Priests Want Married Clergy Discussed

Some Los Angeles area Roman Catholic priests are urging an open discussion on whether to allow married clergy as one solution to the growing priest shortage, and say they hope Cardinal Roger M. Mahony will raise the issue to church authorities nationally and in Rome.

Calls to discuss the option of a married clergy came earlier this week at an annual assembly which drew about half of the Los Angeles Archdiocese’s 1,200 priests. Similar requests are increasing across the nation but also are triggering strong resistance.

Mahony, who last year became the first American cardinal to support discussions about a married clergy despite Pope John Paul II’s opposition to them, does not plan to raise the issue at higher church levels, Los Angeles archdiocesan spokesman Tod Tamberg said Friday.

“The cardinal believes that any such discussion should begin at the grass-roots level,” Tamberg said in a written response to questions.

But Tamberg added that Mahony’s support for open discussions did not imply an endorsement of married clergy and said the cardinal agreed with the pope’s recent comments that “celibacy is fitting for the priesthood.”

Still, many priests lauded Mahony for allowing the debate on a topic considered taboo a decade or two ago. Celibacy has been a cornerstone of the Roman Catholic priesthood for more than a thousand years, and many priests say that efforts to even discuss it had been suppressed until recent years.

“We have made an extraordinary shift in the last 10 years,” said Msgr. Clement J. Connolly of Holy Family Church in South Pasadena. “It’s a new day when we can even talk about this now with respectability and a certain reverence and understanding.”

Support for discussing the issue was not unanimous, however, according to participants who attended the meeting at the Cathedral Center downtown. Opposition was particularly strong from many younger priests who are strongly influenced by Pope John Paul II and some priests from foreign countries who work in Los Angeles. Objecting to a debate on a subject the pope has deemed closed, they said efforts should be made instead to recruit more men for the priesthood.

“Rome knows what it’s doing,” said Father Donatus Ekanachi, a Nigerian native and associate pastor of St. Raymond Church in Downey. “The Catholic Church has one head, and anyone who challenges that head becomes a rebel.”

But those discussions are becoming more common. In August, more than 160 Milwaukee-area priests signed a letter to the nation’s bishops urging that the priesthood be opened to married men, and other priest associations representing more than 700 members in Boston, New York, Chicago and elsewhere have said they plan to back them.

That letter was denounced, however, by the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy, a national organization of more than 600 priests, who expressed “unequivocal support for the ancient discipline of priestly celibacy.”

In Los Angeles, the discussion about married clergy came during a presentation on how to maintain Eucharistic celebrations -- the Catholic Church’s central act of worship -- amid an escalating shortage of priests who can perform them, according to some of those at the meeting.

The archdiocese distributed stark figures detailing how the growing Catholic population and declining clerical ranks in its territory of Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties have produced a ratio of one active diocesan priest for every 11,500 parishioners. That ratio, the highest in the nation, has nearly doubled since 1991.

The priests pondered possible other solutions to the shortage, including sharing priests between parishes and reducing the number of Masses.

But the priests who advocated married clergy said they were prompted by fears that depriving the faithful of the Eucharist’s spiritual sustenance could have serious repercussions.

“The right to the Eucharist is a more important right and value than a celibate clergy,” said Father Jarlath Cunnane of St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Los Angeles, who supports a married clergy.

Another supporter, Msgr. David O’Connell of St. Michael Church in Los Angeles, said that opening the priesthood to married men would also allow parish leaders to emerge in their communities. Currently, most priests parachute into churches in a revolving-door system that many say can be disruptive to parish life.

Msgr. Terrence Richey said he told Mahony during an “open mike” session that many priests wanted “the discussions to go on among clergy and bishops in a way that is not seen as being disloyal to the church.” Richey said Mahony “basically agreed with those sentiments.”

But, participants said, opposition to such sentiments was voiced in a way that took many priests by surprise: open booing by younger clerics.

That reflected an ideological divide among priests ordained during the reform years of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s and those who entered the priesthood during the 25-year papacy of Pope John Paul II, who has celebrated the value of celibacy.

(Currently, some married Protestant ministers who convert to Roman Catholicism have been allowed to become priests.)

“The older guys are the ones who bring up this stuff and it’s disheartening to the younger guys,” said Father Marcos Gonzalez of St. Andrew Church in Pasadena. “The real issue is that we need to promote vocations to the priesthood.”

Gonzalez and other younger priests said if any discussion is to occur, it must be a “more balanced” one that included the virtues of celibacy.

“If we allowed married clergy, we’d be losing something valuable -- the significance of a celibate priest as a man of God dedicated to God, church and family with an undivided heart,” he said.

Nationwide, support for opening the priesthood to married men is high among both priests and the public. A Los Angeles Times poll last year found that 69% of 1,854 priests surveyed nationally supported ordaining married men in the Latin rite. Among American Roman Catholic laity, support for married clergy has grown from 63% in 1987 to 71% in 1999, according to the Gallup Organization.