(Article published in Corpus Reports, (Sept.-Oct., 1999)

Eugene C. Bianchi

Gayle White, senior religion editor for the Atlanta Constitution, asked me why so few young men (and women) were joining Corpus. I had navigated the interview pretty well up to that point, but her question stumped me. The query stayed in my mind as I watched the participants at the Fifth International Congress of Married Catholic Priests at Emory. On the whole, we were definitely an over-fifty crowd, a gathering of gray hairs. After some thought and a few consultations, I offer the following reflections on the question. These remarks are speculative in my own mind; I renounce any claim to infallibility in the matter, and present them as pump-primers for discussion. The order of presentation does not indicate a level of importance; that degree of sophistication is beyond me at this point.

A. Pre-Vatican II Formation. Older priests went through the drama of shifting from a more repressive and juridical Catholicism to the freer climate of Vatican II. These men were immersed in and shaped by a close-knit Catholic culture during what we may call the late period of Immigrant Catholicism of the 1930s to 1950s. Catholic communities and families supported and esteemed the priesthood more than in recent decades. Imprecise as this expression is, the church as total community got into their bones; it was harder to spit out the hook, to mix metaphors with abandon. Modern sciences of consciousness show that our self-understanding and values are greatly enforced by the social groups that command our loyalty. The priesthood flourished within the "safety net " of these immigrant subcultures.

The new freedoms of Vatican II and the societal climate of the 1960s encouraged men of that time to hope for institutional change in the priesthood, perhaps in their life-times. Such priests and their age-cohort associates were more inclined to organize groups like Corpus for bringing about change. Today's younger men were formed in a more individualist culture unlike that of immigrant Catholicism; moreover, a greater number of career alternatives opened up in the individualistic and pluralistic society that the country has become. For such men, the priesthood was a noble ideal and profession, but once they decided to leave, they moved on to other things, untrammeled by the thick psychological and cultural ties of Immigrant Catholicism. To them, a group like Corpus might look anachronistic, a kind of holding on for the sake of holding on.

B. Neo-conservative Young. This point bears mentioning, but doesn't need a great deal of explanation in the context of our question. From various reports, a sector of the younger priesthood today may be closer in theology and mind-set to the Legionnaires of Christ or to Opus Dei. When such persons leave, they would hardly be inclined to join a group of aging lefties (Corpus types) whom they see as quaint remnants of ancient wars. Or as a friend of mine refers to them, the facial-hair liberals. The younger neo-conservatives would rather ready themselves for more respectable and promising involvements.

C. Proportion Problem. Here we must make an important nod to demographics. The age cohorts of older priests were considerably larger than those of younger men. Seminary populations have dwindled and fewer are ordained than in the 1950s and 1960s. We should expect, therefore, that there would be fewer candidates available for groups like Corpus. It would be interesting to know what proportion of those who left in the halcyon days of abundant clergy actually joined reformist groups. My guess is that the number would be less than ten to fifteen percent.

D. Too Clerical. It may be that Corpus retains the image of resigned priests who are asking the church to let them back into the priesthood as married men within the present forms of clerical life. Those who know Corpus well realize that the movement has developed significantly from an earlier more clerical and all-male approach to one which explores new modes of priesthood and encourages the involvement of women at every level. But perhaps this word has not really gotten out to younger generations. It is interesting to note that Call To Action attracts younger people, but CTA does not have a clerical aura.

E. Gay Clergy. No one has exact statistics about the proportion of the Catholic clergy that is gay. But there is good reason to think, based on a number of credible reports, that a large number (maybe even a majority) of younger priests (under 45 or 50 years old) are gay. Reasons for this situation transcend the scope of our discussion. One factor is the growth over thirty years of a public gay subculture which has its counterpart in the Catholic clergy. And despite the irony of official Catholic stands on homosexuality ("intrinsically disordered"), the clergy is a congenial place for dedicated service among gays. If all the gay clergy left tomorrow, we would have a true employment crisis in the ministerial ranks. My remarks are in no way intended to be understood negatively about gay priests, most of whom contribute a great deal to ministry. But in terms of recruitment for Corpus, there are problems. One is that people generally tend to socialize within their age-cohorts, and secondly, gays tend to socialize with gays. C'est naturale, ne c'est pas? The church has always taught that grace builds on nature. Why would younger gays who leave want to join an organization of aging heterosexuals?

This may not be the end of the matter, however. Maybe Corpus should reach out more to gay priests who leave. I sense that Corpus has hesitated to do this for fear of confusing its focus on a married and female priesthood in the heterosexual manner. But the time may have come to explicitly encourage priestly ministry among gays who leave and live either singly or in a committed partnership. Perhaps Corpus should step into the pastoral vacuum left by the recent savaging of the New Ways Ministry of Robert Nugent and Jeannine Gramick. Maureen Fiedler spoke of such inclusiveness in her sermon at the concluding liturgy of the Emory meeting.

F. Pain and the Need for Distance. For many men, leaving the priesthood means interior struggle and a confrontation with losses. Many have to work through degrees of anger, even bitterness, before they are ready to join progressive Catholic groups. It takes time to re-establish oneself in the realm of work and love. The latter can be all-consuming for a few years after leaving. Many priests who leave do not have the soft landing I had in the academia; they often experience deep insecurity about finding a suitable job, especially when they have to support a family. This is where local Corpus groups might seek out those who leave and need the emotional, consultative and intellectual companionship of priests who have successfully made the transition. A younger couple at the Emory meeting told me how important it was for them to be directed by Linda Pinto to the welcoming community of Nick Reyes in California.

G. Soccer Moms. I can't resist this one. Everyone knows that men do what their moms always wanted them to do. At least for a good period of their lives, that is, until either mom dies and/or a new love replaces her. This is probably true for gays and straights. I'm waiting for someone to come along and write the real story of the denouement of the Catholic clergy in the last three decades. That story will be less about shifts in theology and more about a transition in motherhood. To put it briefly, when the devotional, rosary moms of the 1940s became the soccer moms of the 1990s, the jig was up for a universally celibate clergy. Mom didn't want that to happen any more to her boy(s). You laugh? Well, you may want to say that the soccer moms sold out to materialism as they ferry their youngsters around in Volvo station wagons to ballet and soccer practice. But these better educated women with more vision about alternatives for their children and a broader appreciation of spiritualities may just be a little smarter than the rosary moms. I wonder if John Paul II would want me to write a draft of an encyclical on the subject? Let's see, how might it start in Latin? De matribus sacerdotorurm qui rosarium sacrae virginis renunciant et philosophiam modernam, quae vocatur 'footballismus' amplectunt. Of course, it would be shortened in the New York Times to De Matribus Sacerdotorum. An alternate title of the papal letter could be De Potestate Matrum; this would allow the pope to discuss the power of mothers without having to ordain them. It would most likely be a first as a papal encyclical devoted entirely to motherhood, the priesthood and the various dimensions of "footballismus" (I translate "soccer" into "football" in the encyclical to respect the more international designation of the sport). I have no ready remedy for Corpus and soccer moms, but the following reflection on alternative spiritualities may pertain, since I said above that soccer moms may have seeded the sons who disobeyed them for while by entering the present clergy with an embryonic yen for spiritual pluralism not available in the parish. Ah, the return of the repressed.

H. Alternative Spiritualities. Just as there are more career alternatives for priests who leave today, so also there are more spiritual alternatives on the present horizon. Dan Maguire at the Emory Congress emphasized this point when he spoke about religion as fundamentally a response to the sacred. He described a wheel with many spokes pointing inward to a sacred center. Various old and new religions represent the spokes. Maguire saw this movement of seeking the experience of a sacred center as more than cafeteria spirituality; he referred to it rather as a touchstone of our times when cybernetics, environmentalism and other movements draw us more deeply into the quest for a universalizing religious consciousness. Maguire's stress on the Hebrew prophets for a spiritual ethics showed us that one could be based firmly in a particular tradition while learning from and sharing with alternative heritages. Perhaps too much of the present spiritual culture of the priesthood still reflects what Paul Collins called the OTC mentality, the one true church spirit of a form of Catholicism that had all the answers even before questions were asked. It could be that some priests who leave want to experiment with alternative spiritualities. They may find Corpus focused on a sacramental priesthood still understood too tightly understood according to the seven sacrament theory of the Middle Ages. This is not an invitation to jettison the seven sacraments, but rather a call to re-mythologize or re-imagine sacramentalism in a wider perspective, as signs of the holy in many traditions and in nature. Edward Schillebeeckx started us on this kind of reflection thirty years ago. Perhaps Corpus could do more about re-thinking the nature and role of priesthood today along the lines of spiritual teacher, prophetic friend and healer or reconciler....themes that I took up in the Corpus Boston meeting in 1997. The present crisis in clerical leadership revolves in large part around tensions in understanding priestly identity. What is the priest supposed to be today? What is he or she supposed to do? Is he or she supposed to learn in part how to not-do and not-know and be a non-self? The latter question is important for me as I learn from Taoism and Buddhism.)

I. Laicizing Identity. From my study (with Peter McDonough of Arizona State U) on contemporary American Jesuits and former Jesuits, it is becoming clearer that an aspect of priestly crisis in the Catholic Church today revolves around a shift in understanding the role of the priest. The Vatican knows this quite well and tries to bolster up priestly identity with documents that continue to polish up a faded ideology of clerical separateness or specialness. This approach will not let go of the monastic template that was imposed on the whole clergy in the twelfth century. I could say a number of positive things about this monastic template as a reform device in the Middle Ages. But here I want to underscore its ideology of a superior route to salvation. If one lived according to monastic poverty, chaste celibacy and obedience to superiors, be it in the form of religious orders or in the accommodated form of diocesan clergy, one was on the fast track to salvation and one resided in a superior caste within the church. Such a person lived in an extra-ordinary realm, not in the ordinary zone of lay people. (It is interesting that the philosopher, Charles Taylor, sees much of modernity as a return to the ordinary in movements and ideologies that pulled the West especially away from fixed hierarchical classes toward democratic understandings and involvements). Notice that the church opposed these movements for two hundred years until Pius XII in 1943 gave a blessing to modern democracies, but, I emphasize, he would not have countenanced democratizing within the church.

Now to bring this topic back to younger priests and Corpus, I submit that there is a laicizing movement afoot in the church since Vatican II, a return to the ordinary and away from extra-ordinary castes in the realm of spirituality and holiness. The Fathers (too bad there were no Mothers) of Vatican II shot the underpinnings out from under the special-route-to-holiness ideology. They insisted in Lumen Gentium that all members of the church had received an equal call "to the fullness of the Christian life and the perfection of charity." Were they drunk on chianti or moved by the Spirit to write in that way without checking out the consequences? Or was the Spirit coaxing the bishops into the hilaritas vini? But in such spiritual euphoria, they shot themselves in the clerical foot; both feet actually; some hierarchs still hobble around with bandaged feet trying to cure these wounds with nostrums from the medieval pharmacy. The Spirit as trickster has a sense of humor. Many bright young men studying for the priesthood wonder how they are any different from committed Christian laity, especially well-educated and spiritually advanced lay people. Why take on mandated celibacy, they ask, when we are all brothers and sisters in a discipleship of equals? It is well to note that the new laicizing should not be confused with the anti-clerical laicizing in Europe during the last century. For example, at a conference in June on the future of Jesuit higher education, I was impressed by the intelligence and commitment of lay colleagues who were taking up the baton, as it were, of Jesuit spirituality from the dwindling ranks of the latter. (Another touch of irony: a married clergy in Catholicism could bring back a renewed clericalism, a new class apart.) In light of all this, does Corpus appear to younger men who leave the priesthood as a warmed-over version of the older caste they are leaving?

J. Popular Culture. American popular culture is geared toward celebrities and the media. Young people exchange ideas and find values via music, television, film and the internet. Many of us who were formed in the era of print culture tend to look down on current popular culture, but we too easily dismiss the importance of these newer modalities. Jerry Grudzen, a former president of the Federation of Christian Ministries, underscored this point at the recent Emory meeting. He emphasized, for example, the importance of the media in depreciating the image of the Catholic priest by the many reports on sexual scandals among the clergy, especially the exploitation of children and youth. Images of the priesthood are created that play subliminally on our imaginations. Perhaps younger men who leave the priesthood today are more aware of such images; they may not want to associate themselves with an explicitly priestly movement in the church.

Jerry also pointed out that images of a married priesthood may be out of date and reflective of a narrow understanding of issues we are facing. In a world of expanded alternatives and lifestyles, many younger people may prefer not to be married, but to live singly or to explore their sexuality in other ways. Could it be that some priests who leave see the emphasis on a married clergy as representing a older cultural construct that does not accord with a culture of plural choices and lifestyles? Whether Jerry is right or not about many younger people not viewing marriage in the same way as older generations, it may be worthwhile for Corpus to ponder the imagistic and visual/audio culture of the young. What might we learn from an expert on modern communications and popular culture, especially if such a speaker or writer was well acquainted with Corpus' goals?

K. Social Justice. As might be expected, a good number of men who leave the priesthood go into some form of social service work. The social teaching of the church has for the most part been one of its most creative contributions to the modern world, and groups like Catholic Social Services do extensive good work around the world. One does not have to be a priest to engage in these efforts. But the service and justice apostolates are part of the gospel mission for every category of church personnel. As an organization for priestly renewal, Corpus may appear too centered on intra-church issues, especially those pertaining to clergy. Corpus can't do everything; it needs to concentrate efforts on its particular goals. But more emphasis in its publications and meetings on issues of social justice and service could be attractive to some younger ex-clergy. I suggest a caveat, however, in approaching social justice. I find too much prophetic posturing among some clerics and former clerics who condemn corporations and governments, usually those in technologically advanced countries, in broad general terms like neo-liberalism, without doing more careful homework about how businesses and governments actually operate. I'd like to see social justice types give more consideration to economic reality; moreover, I'd like to see these prophets think hard about what alternatives they would offer to present systems which, of course, do have their very negative sides.
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The lyrics from the song made popular by Peter, Paul and Mary in the 1960s, "where have all the young men gone, long time passing" seem appropriate to these reflections about Corpus and younger priests. The Sixties marked the beginning of a new period in church history; much time would have to pass before we could see the shape of things to come.

Some become discouraged when they see Corpus made up mainly of gray hairs, and this is understandable. The restorationist mood of present church leadership makes progressives wonder if the spirit of Vatican II will ebb away, broken on the rocks of neo-conservatism. But this is too pessimistic a view. While the future is unknown and undetermined, there is very good reason to believe that the church will continue to need those who know how to dialogue with the leading voices of contemporary culture, taking in what is valuable and critiquing what isn't. Corpus and other reform-minded groups stand in this long Catholic tradition of dialogue with the best of contemporary knowledge and wisdom. The very public presence of Corpus and similar reform groups, regardless of numbers and the aging of constituents, makes a statement that some would like to ignore or minimize. It is not impossible that the wider church could take on an Opus Dei or Legionnaires of Christ mentality. But it is unlikely; the Spirit is too much of a humorist and trickster for that to happen in a very big way for a very long time.

But my optimism for the long run doesn't spare us the hard work of reflecting on how we can do our job better now. It is in this spirit that I offer the above thoughts about the make-up and possible make-over of Corpus. Which of the reasons above for the aging of Corpus make most sense to you? Maybe you have other explanations to add or substitute or express better than I have. I have spoken of dialoguing outwardly with the world, but we need to dialogue inwardly with one another. Let Dave Gawlik and Corpus Reports know what you think by letter or e-mail or phone.

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