Heirs of the kingdom?
Fichter, Joseph H.
HEIRS OF THE KINGDOM? THE CHILDREN OF MARRIED PRIESTS JOSEPH H. FICHTER ost American Catholic priests who resigned the active ministry since Vatican 1I got married and soon thereafter--not...
...Comparing the two groups, we found similarities, in the proportions who have a personal relationship with God and who agree that religion gives meaning to life...
...The label of "always wrong" was placed proportionately on the following items: Cheating on term papers or exams, 77 percent...
...Nevertheless, the children of priests are much more likely than the college students to attend Mass and receive Communion "often...
...However, the statistics in our survey indicate that the children of ex-nuns are less likely (24 percent) than the children of other mothers (32 percent) to express such a vocational interest...
...They appear to be quite content to accept the religious counsel and guidance of their parents...
...It is of specific interest, therefore, that almost three out of ten (28 percent) of these children are "considering" a church vocation...
...It is the exception who has negative feelings about Catholicism...
...We asked no direct question about their own moral conduct, to indicate the degree to which they personally conform to the ethical tenets of the Catholic religion...
...Tile great majority of diocesan priests--as compared to religiousorder priests--are engaged in ministry at the parish level...
...We asked them to make a judgment about several forms of moral behavior...
...Our hypothesis was that the children of Catholic clergy parents are more likely to be "Catholic" in their beliefs and practices than children who were raised in otherwise "normal" Catholic families...
...more in favor of help to alien immigrants (52 percent to 18 percent...
...Many stories have been told about Protestant ministers' children who are brighter, more religious, and better behaved than the children of nonclergy parents...
...A MARRIED PRIEST WHAT CHANGED, WHAT REMAINED THOMAS A. McCABE here has been a great deal of heat, although not always light, generated on the question of optional celibacy for priests of the Latin rite...
...The majority (73 percent) are aware also that their father has gone through the process of"laicization...
...A higher proportion of ex-nuns (69 percent), than of the other mothers (52 percent), have married diocesan 432: Commonweal priests...
...On the other hand, they are married to priests who want to get back into the active priesthood and bring their wives with them...
...We wanted to know whether those surveyed identify with the institutional church through parish membership, which would ordinarily be the case with Catholic school students...
...I would like to continue this effort to look inside the priest and see what additional light this might shed on the issue of optional celibacy...
...Despite widespread discussion on the issue, it is still the "thinking of the church," as expressed in solemn Vatican documents, that priests of the Latin rite should not be married men...
...they pray...
...They gave the same proportional response about the frequency of receiving Holy Communion...
...Clergy wives, the mothers of these young Catholics, had sometimes argued that a crusade for women's ordination might distract from their own primary goal of their husbands' reinstatement in the institutional priesthood...
...There are no reliable statistics reporting the number of married resigned priests in the United States, much less the number of former women religious who married these priests...
...In a lighter vein, a high-school senior said, "the parents of my dates trust me more...
...One wonders whether the mothers, who previously had the experience of religious sisterhood, advise daughters to follow in their footsteps...
...t'' 12 July 1991:433 be expected that the girls (77 percent) were more likely than the boys (64 percent) to favor the introduction of women clergy to the Catholic church...
...and are more in opposition to the death penalty (47 percent to 26 percent...
...THE CHILDREN OF MARRIED PRIESTS JOSEPH H. FICHTER ost American Catholic priests who resigned the active ministry since Vatican 1I got married and soon thereafter--not unexpectedly-began to father children...
...In his letter, Weakland says that if a parish meets certain conditions of faith, worship, and education but does not have "a regular Mass on Sundays because of the shortage of priests...then I would be willing to help the community surface a qualified candidate for ordained priesthood even if a married man and, without raising false expectations or unfounded hopes for him or the community, present such a candidate to the pastor of the universal church for light and guidance...
...We used some of the same questionnaire items in a survey of 244 first-year students at a Catholic college...
...they are realistic in dealing with that loneliness that is part of everyone's life...
...One gets the impression, however, that this formal rescript is not taken seriously by either children or parents...
...Nevertheless, they are far out in front of the Catholic college students in their support of the bishops' social teaching...
...The parental influence for progressive social thinking has undoubtedly accounted for their children's attitude to social change...
...A further comparison with Catholic youth at the freshman college level reveals that less than 1 percent show any interest in the church calling...
...Are they just normal Catholic teen-agers, or are they something more, and different...
...But the vows of religion obviously still preclude the option of marriage for nuns...
...Furthermore, "to tell the story that your parents were a priest and a nun is a great ice-breaker at parties...
...Prospective diocesan seminarians, however, may vaguely hope for a change in the celibacy demands of the priesthood...
...The others do participate in a variety of ways: in CCD classes and study groups, as ushers, lectors, and choir members...
...This, of course, was impossible before the revision of the Canon Law in 1982...
...Six out often of the mothers are married to resigned diocesan priests, the remainder to men from religious orders...
...Most of the respondents are "practicing" Catholics, some of them enthusiastically so...
...When asked about the sacrament of reconciliation, "going to confession," the great majority (73 percent) report that they "seldom" (31 percent) or "never" (42 percent) had entered the confessional during the past two years...
...they are not looking for a "fast climb up the hierarchical ladder...
...Census regions, with most in the Midwest and fewest in the South...
...This is a carefully nuanced statement made by a bishop struggling with the question of how to sustain eucharistic communities in the face of a priest shortage...
...We asked these youngsters about their attendance at Mass during the past two years, and the great majority (69 percent) said that they have "often" gone to Mass...
...What do these youngsters say about themselves and their parents...
...Another example of light on the subject of priesthood was Sister Mary Anne Huddleston's recent article, "Sex, Sense, and the Celibate Priesthood" (America, December 1, 1990...
...Growing up with a priest-father is a very interesting experience, especially having Mass at home...
...One of the things you notice is that your father is older than other fathers...
...In the cORPUS Directory of 1990, we found 217 clergy couples who have 385 "young adult" children (fifteen),ears of age and older...
...the married life...
...It is a commonplace of biographical lore that parents generally are pleased when their children follow in the same profession or occupation...
...With the proportion of children of married priests showing an interest in the church vocation higher than any other category of youth outside the seminary, one may ironically suggest that the best source of vocations to the priesthood may be among the children of priests who are not allowed to function as priests...
...Our survey found that a higher percentage of sons of former clergy (34 percent) think of a "church vocation" than do the daughters (22 percent...
...I, too, had a Christ-dream and I could think of no more exciting a life than to be a priest...
...He is not antichurch but says we have to be productively critical...
...Though not written from a theological or sociological point of view, it looked at the hearts and souls of celibate priests who have found peace in their vocation...
...I can still pick out an ex-priest, or an ex-nun, just by their movement, action, and vocabulary alone...
...It has given me a healthy perspective which he transferred to me...
...The brief two-page questionnaire we sent to each of these youngsters drew 233 completed and usable responses, an appreciable return rate of 61 percent...
...telling racial and ethnic jokes, 43 percent...
...It seemed important to know whether their fathers shared the CORPUS goat of seeking readmission to the active priesthood...
...If they had negative reasons for leaving the convent, they may remain critical of Catholicism...
...Interestingly enough, however, we found only one out of five (21 percent) "depends on the church for moral guidance," girls (26 percent), more than boys (14 percent...
...drunkenness, 33 percent...
...As I read this image of the "peaceful priest," I was almost embarrassed to realize that the author was describing my experience as a celibate priest in Brooklyn...
...Many of these youngsters are now teen-agers ready to talk about their experiences...
...he common criteria for the measure of active Catholicism are in the frequency of Mass and the sacraments...
...There is also the stereotype of the rebellious youth who is "fed up" with too much religion in the parsonage and fails to do credit to his parents...
...In the present instance, it appears that the influence of the priest-father is a weightier factor for the church calling...
...Children from a previous marriage of the wife were excluded, in order to avoid the special problem of stepchildren...
...On the other hand, a college co-ed wrote: "My father has set an example of humility, gentleness, compassion, deep love, and faith...
...they are content to be priests and to serve people...
...They have a "dream," a Christ-dream, that drove them to the seminary and to ordination...
...Half of these children, however, admit that they are not active in their local parish, except for attendance at Sunday Mass...
...An interesting difference, however, was that the children of priests are less likely (21 percent) than the college students (34 percent) to say that they look to the church for moral guidance...
...Two-thirds of them are teen-agers still in high school, and the answers came from more girls than boys (54 percent to 46 percent...
...All the children of resigned priests were baptized and confirmed in the Catholic church and had received their first Holy Communion, but about half (48 percent) had not attended Catholic elementary or secondary school, and only 16 percent report attendance at both levels of Catholic education...
...The priests' children we tell about here ought to be a special kind of young Catholic because their parents belong to the National Association for a Married Priesthood, known previously as CORPUS (Corps of Reserve Priests United for Service...
...We had surmised that the ex-nun mother might have a more positive influence in inclining these young people toward a church-related direction...
...They resigned the religious vocation and married a resigned priest, and we do not know the measure of dissatisfaction with their life in the convent...
...In the jargon of a simplistic psychology, one may suggest that for many former nuns there is a love-hate relationship between themselves and the Catholic church...
...Certainly the contemporary life of women religious in the Catholic church is vastly different from a generation ago...
...they develop sound friendships...
...We can only speculate why there is this disproportion...
...This approximates the national statistics of 65 percent diocesan men in the active ministry...
...They reside in all nine U.S...
...The fathers in these families, and many of the mothers, took up a second vocation when they switched from the celibate to JOSEPH H. FICHTER, S.J., is professor of sociology at Loyola University in New Orleans...
...One male respondent, however, a college sophomore, said that he can "sense" the persons who come from priest-families...
...Another high-school boy said, "My dad is usually very serious and never has taken enough time to just have fun...
...They are much stronger in favor of social welfare for the poor (73 percent to 43 percent...
...The young respondents of this survey, however, overwhelmingly agree that "diocesan priests be allowed to marry...
...One high-school girl said, "being the child of a priest is no different than being the child of a doctor or a lawyer...
...In a second opinion that is also clearly in opposition to current thinking among the church hierarchy, these youngsters voted (7l percent) in favor of the ordination of women to the priesthood...
...More than six out of ten (63 percent) say they know their father wants to go back to the official priestly ministry...
...We did not ask them about their habits of personal prayer, but when it came to reading the Bible, almost eight out of ten (78 percent) admit that they seldom, or never, read the Scriptures...
...In this country we face a brand-new Catholic phenomenon: a unique generation fathered by clergy who no longer live in parish rectories or religious communities...
...It has been the continual aspiration and hope of their parents, as members of CORPUS, that the celibacy provision be removed from the church's procedures and that they themselves be readmitted as married priests...
...I was struck by Huddleston's description of"peaceful priests...
...Prior to that, priestly paternity had been a diriment impediment for ordination to the priesthood...
...One college girl, whose mother had been a nun, said that her parents had difficulty in relating to teen-agers because they had spent their youth in the seminary and the convent, and had never experienced a "normal adolescence...
...I had wanted to be a priest since I was fourteen and so I entered the minor seminary in high school...
...One girl complained that "the church prevented him from marrying and having a family earlier...
...The young people from "clergy" families we surveyed have become accustomed to the notion of a married priest who is their parent, and they are almost universally in favor of a married priesthood...
...THOMAS A. McCABE is a supervisor in special education for the New York City Board of Education and the author of the McCabe Reading Program for older nonreaders...
...and premarital sex, 21 percent...
...Three out of five (61 percent) of the fathers had been diocesan priests, and more than half (55 percent) of the mothers had been religious sisters...
...they work hard...
...In this instance, they appear to be more liberal than their parents, who had discussed this matter at great lengths in the several annual conferences of the National Association for a Married Priesthood...
...It was a "delayed" vocation, as well as a delayed parenthood, since they were on the average about ten years older than the age when most Americans marry...
...A younger high-schooler said, "I like the rebellious attitude my dad has toward the church...
...It is probably to "I tell you, a kid born today is an informed kid...
...Their children support the aims of CORPUS...
...I was a celibate priest for ten years and I have been a "married" priest for twenty...
...it is likely that sisters teaching in the parochial schools meet their future husbands in that setting...
...In about one-third (36 percent) of these families, Mass attendance is "made easy" for the children because their father regularly celebrates Mass at home or among the neighbors though the Vatican prohibits the public celebration of the Eucharist by noncanonical priests...
...Certainly the recent draft of the pastoral letter, "Facing the Future with Hope" by Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee, is an example of light shed on a subject that, despite the Vatican's effort to limit discussion, needs to be discussed prayerfully and reflectively...
...434: Commonweal...
...Many of the youngsters in our initial study did not have the benefits of formal Catholic education...
...This ambivalence toward church and religion may help to explain some of the responses of their children...
...They are intellectually alive...
Vol. 118 • July 1991 • No. 13
