The Boston Phoenix November 23 - 30, 2000
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Ironically, in the midst of such a strong gay presence, many observers have noted an increasingly conservative turn in the priesthood. (Jordan speculates that this is not coincidental, for many gay men embrace conservatism as a way of deflecting suspicion about their sexual identity.) This conservatism, in turn, is also driving some men away from the priesthood. At a minimum, clerics who disagree with the Vatican's official stance on such issues as homosexuality and abortion are forced to keep silent or pay a substantial price in terms of career prospects. Says James Carroll, a former priest and current columnist for the Boston Globe, "You have to surrender your freedom of conscience and your freedom of basic thought to be a Catholic priest today." Father McBrien of Notre Dame agrees. To become a bishop, he says, priests "have to be 100 percent for the Church's teaching on birth control, which a great majority of Catholics don't accept, and be 100 percent against the ordination of women. What they're looking for is loyalists." Desperately seeking seminarians
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by Dorie Clark
Recent examples of the Church's crackdown on perceived unorthodoxy include last year's US bishops' vote requiring Catholic theology professors to seek approval for their teachings (although the mandate was significantly watered down last week), and the October decision to remove Sister Jeannette Normandin from her work at Boston's Jesuit Urban Center for aiding in a baptism. (The head of the Jesuit Urban Center also removed Father George Winchester for allowing her to participate in the sacrament.)
But many Catholics opposed these crackdowns, and some think that conservative moves like these -- while shoring up the Church's hierarchical authority -- turn off exactly the type of independent-minded candidates the Church most needs. Says Sister Christine Schenk of FutureChurch, a Cleveland-based group advocating for female and married priests, "Young men do not want to be treated like flunkies."
So what is the Church doing in the face of a diminishing clergy? The same thing it's done for hundreds of years in times of waning power and influence: fighting back. It's redoubling its recruitment efforts and, in the short term, hiring more laypeople to handle religious education, music, and administration -- duties that formerly fell to priests. It's also importing priests from Europe and the Third World to the United States to fill gaps in clerical manpower. Indeed, 16 percent of active parish priests in the US are foreign-born, though statistics aren't available on what percentage moved to this country as adult priests (as opposed to coming with their families as children). Irish priests are the largest foreign-born contingent, followed by clerics from India and the Philippines. The lure of American-style easy living and the opportunity for professional advancement is appealing to many in developing countries, priests included.
But drawing priests from overseas has serious drawbacks. For one, the shortage of priests is even more acute outside North America. In Asia, there is one priest per 2551 Catholics. The disproportion is even worse in Africa (one per 4483) and in South America (one per 7094). Eventually this priest-borrowing will catch up with the Church unless it becomes much more successful at drumming up recruits in the Third World than it is in the States. In addition, some view it as a distasteful form of imperialism. "The developing world already has major difficulties," says Sister Christine Schenk of FutureChurch. "This is another example of rich countries taking advantage of poor countries." Whether or not the practice is exploitative, some argue that, in any case, it is less effective in reaching the American faithful. Cultural differences and language barriers can make it difficult for foreign-born ministers to reach out to the laity. Perhaps the biggest disconnect is theological. Says Jordan of Emory University, "We're getting a kind of time-shift backwards as priests come in from Poland or Central Africa. They're bringing in a Catholicism that's in some ways 40 years old." Even if these priests aren't old, it seems their mind-set is.
To stir up interest on the home front, the Church is mounting a good old-fashioned marketing blitz. Last year in Providence, it aired priest-recruiting television commercials in such secular and irreverent venues as MTV, Comedy Central, and ESPN. In 1998, the Diocese of Milwaukee began a recruitment billboard campaign with the tag line ENJOY THE ULTIMATE BENEFITS PACKAGE. These marketing efforts have yielded interest, and even a few new seminarians.
But the secret to a sustained turnaround may be one-on-one recruitment efforts. Father Daniel Greenleaf, 34, the diocesan recruiter from Portland, was at one time a successful accountant, with a girlfriend and a sports car. But after visiting his high-school priest and realizing that his priorities had gone astray, he decided to become a man of the cloth. Today, he provides a forum to assist others going through the "discernment process" (the term for deciding if one should join the priesthood). "It's okay if there's only one or two," he says. "It's really about helping people if they feel God is calling them." With 14 men from his diocese currently in the seminary, he's had good luck, but he recognizes that recruitment is not as easy as it was in the past. "I'm trying to replace some of the institutions that supported the vocation, whether it was a convent full of nuns or a school full of brothers," he says. "I'm trying to replace that with individual contact and individual support."
But despite all these efforts, it's hard to find good candidates. "It's difficult to measure, but everybody close to the scene agrees that the quality [of recruits] has gone down," says Hoge of Catholic University. "It's not intelligence or commitment to Jesus Christ that's gone down, but leadership has." Jordan of Emory University worries that this leadership decline may dovetail with the issue of sexual abuse. "A lot of the dioceses are desperate to take people, even if they have qualms about them, even if they don't do well on certain psychological tests," he says. "There's a real tension between needing candidates and trying to prevent future abuse scandals. Some dioceses do really well and say `We'd rather do without,' but others aren't so picky."
As a result, the Church might be forced to consider a solution it never thought possible: opening up the priesthood. Catholic parishioners seem receptive. The National Catholic Reporter's 1999 poll revealed that 71 percent of the laity supported opening the priesthood to married men. They also supported admitting both celibate women (63 percent) and married women (54 percent). Reflecting a growing recognition of the shortage, a 1994 Los Angeles Times poll showed that 59 percent of priests supported measures allowing priests to marry, and 44 percent would give the nod to female clerics. And though most remain silent on the matter, it seems that many Catholic clergymen share those views.
Sister Christine Schenk couldn't agree more. "The whole issue of celibacy has to be discerned apart from the call to priestly ministry," she says. If the Church would accept married men into the ranks (as it did until the Middle Ages), or women, she believes "there would be no priest shortage. . . . God is a God of abundance, not of scarcity." The 30,000-plus lay ministers employed by the Church (82 percent of whom are female) are a ready pool of recruits. A good number of the men who left the priesthood to get married might return if given the opportunity. Indeed, although it is not commonly known, the Catholic Church currently does allow some priests to be married. Episcopal priests who are married, convert to Catholicism, and wish to remain in the vocation are allowed to stay wed "in the full sense of the term," reports Father McBrien of Notre Dame.
Today's Catholic Church is facing an uphill battle, trying to minister to 62 million American Catholics with only 45,699 priests. Despite advertising campaigns and focused recruitment efforts, it will be very difficult for the Church to muster enough candidates even to replace the ones who leave. The diminishing priesthood is wreaking havoc on a church that -- unlike its Protestant counterparts -- strongly emphasizes the sacraments, such as last rites and Holy Communion. "There are fewer Masses," says Professor Dean Hoge, "and priests are less available for visiting the sick and dying, for weddings and baptisms, and for coming to meetings around the parish." Says Father McBrien, "To some in the Catholic Church, it's more important to maintain a celibate priesthood than to have the Eucharist and other sacraments available to the faithful." But without priests to perform the sacraments, less emphasis is placed on them; with access to the priest for counseling or community-building also reduced, this may cause Catholic church-going to become less meaningful. And if mainstream Catholics continue to disregard the Vatican's views on social issues, the Church may seem even less relevant to their lives.McBrien is convinced the day will come when the Church will accept married priests. "It won't come under Pope John Paul II," he says, "but if for no other reason, the pressure of reality will require the Church to relax its rules regarding celibacy." In the meantime, the Church will continue its uncomfortable grappling with a heavily gay clergy and human sexuality in general, just as it copes with its occasional scuffles over theological freedom and dissent. And Father Greenleaf of Portland and his counterparts will continue looking for the next generation of priests -- men who, he says, "have an amazement for life and finding the mystery, that there's something rather than nothing."
Dorie Clark can be reached at dclark[a]phx.com.
