Rome’s Command Silences the Hierarchy

Many people have responded to my resignation from the Jesuit order--most in a spirit of support, a few with scorn and even character defamation, others with puzzlement as to why my resignation would occasion such attention.

Here I hope to explain more fully the seriousness of what is happening and why I chose to resign rather than suppress research on the attitudes of 145 members of the American hierarchy concerning issues of vital concern to the entire Roman Catholic Church.

The central conflict is much larger than one of authority versus individual conscience. It would be more accurate to say that the conflict is one of authority against itself, against the spiritual well-being of the Catholic community, and against individual conscience.

My superiors in the Jesuit order, responding to pressure from the Vatican, were asking me to suppress information that I’d gathered on the attitudes of well over 100 members of the hierarchy, and they were asking me to do this without first obtaining the consent of the hierarchy involved. In short, certain persons in authority were trying to silence a large number of other persons in authority.

What makes this attempt at silencing even more serious is that the issues involved are crucial to the future of the priesthood and the spiritual well-being of the faithful. Since Vatican II, more than 100,000 men have resigned the priesthood. In the United States the two principal reasons that they gave were conflict with authority and the problems with celibacy. Compounding the problem of resignations is the drastic reduction of seminary enrollment, down 74% at the high-school and college levels from 1968 to 1983. Sociologists project that in less than 14 years there will be only 15,000 diocesan priests left, while in 1970 there were 37,000 priests serving parishes. The present U.S. Catholic population is estimated at 52 million, and is expected to steadily increase into the year 2000.

The 1986 Dean Hoge study of future church leadership showed that the strongest obstacle for Catholic men considering a vocation to priesthood is that they are “not allowed to marry”--and, if “married men could be ordained, the number of men desiring ordination would increase, as an estimate, fourfold or more.” Further, “If women could be ordained, the number of women desiring some form of vocation would increase twofold or more.”

What this means is that American Catholics will have to “hunt around” to find a priest to say Mass, hear their confessions, baptize, marry, bury or counsel them through family problems, crises of faith, spiritual hunger and debilitating temptations. What this means is that priests and laity alike will suffer as priests become overburdened, disappear, grow old and die.

Emerging from this conflict are two models of authority: One is a model of authority as institution, structured hierarchically, spiritually and doctrinally from the “top down”--from God, through the Pope and his Vatican, through the hierarchy to the priests, and finally to the laity. The other is a model of authority evidenced in Jesus’ relationship with his disciples and the people who came to him. His was an authority rooted in love, truth, compassion and an unquenchable desire to serve. In short, his was an authority imaging not institution but community and companionship founded on ministering love.

Jesus chose both married and unmarried to be his disciples. He chose women to be the first to proclaim to the apostles his resurrection from the dead. God chose a woman, Mary, to bear Jesus.

These issues of authority and priestly ministry are vital to the future of the Catholic Church. Apparently the 145 American bishops who responded to my survey thought so. Some Vatican and Jesuit authorities thought that the matter was closed not only to me but also to the bishops and the cardinals throughout the world.

The Jesuit Provincial ordered me, under threat of dismissal and “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” to abandon the survey.

On July 26 I wrote back to him saying: “Neither you, nor the General of the Jesuit Order, nor Cardinal (Joseph) Ratzinger, nor any Vatican official, no matter how highly placed, has the right or the authority to silence the hierarchy--unless they themselves consent to it.

“If you want me to obey your ‘command,’ obtain the hierarchy’s consent, and I would respect their decisions. Neither you nor I have the right to decide for them.

“Your ‘command’ is not only insensitive to the needs of the people of God, and insulting to those members of the hierarchy who responded to the survey, your command is contrary to fundamental human rights, it is contrary to the canonical rights of Christ’s faithful . . . .

“Even after 23 years of Jesuit life, I prefer to resign from the Society rather than commit such a sin, and so disgrace the very name ‘Jesuit.’ ”

It is my hope that people will see my action not as one of disrespect and disobedience but as an action of profound respect for the church and profound love for the church.