the Secret

A young priest asks: Why stay in a church so clearly flawed?

By James Martin, S.J

Five years ago this summer I knelt on a cold marble floor in a church in Boston, before a Jesuit archbishop. Placing his hands on my head, he prayed silently. By tradition, when I stood up I was a priest.

The ordination Mass is one of the most elaborate liturgical ceremonies in the Roman Catholic Church, with rituals stretching back to the earliest days of Christianity. At various points in the liturgy one hears echoes from the worlds of both late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Near the beginning of the ceremony, those to be ordained, the ordinandi, kneel before the bishop and place their hands between his, recalling the pledges of fealty offered by vassals to their overlords. After declaring their obedience, the men lie prostrate on the bare floor, facing the altar, hands tucked under their foreheads, in a gesture of humility before God and the church. Following the episcopal “laying on of hands” the ordinandi, clad in white albs tied with cinctures (a traditional symbol of chastity), are vested with the symbols of the priesthood: the long stole (a sign of authority in ancient Rome) and the chasuble (the poncho-like garment of Greco-Roman times). Finally, they are anointed on the palms of their outstretched hands with the chrism, or holy oil, as the bishop pronounces a ritual formula: “May Jesus preserve you to sanctify the Christian people and to offer sacrifice to God.”

In light of the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic church, the above paragraph carries overtones that are both unwanted and unavoidable. Today the “obedience” of priests and bishops to the church suggests a desire to protect an institution at all costs. “Humility” before the church may connote a willingness to overlook crimes committed against children. Any “authority” that priests enjoy, at least in this country, has been severely eroded. The notion that a cleric would be needed to “sanctify” others may seem an arrogant one, effectively elevating the priest from the plan of the average layperson. Indeed, that ordination is limited to men is a continuing source of pain for many Catholic women (and men) and underscores the insular nature of the hierarchy, a target of withering criticism during the last two years. The term “laying on of hands” after the sexual abuse of so many minors is especially fraught. And chastity may be the last thing associated with the contemporary Catholic priesthood.

But this collision of the new and the old, the contrast between beautiful ideals and sometimes ugly realities, as well as the negotiation of clerical life during a period of crisis are only a few of the hurdles that face the Catholic priest today.

Though the life of a priest is almost unimaginably rich, many people I meet are interested not in joys of celebrating Mass, the deeply moving experience of hearing confessions, the challenges of balancing the active and contemplative lives, or the struggles of representing a church in a secular world, but something else: the sexual life of a priest. Such interest only intensified in the wake of the clerical abuse crisis, which led many Americans to conclude that priests were (pick one): sexually active, utterly un-aware of their sexuality, pedophiles, or, wholly incapable of keeping their promise of celibacy.

Even strangers and the most casual of acquaintances have felt free to ask me questions about the following topics: my sexual history (before and after my ordination), my sexual orientation (and that of my brother Jesuits), and even whether I think masturbation violates the vow of chastity. It is as

if the mere appearance of a Roman collar sets people free from the normal conventions of contemporary conversation.

One challenge, therefore, is not to take personally even the most offensive comments, and to bear in mind that many such questions come from a lack of knowledge about the priesthood. After all, there are fewer and fewer priests around. A recent George-town University study reports that the number of Catholic priests in the United States declined from roughly 59,000 in 1975 to 47,000 last year. The number of active priests (the total figure includes retired clerics) is pegged at only 22,000. While the Catholic population in this country has grown rapidly (from 49 million in 1975 to 63 million in 2003) the number of priests has declined dramatically. So it is not surprising that misunderstandings would grow over time.

Underneath some of these pointed and personal questions seems to rest a natural curiosity about the meaning of sexuality, which the Catholic church has defined as a precious, indeed holy, gift not to be squandered. Whatever one may think about the church’s attitude toward sex, this facet of Catholic moral theology always strikes me as healthier than almost any other message that one receives in a culture in which sex and sexuality are increasingly commodified.

Such questions about sexuality are neither surprising nor difficult to understand, especially these days. During the early months of the sexual abuse crisis, in 2002, as I learned more about the grotesque crimes of the former Boston priest John Geoghan, I found myself repulsed by the details of his actions and outraged that such a person would have been allowed to continue functioning as a priest. Still, I remained hopeful that such cases would prove rare.

But as more and more instances of abuse were unearthed, and evidence uncovered that some bishops had moved abusive clerics from one parish to another, I found myself, like most priests, confronting a host of warring emotions. Certainly I knew that many bishops had in the past relied heavily on the expertise of mental-health professionals, who had sometimes given even serial abusers clean bills of health. Nonetheless, the consistent reshuffling of abusive priests time and again flew in the face of basic common sense. Eventually, I found myself angry (at the ineptitude of many bishops), embarrassed (as the term “pedophile priest” slowly entered the lexicon), sorrowful (over the awful plight of the victims), confused (at the bewildering variety of reasons offered for the scandal) and despairing (as the litany of cases seemed without end).

As the crisis wore on, every priest seemed to admit to one tipping point — the piece of news that finally moved him, if even temporarily, to a state of demoralization, depression, or despair. Perhaps it was reading the repellent details of a predatory priest’s crimes in one’s diocese; perhaps it was meeting face-to-face with a victim of abuse living in one’s parish; perhaps it was knowing a colleague abruptly removed from active ministry as a result of a decades-old crimes. For me it came as I read the nearly unbelievable story of Paul Shanley, the serial abuser and former member of Nambla, the organization that celebrated “man-boy love,” and who was later called “a priest in good standing” with “no problem that would be a concern in your diocese” in a letter from Cardinal Bernard Law’s office to the bishop of San Bernardino, California. For a while I wondered how I could publicly represent a church that countenanced or at least tolerated criminal behavior. And for the first time in my short career as a priest, I was embarrassed to wear the collar.

The fallout from the crisis in the lives of active priests — that is, the vast majority, who have led healthy lives of service — is immense. Beyond the disappointment in the institutional church and sorrow for the victims of abuse, there are less well-known consequences for priests: tightened budgets resulting from justifiably large legal payouts means less money for educational and social-service programs in parishes; working with lay-run organizations like Voice of the Faithful, as well as developing and implementing sexual misconduct policies, rightly demand more time and attention; dealing with bishops whose schedules are now packed with meetings with lawyers and psychologists means that other pastoral issues must take a back seat.

There are other, more personal, results. Many priests will now, as a rule, never get close to a child, no matter how benign the circumstances. After a recent Sunday Mass, a young girl standing beside her mother spontaneously hugged me, and I was surprised to find myself wanting to push her away. I wondered: Would this hug be later misinterpreted? Priests and members of religious orders teaching in Catholic schools say that their work has been affected dramatically. One friend who works in a Catholic high school for poor boys is frequently approached by students seeking counseling about their complicated family lives. In the past, the students could count on privacy. Now they must air their problems in a classroom with an open door, and so are less willing to discuss their struggles, for fear of other boys overhearing. While these concerns are a small price to pay for the crimes committed by priests, they nonetheless have an effect on many hardworking priests who struggle to carry out their day-to-day ministries.

Why do I stay in a church so clearly flawed? Why do I stay a priest? These are fair questions, and they reminds me of Father Andrew Greeley’s trenchant comment that the question today is not why so many Catholics leave the church, but why they stay.

First reason: I freely made a vow to God, and I intend to keep my word.

Second reason: I love being a priest. I feel it is where I am meant to be.

I love celebrating Mass, presiding at baptisms and weddings, preaching homilies, hearing confessions. I love talking with strangers on the bus or subway about faith and doubt. The Trappist monk Thomas Merton expressed this gracefully when he wrote, in 1949, that the priesthood “is the one great secret for which I had been born.”

Third reason: Like anyone who reads church history, I am not surprised by the presence of scandal and even grave sin in the church. As any organization, the church has long had its share of fools and villains, some of whom held high offices. After all, Saint Peter, by tradition the first pope, sinned famously — denying Jesus three times before the crucifixion. Centuries later, Renaissance popes like Alexander VI (of the rapacious Borgia family) and Paul III were widely known to have granted ecclesiastical offices to both their illegitimate children and grandchildren.

Even the greatest of Christian saints recognized this. During the fourteenth century, when two and sometimes three men claimed the papacy for themselves, Catherine of Siena excoriated them. “You are flowers that shed no perfume,” she wrote to a group of Roman cardinals, “but a stench that makes the whole world reek.”

While historical precedent does not excuse the contemporary sins of abusive priests or the bishops who reassigned them, it stands as a reminder, especially to Catholics accustomed to thinking otherwise, that the institutional church is made up of sinful human beings, and is therefore constantly in need of change and reform: Ecclesia semper reformanda. The theological model of the church as a “pilgrim people,” always on a journey, was underlined by the Second Vatican Council in its 1963 “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church,” a key document: “The Church...at once holy and always in need of purification, follows constantly the path of penance and renewal.”

But it is insufficient simply to admit sinfulness. As any priest worth his salt will tell you in the confessional, a penitent also needs to show a “firm purpose of amendment” and a desire to undergo a form of penance. There is also the long-standing requirement to participate in the larger reform of the community. During the Donatist controversy in the fourth century, when a group of Christians wanted to admit only the “holy” into the church, Saint Augustine disagreed, arguing that the Christian community should welcome as well those who have sinned and repented. Yet as Peter Brown notes in his biography Augustine of Hippo, the saint understood that this was only part of the solution. Early Christians striving for holiness must, of necessity, co-exist with other sinners in the church, but they should also “be prepared, actively, to rebuke and correct them.”

I see some signs that after a very public “rebuke,” penance and reconciliation are finally beginning in the Catholic church in the U.S. Last July, the new archbishop of Boston, Sean Patrick O’Malley, a Capuchin Franciscan, declared on the day of his appointment his desire to work for reconciliation, no matter what the cost. “People’s lives are more important than money,” he said simply. O’Malley’s subsequent swift resolution of legal settlements, his willingness to sell the archbishop’s palatial residence in Brighton, and his personal outreach to victims of clerical abuse show that it is possible to work for reconciliation with compassion, intelligence, and, yes, speed.

At the beginning of the ordination Mass, the bishop offers a short homily to the ordinandi. Though the rubrics of the ceremony provide a standard homily, the bishop has the option of foregoing this in favor of a more personal message. But I’m always a bit disappointed when he chooses to do so, since the traditional text includes this exhortation:

“Let the example of your life attract the followers of Christ, so that by words and actions you may build up the house which is God’s church.” All in all, that’s a good goal for priests during this period of crisis, and I look forward to helping rebuild a church sorely in need of repair.

James Martin S.J. is associate editor of the Catholic magazine America.

The Office of Campus Ministry helps students explore issues and crises of faith and religion. To support its important work, make a gift by clicking here.