santorum was more than half right. Liberalism did not cause sexual abuse. But at least in Massachusetts, the triumph of political liberalism in the late 20th century was not unrelated to the emergence of the sex-abuse scandal early in the 21st. Both trends were symptoms of the same underlying cause: a corruption that began when Church leaders betrayed their primary responsibilities.
What has happened in Boston can happen elsewhere. Throughout this book I will offer comparisons between the situation in Massachusetts today and the situation that other Catholic communities are facing, or may face in the near future. In Dallas, in Philadelphia, and in Los Angeles (to name only a few cities) the full dimensions of the sex-abuse scandal have not yet been explored, and the results could ultimately be as catastrophic as they have been in Boston already.
And what has happened to the Catholic Church can happen to other religious denominations. This book should serve as a cautionary tale. Any conservative Christian body, fighting to preserve the integrity of the Gospel message against the advance of secularization, should be wary of the same dangers. The faith will always face resistance, and Church leaders will always be tempted to tailor their messages to suit the latest fashions. But when the quest for public affirmation takes precedence over the demand for integrity to the apostolic tradition, the results are predictable. The church that caters to public opinion may enjoy a short burst of superficial success, but in the long run it will lose both integrity and popularity.
The harshest critics of the Church might say that the steady erosion of Catholic influence in Boston was caused not by strategic errors on the part of Church leaders, but by the inadequacy of their message. Enlightened believers (they might say) threw off the shackles of Roman authority to embrace a more modern approach. But it is only fair to point out that not even the most vociferous anti-Catholic bigots ever envisioned the sex-abuse scandal; no one suggested that the disintegration of Catholic authority would occur in this spectacular fashion; so no one should claim that the debacle has vindicated his theory.
No doubt there are many people rejoicing at the demise of Catholic influence, in Boston and elsewhere. Many people would argue that the Catholics of the early 21st century have come to a new maturity, adopting a more modern approach to the faith. But that argument, too, begs the question. If the model of Catholicism that prevailed in the mid-20th century is no longer valid, what is the best model for public Catholicism today?
If the Church should have any public influence, what should that influence be? To say that the Church should accept the norms of secular society on the most hotly contested issues of our day-- such as abortion and contraception, divorce and same-sex marriage, sterilization and in vitro fertilization, stem-cell research and assisted suicide-- is to say that Catholicism should have no public influence at all. Even those anti-Catholic bigots who embrace that view, if they are honest, should admit that their recent advances in these political debates have come not when they defeated the Catholic opposition in intellectual combat, but when their rivals left the field without a fight.
Again, in recent decades the rout of Catholic social thought has been most complete in Greater Boston. In the space of my lifetime, from 1950 to the present, Catholic influence in public life has plummeted, from a position of seemingly absolute dominance to one of near-universal contempt.
No, the collapse of Catholicism in Boston did not begin with the sex-abuse crisis of 2002. That crisis itself was the manifestation of corruption that had begun long, long ago. The corruption was evident decades ago, when Cardinal O'Connell-- the same powerful prelate who could scuttle a popular legislative initiative with a single statement-- learned that a prominent priest was engaged in gross sexual misconduct. The cardinal chose to leave that priest in office, and cover up the evidence of his transgressions. No doubt he told himself that he was acting "for the good of the Church."
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