Priest Won’t Bow to Vatican, Quits Over Celibacy Survey

A Los Angeles Catholic priest resigned Friday from the Jesuit order rather than comply with Vatican pressure--and a command from superiors--to abandon and destroy his survey of U.S. bishops’ attitudes on celibacy and women priests.

While members of his family and several close friends watched, Father Terrance A. Sweeney, 41, signed papers at Loyola Marymount University resigning from the Society of Jesus upon orders from his superiors. His research, which asked the nation’s church hierarchy their opinions about married and women priests--neither is permitted in the Roman Catholic Church--has disturbed the highest levels in the Vatican.

Sweeney, however, said his immediate superiors had been aware of the survey, which was also sent to the church’s cardinals worldwide, and that they initially encouraged him to pursue it.

Sweeney’s conflict with authority comes at a time of growing efforts by the Vatican--and apparently Pope John Paul II himself--to quell dissent and put an increasingly conservative doctrinal stamp on the church.

Father Charles Curran, a widely known specialist in sexual ethics at Catholic University in Washington, has been ordered by the Vatican to retract his views on moral theology that are at odds with official church teachings.

And Father James Provost, a nationally prominent Catholic University professor of canon (church) law, is fighting for his academic life because his application for tenure has been stalled for more than a year. The Vatican has raised questions about his writings, reportedly about the participation of lay Catholics in the church, conditions under which divorced and separated Catholics could receive the sacraments and the church’s apparent discrimination against women.

Appointment of Father Michael J. Buckley, a professor at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, as doctrinal adviser to the U.S. church hierarchy is also being held up while a panel examines his orthodoxy. Objections to Buckley stem from an open letter that he and 22 other faculty members at the seminary signed in response to a 1977 Vatican declaration that women may not be ordained priests.

Two Nuns Face Dismissal

And two American nuns still face the threat of Vatican dismissal from their order for signing a 1984 statement on abortion published in the New York Times. The two were among 24 nuns who alleged in the statement that the church’s official teaching against deliberate abortion was not “the only legitimate Catholic position.” The cases of the other signers of the ad have been cleared by the Vatican.

Sweeney, a Jesuit for nearly 24 years, has won five Emmy Awards as a writer and producer of film and television productions. He insists that his survey of the hierarchy is an “obligation to truth” and a “serious matter of conscience.”

Just before he resigned Friday morning, Sweeney gave a brief, emotional speech outside the Loyola Marymount campus post office, where he then mailed a copy of his research to Pope John Paul II.

Sweeney said he preferred to resign rather than submit to “authority destructive of the very foundations of the church, and religious and academic freedom, and the freedom of inquiry and speech that are inalienable to us as human beings.”

Father Robert Caro, rector of the Jesuit community at Loyola Marymount, witnessed the signing of the papers in his office. Caro praised Sweeney’s abilities as a priest, but declined to discuss the dismissal with a reporter.

“Father Sweeney requested . . . dismissal. It’s his choice to leave the (Jesuit) order,” Caro said.

According to church law, Sweeney’s status is in limbo. Although he remains an ordained priest, he is no longer a Jesuit and cannot function as a priest unless he finds a bishop willing to receive him into his diocese, a development that he considers highly unlikely. Sweeney has already received a rejection from Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony.

Sweeney, who holds a Ph.D. in theology and the arts from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, is widely known for his work as producer, director, writer, actor, consultant and technical adviser for almost 100 film and television productions, including “The Thorn Birds” and “Barnaby Jones.” He is also the author of two books, including “Streets of Anger, Streets of Hope,” a study of how to deal with gang violence in East Los Angeles.

He also is interested in sociological studies and has long expressed concern about the acknowledged crisis in the Catholic church caused by the declining number of priests during the last two decades.

The Official Catholic Directory for 1986 lists 57,183 ordained priests in the United States, down from 58,847 in 1976. At the same time, statistics show, the Catholic population in this country has increased by nearly 4 million. A priests’ association has predicted that the number of priests may decline by half by the end of the century.

Last November, Sweeney sent his four-question survey to the 312 Catholic bishops in the United States and the 122 cardinals serving the 825-million-member church worldwide.

He asked them whether, “in light of the mission of the church and the pastoral needs of the faithful,” they approved or disapproved of changes in the church’s traditional stand requiring celibacy for priests and barring women from being ordained as deacons or priests.

Another question on the one-page survey asked whether the prelates approved of inviting married and resigned priests to return to active ministry.

The questionnaire did not ask respondents to identify themselves. Sweeney said 145 bishops--about 45% of those queried--and 10 cardinals responded. The survey is believed to be the first in which the Catholic hierarchy as a group has been specifically polled on these subjects.

Sweeney would not discuss details of the survey but said that fewer than half of the bishops who responded to any of the four questions favored changing current official policies.

“The data won’t be earth shattering from a sociological point of view,” Sweeney said, “but from a theologically perspective it will be. . . . If even one bishop differs from Rome, it is significant.”

According to interviews, correspondence and notes of conversations that Sweeney made available to The Times, the trim, 6-foot priest at first encountered no opposition to his plan to poll the hierarchy from his superiors in the California Province of the Jesuits.

Encouraged to Go Ahead

In fact, according to Sweeney’s records, he sent a copy of the survey and its cover letter to a vice provincial of the Jesuits in Los Gatos a week before the questionnaire was mailed to the hierarchy on Nov. 13, and he showed a copy to the Jesuit Provincial for California, the Very Rev. John W. Clark, when the two met on Nov. 25.

As Sweeney recalls the conversation, he told Clark: “The results of this survey may lead to conclusions that will take issue with current church policy. Am I being loyal and obedient in pursuing this? Or am I being disloyal and disobedient?”

Sweeney said Clark expressed some “minor reservations” about the survey but encouraged him to go ahead, subject to submitting written findings to the “usual process of censorship” in the Jesuit Society.

According to Sweeney, Clark told him “the society has always been on the cutting edge. Sometimes Jesuits say things the Pope and others don’t like, and Jesuit superiors are accountable. . . . But we are not a society that simply repeats what the Pope says. He expects us to challenge him.”

Father Peter Filice, executive assistant to Clark, said Friday the provincial was on vacation and could not be reached by telephone. Filice said he was not familiar with correspondence or conversations between Clark and Sweeney and therefore could not comment.

Sweeney said he first heard objections to the survey on Nov. 23 from Archbishop Mahony, who told him during a telephone call that he had received an inquiry about the poll from Archbishop Pio Laghi, the Pope’s apostolic delegate in Washington.

In a follow-up letter, Mahony wrote Sweeney on Dec. 6 that “the survey is so inadequate as to be useless as a research tool. I would expect that most bishops either disposed of the survey immediately or expressed similar feelings to you as I have expressed.”

Mahony added that “the church definitely needs quality research in the matter of religious and priestly vocations, and I am hopeful that quality and scientific research will be at the very heart of any publication which you contemplate.”

Neither Mahony nor Laghi could be reached for comment on Friday, but a secretary to Laghi said that the apostolic delegate “normally allows particular priests to deal with their own superiors and does not become involved” in dismissals.

Told to ‘Stay Loose’

On Nov. 23, Sweeney wrote Father James N. Loughran, president of Jesuit-run Loyola Marymount University, about the negative response from Mahony. Sweeney was in residence on campus as a dormitory counselor but held no teaching position there.

In a brief reply, Loughran advised Sweeney to “stay loose. I’d say: ‘Not to worry.’ But what do I know?”

By Dec. 13, Sweeney said, his research had come to the attention of Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, the general superior of the 26,000-member Jesuit order in Rome, as well as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the staunchly conservative watchdog for the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Sweeney said that, based on requests from Kolvenbach and Ratzinger, Clark issued a verbal ultimatum to “cease and desist all work on the survey (and) destroy the material you have gathered thus far.”

Sweeney quoted Clark as saying that the survey was a “bad theological and sociological study” and would “bring great harm to the society and to the church.”

After further exchanges in December, Sweeney wrote Clark on Jan. 7, saying he was resigning from the Jesuits.

“Obedience without reference to some reason or truth is not consonant with human dignity and integrity,” Sweeney wrote Clark. Eleven days later, Sweeney wrote an open letter to his fellow Jesuits at Loyola Marymount, explaining his decision.

But Sweeney did not sign final release papers, claiming that he needed time to appeal the order. As months passed, his delay prompted a formal written command from Clark on July 7 to sign or be expelled. Sweeney then set Aug. 15 as the date he would comply.

Clark’s July 7 ultimatum also said: “I command you to abandon the . . . project immediately and permanently, that you assure me in writing that you have abandoned it and that you will not in any manner whatsoever make the response to your questionnaire which you have or will receive, available to anyone for use in any manner whatsoever.”

By that time Sweeney had pleaded his case to Kolvenbach and appealed the command to leave the Jesuits to the Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes in Rome, which has jurisdiction over such matters.

Both turned him down.

The Most Rev. Vincenzo Fagiolo, secretary for the Congregation for Religious, wrote Sweeney that Jesuit obedience “receives its command just as if it were coming from Christ. . . . Regrettably, in refusing to obey you have made a clear choice between your research project and your Jesuit vocation.”

Sweeney moved in January from the Loyola Marymount campus to a small office-apartment in Beverly Hills, where he is continuing research on church authority and celibacy, and his plans for several religious films and television productions.

After he preached a controversial sermon on July 6 at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills, where he had been regularly assisting as a priest since 1981, Sweeney’s services were abruptly terminated by the pastor, Msgr. Peter Healy, Sweeney said.

‘Nothing to Do With Sermon’

In his homily, Sweeney suggested that the U.S. bishops’ June reaffirmation of mandatory celibacy for priests was neither scripturally valid nor founded upon immutable church tradition.

Sweeney’s not being asked back had “nothing at all to do with his sermon,” Healy said Friday. He added that when he requests the services of priests through Loyola Marymount he does not ask for particular individuals, and the Jesuit community decides whom to send.

By signing the formal “decree of dismissal” from the Jesuits on Friday, Sweeney was released from his vows of poverty and obedience, but not celibacy.

Sweeney says he wants to remain a priest and will not seek to become a lay Catholic.

“I feel what I’m doing is very priestly and is an attempt to save the priesthood itself by bringing to the surface the crisis it is in,” he said.

In his last letter to Clark and Kolvenbach, written July 26, Sweeney said the directive to scuttle the survey “would stifle the very act of intellectual inquiry, the very process of thinking. I have heard of people being dismissed for writing or saying things ‘harmful’ to the church, but I have never heard of people being dismissed for thoughts neither formulated nor expressed. Yet, that is precisely the kind of ‘authority’ you are exercising.”

Sweeney said he could not, “in conscience, follow your ‘command’ without committing sin. . . . I prefer to resign . . . rather than commit such a sin and so disgrace . . . the Society of Jesus, which I love more than you will ever know.”