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Father figures

Married priests are still practicing the sacraments despite disapproval from the Vatican

BY MICHELLE CHIHARA

When Charles Ara fell in love, at the age of 39, he faced an anguished choice. As a priest in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, he had taken a vow of celibacy. But after working alongside the 28-year-old religion educator in his parish for almost three years, he felt that his vows had become impossible to live out honestly.

"I struggled with that decision," he says. "I agonized over it for about a year. It was probably very unfair to my wife-to-be, to ask her to wait while I worked through my own issues."

Ultimately, Charles Ara, who still calls himself Father, says, "I decided to add love and marriage to my priesthood."

The church did not look kindly on Ara’s decision. "The pastor announced that no one could attend my wedding," Ara says. "A bishop told my parents they could not attend."

But on the day of the ceremony, at a parishioner’s home, his parents were not the only faithful who made the decision to support Ara. Hundreds of uninvited parishioners showed up. On Oct. 10, 1970, more than 300 Catholics watched as several married priests, one Orthodox priest, one Episcopalian, and a group of nuns presided over the marriage of Charles Ara and Shirley Meyers. The wedding party ran out of food, what with the unexpected turnout, but the guitar music from the ‘60s played on.

While the church does not recognize him as such, Ara, a father of four, still considers himself a Roman Catholic priest. "It affected my faith," Ara says. "But I will always love my church, and my faith." Ara now works as a marriage and family counselor. He does seem to miss the leadership role he had as a priest, though–he’s running for Congress.

Ara is one of as many as 100,000 men worldwide who have left the Roman Catholic priesthood, many of them in order to marry. In the U.S. there are as many as 20,000 married priests (conservative estimates put the number lower; there exists no official figure). Thousands of these men have taken a certain Canonical law to heart: Once a priest, always a priest.

Despite the fact that the church hierarchy no longer recognizes their right to officiate, they still perform weddings, baptisms, and even the occasional mass. The church may have turned its back on them, but these men still have hope for the church. They represent an organized, vocal, and dedicated group at the margins of Catholic life in the United States and Europe. They may even represent the church’s best hope for the future.

Moral authority

Today’s Catholic Church has been watching its moral authority erode with every damaging headline about sexual abuse by its priests. The church’s veil of secrecy–its policy of keeping victims quiet with expensive settlements and shuffling abusers quietly from parish to parish–has exploded in its face. That known child molesters were quietly shifted around within the church throws a criminal taint onto the entire hierarchy. And the irony is not lost on married priests: While they neither harmed minors nor lied about their sexual choices, the church abandoned them, often dramatically, at the same time that it shielded sexual predators.

The scandal is bringing new, intense pressure to bear on an organization with a long history of dedicated resistance to change. But resistance may be wavering. Gallup polls show that three in four Catholics in America believe the church has been handling the scandals badly. And in June, at a conference in Dallas, Texas, the bishops’ statements showed that they are more sensitive than ever to public opinion. On July 20, Voice of the Faithful, www.voiceofthefaithful.org, an influential new lay organization, is holding a conference in Boston in an attempt to galvanize further change and provide a forum for the Catholic public. The bishops will be paying attention.

"The space holds 5,000 and we are expecting to fill it," says Mike Emerton, a VOTF spokesperson. Besides supporting victims of abuse and priests of integrity, Voice of the Faithful’s primary goal is to push for the laity’s inclusion in church governance.

There’s a lot more at stake than just arcane questions of church governance. The laity’s role is crucial: It’s the central axis that connects a host of hot-button issues for Catholic America–optional celibacy for priests, birth control, and the ordination of women.

"The underpinning of all this is really a level of diametric opposition of two totally different world views about what the church is supposed to be," says Russ Ditzel, an activist for a priesthood of single and married men and women with the Corps of Reserve Priests United for Service (CORPUS). "It’s a clash of the church as the people of God, and as a hierarchical, structured organization."

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 one of the first items on the agenda.

While optional celibacy is at best a remote possibility under the current Pope, in many ways it is one of the least controversial issues. Celibacy is not dogma; it’s a rule passed in the 12th century. And the Catholic Church already has married priests–scores of Anglican priests who were allowed to switch to Roman Catholicism, even though they were already married. Homosexuality, for example, is a much more explosive topic, despite the fact that some experts believe that as much as 30 percent of the Catholic priesthood is gay.

Priest shortage

Added urgency comes from another unavoidable Catholic crisis: a shortage of priests. In 1975, America 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. For individual regions, the burn rates translate into dramatic declines: In 1966 in Chicago, there were 1,340 priests. That number has now dropped to 657.

The numbers in the seminaries are even more dire. While 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," from the Columbia Contemporary American Religion series). Ironically, the ranks of Catholics in the United States are growing, swelling with an influx of Catholic immigrants from Latin America.

To put it baldly, the American priest appears to be a dying breed. But if the church were to welcome back its married priests, it could increase its ranks by as much as a quarter.

"The priesthood is going downhill fairly fast," says Dean Hoge, a sociologist and former priest 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 four-fold increase in seminarians if you had optional celibacy. It’s the biggest deterrent."

"There is no shortage of priests," says Charles Ara. "They’re not using the priests they already have. I get referrals from parish priests," he adds. "If for some technicality they can’t do it, they don’t have a problem referring people to me."

Apart and above

Only about half of both homosexual and heterosexual priests "in good standing" with the church are actually practicing celibacy, according to A.W. Richard Sipe, former priest and author of "Sex, Priests, and Power." At any one time, according to his surveys of priests, he estimates that as much as 20 percent of priests are involved in ongoing sexual relationships with adult women.

"This sense that priests are set apart and above," Sipe says, "I think that erects a structure for duplicity. This is why many priests, who are still priests, lead double lives. They’re good men, and they do good things, but they have a woman in another town, or have affairs or relationships with a man–or in the worst cases relationships with children–that are contrary to what they say and stand for in their official lives."

Priests who marry, on the other hand, are priests who are unwilling to lie. "My experience with priests who marry is a desire for honesty," Sipe says. "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."

Most married priests, especially those organized into groups pressing for reform like CORPUS or Call to Action, are straightforward about who they are. Some are uncomfortable with the idea of practicing, especially with the idea of charging for services not recognized by the church. But many others are hungry for reform. Several hundred are listed online in a regional database run by a group called Celibacy Is The Issue (CITI) at "Rentapriest.com." That Web site trumpets "We married Roman Catholic Priest/couples invite you to receive the Sacraments. COME AS YOU ARE!"

CITI was founded by a laywoman named Louise Haggett, who was moved to action when she couldn’t find a priest to minister to her dying mother. "Mom never saw a priest until she was practically comatose in the hospital," Haggett says. "I felt so betrayed by the church," she says. "The disciples were married men," she says. "If the Berlin Wall came down, why can’t celibacy be abolished?" Convinced married priests would solve the shortage, she started a one-woman campaign to restore credibility to married priests.

By her own account, Haggett has been succeeding. Hundreds of married priests across the country are performing weddings and baptisms regularly, even stepping in to give mass if the regular priest is not available. The Catholic system allows for lay people to carry out many parish duties, but only ordained priests can give the sacraments. "There are 5,300 parishes without a resident pastor," says Haggett. Married priests, she says, are bound to fill those holes. "Canon 843: No priest can refuse sacramental ministry to anyone who asks," Haggett recites. "Canon 290: Once a priest, always a priest."

Not everyone agrees with Haggett’s analysis, or even with her numbers. "I’m not denying it’s a serious problem," says Mary Gautier, a senior research associate at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, at Georgetown University (CARA). "I just don’t think there’s a crisis."

Doing away with celibacy, Gautier says, would not solve the problem. "The seminaries would not fill up tomorrow with young men," she says. "It would have some impact, but it’s a larger issue." She describes the larger issue as "more of a generational thing."

"Young people are not making long-term commitments to anything," Gautier says. She admits, however, that her belief is not based on any particular study, but on her perception of young people today.

But most sociologists agree that the Catholic Church is facing a crisis. Eight years ago, Richard Schoener and Lawrence A. Young wrote, "At least among Christians in this country, the paucity of pastors in contrast with the steady growth in church membership is a crisis unique to Roman Catholicism." Since that book, "Full Pews, Empty Altars," was published, things have only grown worse. Æ

Michelle Chihara can be reached through the editor at [email protected].




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