CATHOLIC PRIESTS AND THEIR WIVES

Even though there’s a picture of a sexy model on the cover, my bride refuses to believe that I snitched the magazine for an article inside. I wouldn’t have taken it from Cleveland Attorney Michael Smith’s office but, after all, it was over a year old. Who would miss it? I never imagined it would raise such a huge anger inside me.

“Catholic Priests and Their Wives” was printed on the cover of Esquire magazine. That’s why I stuffed it into my briefcase. Seeing as I am a practicing Roman Catholic, and personally know a few married priests and know of many others, I had a natural interest in reading it.

Back home in the comfort of my family room easy chair, I turned on the reading light and opened the magazine, thinking I was about to read about American Catholic priests who have left the priesthood for married life. Omigod...the article is about Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist and priests of other faith expressions who have “converted” to Roman Catholicism, and are now embraced as priests of the Roman Catholic Church.

The article focuses on five men and their families. Yes, I said their families. All have slipped in as priests of the Roman Catholic Church because of the 1980 papal decision to dispense Episcopal priests, and others, from the laws of celibacy. According to Esquire, at the time there were seventy-nine such priests in America.

Cleveland’s Father Don Cozzens is visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies at John Carroll University in University Heights, Ohio. He is an in-demand speaker worldwide regarding celibacy in the Catholic Church. One of his works is titled “Freeing Celibacy.” He wants an end to mandatory celibacy, calling its impact on the priesthood “an unhealthy burden that has shrunk their souls and drained the last drops of passion from their lives.” It’s not Father Don’s first publication addressing the subject. An earlier work, “The Changing Face of the Priesthood, A Reflection on the Priest’s Crisis of Soul, is a book that reflects both concern and hope for the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church.

In October, 2006, the Vatican confirmed its position on mandatory celibacy. While my spiritual faith is not jolted by decisions of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, I am developing a growing belief that it truly is a “good ole boy” network.

I’m not foolish enough to think that ALL Catholic priests fit into Father Don’s view of the current spiritual state of the Catholic priesthood. Nor am I about to question the spirituality of those men of other faiths who have become Catholic priests. However, there are enough of them to prompt a new thinking. But without input by our own faithful, both laity and clerical, we’ll not see any new realities in the Catholic Church.

If the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church is to keep the faithful in our ranks, we must fill them, something that’s not being done. I don’t call ordaining married men of other faith expressions the proper way to do it while, at the same time, confiring mandatory celibacy as a policy. American Indians would call this “speaking with a forked tongue.”

We’re way past the time for a policy of optional celibacy for our own priesthood. For some it may not be important, and that’s OK. But for many it obviously is.