US Catholic Priests' Group Urges Reform

Voice of America News Report                                                 Sept 24 2003

It's been nearly two years since the sexual abuse scandal in the
American Catholic Church first began, and one month since Father John
Geoghan - the man whose conviction started it all - was murdered by a
fellow inmate at a Massachusetts prison. By this point, calls for reform
and accountability within the Church hierarchy have become commonplace.
But until now, these calls have been coming primarily from the laity.
That's changing, as VOA's Maura Farrelly reports.

They call themselves "Voice of the Ordained." They're a small but vocal
group of 150 priests and 52 former priests from three dioceses in and
around New York City.

"Really the organization came together so that there would be a voice
for priests in looking at the whole situation with the Church at this
time," explained founding member Monsignor John Powis, who has been
working with low-income Catholics in New York's borough of Brooklyn
since he became a priest in the early 1960s. "How a pope is named, how
bishops are selected, how priests are selected, should there be a
married clergy? All the questions that are going to come up and have to
come up."

Father Powis said the Catholic laity aren't the only ones who've been
feeling alienated from the Church hierarchy. He said many of the men who
became parish priests in the 1960s, when the Catholic Church was
undergoing some radical reforms known as Vatican II, are disappointed in
the bishops and cardinals who are their supervisors. He said parish
priests like himself feel the hierarchy has abandoned some of the key
elements of Vatican Two by distancing itself and its parish priests from
the laity.

"There were a lot of things going on after Vatican II which were
exciting, said Father Powis. "For instance, I was part of something in
the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, and we were doing things that were
unheard of, say, 15 or 20 years before Vatican II. We had groups of
priests who were living in apartments, working very closely with the
communities, particularly with very poor people. We had a bishop who
many times said to me, "I don't understand what you're doing, but I'll
always support you." Now that's not the type of bishop that's been named
since this present pope is pope."

Monsignor Powis said the sexual abuse scandal and the cover-up that went
on for years are symptomatic of a greater problem in the Catholic Church
- namely, the refusal of bishops and cardinals to recognize that the
world today is far more complex than it used to be.

"We're getting documents now coming from Rome that really... aren't that
pertinent to the days in which we live," he said.

John Powis says the fact that 52 members of Voice of the Ordained are
former priests is a classic example of how out of touch with the world
the Church hierarchy has become. These men left the priesthood because
they wanted to get married, and the Catholic Church requires its priests
to be celibate.

Church officials say celibacy isn't about being "out of touch". It's
about ensuring that priests have the freedom to devote themselves
full-time to their parishes. Celibate clergymen, after all, won't be
distracted by their own families. But if recent statistics are any
indication, more than half the American men ordained as priests this
year will end up leaving the priesthood before the 25th anniversary of
their ordination, and many will do so because they want to have
families. This has created a tremendous priest shortage in the United
States and around the world. And so Voice of the Ordained is calling on
bishops everywhere to consider opening the priesthood up to married men.

"When I became a priest" recalls Father Powis, "it was a different
world. In our class, we ordained 41 people. Last year in Brooklyn and
Queens, with 217 parishes, we ordained two men. I've tried all my years
to interest young men, and many of them have said they'd like to be
priests, except that they would finally get to be 17 or 18 [years old]
and say that they want to form a family. And that's part of the culture
and the way that we live these days. It's a part of television, it's a
part of the media, it's a part of everything."

Voice of the Ordained isn't the only group of Catholic clergymen calling
for a re-evaluation of celibacy. Last month, 160 priests in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, sent a letter to their bishop, blaming celibacy for the
priest shortage afflicting their diocese. That letter was quickly
condemned by the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy, a group of more than
600 conservative priests in the United States and Canada. Nevertheless,
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a group of priests is working to gather
5,000 signatures, calling upon the Church to make clerical celibacy
optional. And according to the National Federation of Priests Councils,
Catholic clergy in Boston, Chicago, and Charleston, South Carolina, may
soon be doing the same.