A married priest
McCabe, Thomas A.
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. It is a commonplace of biographical lore that...
...they are realistic in dealing with that loneliness that is part of everyone's life...
...I had wanted to be a priest since I was fourteen and so I entered the minor seminary in high school...
...No, I did not think I had turned away from God or the Lord from me...
...What had changed was my inner-being, my conscience...
...Has it fulfilled all of my needs and desires...
...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...
...I read Cardinal Cardijn and material on the Lay Apostolate Movement...
...I read Hans Kiing and Yves Congar and the documents of Vatican II...
...With a group of other priests I joined the Fraternity of Charles de Foucauld...
...I hardly thought about it, much less agonized over it...
...It was not written to change the mind of the Vatican on mandatory celibacy...
...Augustine was right when he said, "You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you...
...Marriage has not fulfilled all my needs and desires but I never expected it could...
...434: Commonweal I could think of nothing more important than to "save souls" and "build the Kingdom of God...
...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...
...They are intellectually alive...
...Prior to that, priestly paternity had been a diriment impediment for ordination to the priesthood...
...they are content to be priests and to serve people...
...No, I did not think I had "lost" my priestly vocation...
...It is of specific interest, therefore, that almost three out of ten (28 percent) of these children are "considering" a church vocation...
...Being a bishop or a monsignor was the furthest thing from my mind...
...The teaching church had always taught me that I must follow an informed conscience...
...I tried to spend one hour each day in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament...
...What changed...
...I have been a teacher and a special education administrator for years...
...The raising of children has been a worry but also a joy...
...This, of course, was impossible before the revision of the Canon Law in 1982...
...Yes, I still wanted to be a priest...
...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...
...Of course the presumption was that a truly "informed" conscience will follow the teachings of the church...
...Confirmation parties became awful...
...I have never loved a "job" as much as I loved the "job" of being a priest...
...If that meant celibacy, then it meant celibacy...
...She was as committed to the gospels, to the church, and to the people as I was (maybe more so...
...but celibacy was not...
...I no longer wanted to go on vacation with my priest friends and live in a rectory with other men...
...It was written to be another piece in the ongoing dialogue on the priesthood today...
...I read Dorothy Day in the Catholic Worker and John Cogley's weekly columns in Commonweal...
...I was very happy to be a parish priest...
...What a hypocrite I would have been to listen to God in my inmost being when it came to priesthood but not listen when it came to marriage...
...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...
...I went on an annual retreat...
...This Christ-dream drove me to ordination and to Puerto Rico to learn Spanish and to come back to work in an African-American and Puerto Rican parish...
...But over a period of time I realized this exclusive male companionship was no longer for me...
...In the present instance, it appears that the influence of the priest-father is a weightier factor for the church calling...
...Well, what have I learned from this...
...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...
...It is good work but it does not give me the same satisfaction I found as a priest...
...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...
...For years I had loved working with the team in the rectory...
...Let me add another reflection, one that comes from within me, but one that speaks to the experience of other married priests as well...
...Rather it meant that I was most peaceful, most comfortable, most in touch with myself when I thought of myself as a priest and later when I was ordained and was doing priestly things like celebrating Mass, preaching, counseling, and working with young people...
...There is loneliness and disappointment and frustration in marriage but there is also intimacy and sharing and support...
...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...
...they are not looking for a "fast climb up the hierarchical ladder...
...It was not loneliness that was driving me to seek the companionship of a woman, rather it was the very core of who I was...
...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...
...I read...
...I prayed...
...This is my loss but it is also a loss for the church and for the parish that I could have served for the past twenty years...
...We planned together, worked together, and prayed together...
...I could not picture myself being anything else except a priest...
...But the doctrine of an informed conscience is double-edged because such a conscience can find a different path and travel it without guilt...
...It is a commonplace of biographical lore that parents generally are pleased when their children follow in the same profession or occupation...
...Certainly the contemporary life of women religious in the Catholic church is vastly different from a generation ago...
...I was a man, a Christian, a priest who knew in my heart that my love for this woman was as much a pan of me, my priesthood, and my call from God as celibacy was...
...These reflections have not been written from anger that destroys, but from love that sheds light on the workings of the spirit in the church and in individual souls...
...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...
...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...
...Had I turned away from God...
...I, too, had a Christ-dream and I could think of no more exciting a life than to be a priest...
...So with great pain and sadness I left the active ministry and applied for and received a dispensation from my promise of celibacy...
...During these years I was working in the parish with another person, a woman...
...I had a spiritual director...
...This calling from God was obviously not a calling that I heard with my ears...
...For years I had enjoyed going to confirmation parties and heating "priest stories...
...they develop sound friendships...
...Did I "lose" my priestly vocation...
...I lived with two other priests in a team ministry...
...So here I was, a peaceful priest, praying, talking to my spiritual director, and knowing that no matter what my church said, the priesthood was my calling...
...They have a "dream," a Christ-dream, that drove them to the seminary and to ordination...
...I was a celibate priest for ten years and I have been a "married" priest for twenty...
...I had good friends, both priest friends with whom I played ball and ate and drank, and lay friends whom I loved, and who loved and respected me...
...This is how I "knew" I had a vocation...
...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...
...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...
...Did I still want to be a priest...
...I read Worship, the monthly herald of the liturgical movement...
...Has marriage been great...
...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...
...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...
...I prepared for Mass...
...ears ago I knew I was called by God to be a priest...
...I am happy to say that marriage has been great...
...A further comparison with Catholic youth at the freshman college level reveals that less than 1 percent show any interest in the church calling...
...But the vows of religion obviously still preclude the option of marriage for nuns...
...Just as I am sure that, for some, celibacy is the way to live as peaceful priests because it is their calling from God, so I am equally sure that for others, marriage is the way to live as peaceful priests because it is their calling from God...
...I went to bed alone each night--that was part of the life...
...For years I had enjoyed skiing in the winter in Vermont and swimming in the summer in Puerto Rico with my priest friends...
...I said the rosary alone and with the Legion of Mary...
...Prospective diocesan seminarians, however, may vaguely hope for a change in the celibacy demands of the priesthood...
...I never missed the Divine Office...
...One wonders whether the mothers, who previously had the experience of religious sisterhood, advise daughters to follow in their footsteps...
...In this dialogue we must not overlook the rich, faith-filled experience of either the peaceful celibate orthe married priest...
...they pray...
...Over a period of about three years, I realized I was more at peace, more comfortable, more whole, more myself with her than with any other person...
...I was struck by Huddleston's description of"peaceful priests...
...I was peaceful...
...I went to confession regularly...
...they work hard...
...After all, we both have something to say about this Christdream that we have pursued over these many years, t ~] 12 July 1991:435...
Vol. 118 • July 1991 • No. 13
