A Frank, Open Look at the Crisis in the Priesthood

Crisis is a word that in recent decades has been associated often with the Roman Catholic priesthood, particularly in the United States. At a time of growing membership and ethnic diversity, there are ever-fewer priests. There are worries that the time will come--indeed in many parishes has already arrived--when there will be no priest to consecrate the bread and wine as the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ--the central act of Catholic worship.

Only last June, the nation’s Catholic bishops noted that 27% of parishes either have no pastor or share one with another parish. In the West, the ratio of priests to parishioners is 1 to 2,185, compared with the worldwide average of 1 to 1,127. At the same time, the average age of priests has been edging upward. It is now 57 for diocesan priests, and 63 for priests in religious orders.

There has been much hand-wringing within the church over the crisis. At the bishops’ meeting last June, Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Curry was quoted by the National Catholic Register as questioning the church’s emphasis on evangelizing dormant Catholics. “If we invited them back, what in heaven’s name will we do with them,” he said.

Outside the church, and among liberals within it, the solutions seem all too apparent. They say that if it weren’t for the vow of priestly celibacy or if priests could marry or if women were ordained, there wouldn’t be a shortage.

Now comes Donald B. Cozzens with a thoughtful, complete and finely nuanced critique. For Catholics and non-Catholics alike who have thought--or need to think--about the underlying issues that have precipitated the crisis, this is a must-read book. It is at times brutally frank, written by a priest who has observed firsthand the swirling debates that have finely honed--and in some cases ground down--the priesthood.

Cozzens, a former vicar of clergy in the Diocese of Cleveland and now rector of its graduate seminary, clearly has great love and reverence for the priesthood. He speaks of priests as rumors of angels and messengers of mercy. Yet his is a love that compels him “to say things you don’t want to say, that may even be dangerous to say, but are absolutely necessary.”

The reasons for the shortage are numerous, he says, among them the crisis of priestly identity that took hold following the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, which elevated the role of the laity and thus, to some degree, reduced priestly distinctions. Priests were also demoralized--and their authority eroded--when a small fraction among them were accused of sexually abusing minors.

Of course, the hot-button issue of the day is homosexuality. There appear to be a disproportionate number of gay men among seminarians and priests, he writes. No one really knows what the percentage is, but Cozzens cites sociologist James Wolf’s 1989 estimate that 48.5% of priests and 55.1% of seminarians have a homosexual orientation. Because of this, straight men may not be comfortable with a priestly vocation, and while it is often unspoken, parents are reluctant to encourage their sons to enter the priesthood.

No one can doubt that celibate priests who are gay make an enormous, helpful and healthy contribution to the church. Indeed, their sensitivity may be a special strength needed by any who seek to minister to others.

Yet, Cozzens says, the church must wrestle not with how well parishioners appear to accept a hard-working and celibate gay priest in their own parish, but with the idea that the Catholic priesthood overall may be heavily populated by men with a homosexual orientation.

“The priesthood’s crisis of soul, and by extension, the church’s crisis of soul, is in part a crisis of orientation,” he writes. “Sooner or later the issue will be faced more forthrightly than it has in the closing decades of the 20th century. The longer the delay, the greater the harm to the priesthood and to the church.”

His insights into issues of maturity, psychosexual development and the universal human need for intimacy are especially helpful in understanding why 20,000 priests have left the church--most in order to marry. Others, a small minority, were caught up in sexual scandal and broken vows of celibacy in a misdirected and ultimately self-defeating search to meet the soul’s need for intimacy. Everyone needs intimacy, Cozzens says. But for the celibate priest the need is for intimacy without sexual contact, a close friendship--a soul mate--with whom one can make oneself vulnerable without fear.

In a therapeutic world we are told that we have a right to pursue that which makes us happy and fulfilled.

But the therapeutic culture, he says without any trace of condescension, has not comprehended spiritual truth. He writes: “Willfully seek intimacy and it will elude you. Willfully seek fulfillment and you will remain unfulfilled. Willfully seek holiness and you will encounter spiritual danger.”