Celibacy at all costs?
Jabusch, William F.
In view of the potent impact that primaries could have on the party, it remains to be seen whether current PRI governors-accustomed to treating their states as fiefdoms--will work under the new...
...They live alone in rectories built for four or five priests, shop for frozen TV dinners or cans of soup, and eat alone watching television news...
...It is difficult to know how many today find this to be cogent, but there is no doubt that it has historical and theological weight...
...But I am not so sure...
...I came upon the two of them discussing not law or medicine but what had been their original interest, the Catholic priesthood...
...In spite of urgent prayers, in spite of eager young priests assigned as "vocational directors," in spite of full-color posters and special recruitment retreats for college students, the number of interested candidates is not sufficient...
...Commonweal | aj May 22, 1998...
...I still remember being certain I would never celebrate Mass in English facing the people...
...It is not allowed to dilute it or change it...
...While the average age of the clergy is now over sixty, the average age of pastors has declined...
...And the Protestant experience shows that wives and children are often not happy with what is expected of the pastor's family...
...I wonder if today the problems are rather a numbing weariness, a deadly loneliness, and a sense of pessimism and failure...
...Many feel there will be no change...
...Celibacy is a sign of the heavenly kingdom and the priest is witness to spiritual values that contradict the materialism of the world...
...Curial officials, rejoicing in their own celibacy, seem to see the priest and seminarian shortage as a passing problem caused by Western decadence and selfishness...
...A college chaplain asks why hris is a young man concerned about getting into C a good medical school...
...Their ministry is respected and appreciated by their people, who do not seem especially concerned about a lack of "sign value...
...For them, celibacy does not "speak" in a convincing or even a healthy way...
...Such an adjustment is indicated when there is urgent necessity or obvious usefulness (urgens necessitas vel evidens utilitas...
...Constitution 50 of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) states that a change in discipline (statuta humana) may be called for by a change in "the times...
...Can some be kept open with nonordained pastors...
...Today many potential and actual ministers do not feel called to a celibate life...
...In other places, especially in the big cities, there is still a priest-pastor in most parishes...
...But they do not see anyone ready to take their places...
...Why, they wondered, was celibacy still required when married Episcopalian clergy are being ordained as Catholic priests and, right here in Chicago, we already have married Ukrainian Catholic priests...
...We have, as someone said in an athletic metaphor, no "bench," no replacements, no one prepared to step in and carry on...
...When we were seminarians I remember our elderly Jesuit spiritual director warning us to beware of "Punch and Judy" (whiskey and women...
...So, we are told, nothing will change...
...Priests' salaries would have to be doubled or tripled...
...One does not need a crystal ball to see the future...
...Both had reluctantly put aside that calling since it would mean not having a wife or children...
...Older priests understandably look forward to retirement...
...Failure to curb the escalating crime rate could also cost the PRI dearly at the polls...
...In a number of rural areas in the world, Catholics have not had such a person for some time...
...The Chihuahua results gave the deeply riven PRI a mission--namely, holding open primaries in four PRI-governed states where the party had yet to select its standard-bearers: Sinaloa, Tlaxcala, Tamaulipas, and Puebla...
...In view of the potent impact that primaries could have on the party, it remains to be seen whether current PRI governors-accustomed to treating their states as fiefdoms--will work under the new rules...
...Is that now the case with the discipline of celibacy...
...It is common in the American West for a pastor to put hundreds of miles on his car as he dashes through deserts and across mountains in an effort to offer Mass in four or five different parishes...
...Reverend Willard F. Jabusch is the director of Calvert House, the Catholic Student Center at the University of Chicago...
...Who knows...
...Perhaps, but nuns have disappeared even faster than the clergy, and qualified lay people are still in short supply...
...The diocese of Dodge City, for example, sprawls across twenty-eight counties in southwest Kansas...
...William F. Jabusch CELIBACY AT ALL COSTS...
...But even if the party suffers a setback or two, allowing the sun to blaze in on its nominating process will affect its future in several positive ways: _9 Give greater substance to President Zedillo's insistence that a local version of glasnost complement the economic liberalization that he has championed...
...And thousands of other validly ordained men have been doing so for centuries in Orthodox churches throughout the world...
...Is it time for one of the "appropriate emendations" Pope John XXIII spoke of when on October 11,1962, he opened the first session of Vatican II...
...Thus, in one fell swoop, the PRI (1) selected a probable winner, (2) involved a quarter-million people from across the political spectrum in its selection process, and (3) conveyed a message both to the country at large and to its own militants that their Tammany Hall-style party could embrace more democratic procedures and still come out on top...
...Jim, on the other hand, has already been accepted at several law schools, including Notre Dame...
...and _9 Set the stage for a wide-open contest for the PRI presidential nomination, featuring a half-dozen aspirants...
...The PRI National Executive Committee held its collective breath when the polls opened on primary day, March 8; by nightfall, it was celebrating a political coup...
...He has had straight A's, even when he took physics, chemistry, and Latin in the same quarter...
...The number of new priests being ordained has also dropped, from 994 in 1965 to 522 in 1995...
...His first choice, however, would be to stay here at the University of Chicago...
...They know they do not have the energy and health they once had and which are needed for a vigorous parish ministry...
...The diocese of Innsbruck, Austria, which includes the whole of Tyrol, ordained no one in 1996, and pastors over seventy-five are persuaded to stay on...
...And of course there are divorces, some of them rather messy...
...Frankly, I don't think he has anything to worry about...
...But even this dramatic decrease does not tell the full, sad story, for the number of American Catholics has risen by 33 percent...
...And I suspect that many other university chaplains have talked with generous, devout, and highly intelligent young men who had seriously considered becoming priests but turned away for one major reason...
...Deputy Patricio Martinez Garcia, a moderate, well-liked accountant and rancher from Chihuahua city, had garnered 54 percent of the vote, to defeat Iglesias (35 percent) and a third contender...
...That would dampen Mexico's impressive economic recovery, forcing additional cutbacks in popular social programs...
...Also there is the argument of "sign value...
...According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, the number of priests in the United States has dropped 15 percent in the last thirty years...
...Still, we know that validly ordained married priests are now serving in Roman Catholic parishes and chaplaincies in the United States, England, and Germany...
...I am sorry to say that I did not have a good answer...
...But it is certainly not only rural America that is hurting...
...The bishops, both in Europe and in the Americas, seem timid and hesitate to provoke any Vatican unhappiness...
...But as the older generation retires, becomes infirm, or dies, younger and younger men are assigned as pastors of huge parishes with thousands of families...
...But must it also adapt, at least to some extent, to the felt needs of the ministers...
...He has just published Mexico: From Corporatism to Pluralism (Harcourt-Brace) as well as A Guide to the 1998 Mexican Elections (Center for Strategic & International Studies...
...Men only a few years ordained are given heavy pastoral responsibilities...
...With little experience they face the financial and societal problems of inner-city parishes and, to no one's surprise, are frequently burnt-out after a few years of frustration, loneliness, and hyperactivity...
...The Catholic church has the noble mission of "handing on" the gospel to successive generations...
...They say that the present pope has no interest in this subject...
...George W. Grayson teaches government at the College of William and Mary...
...Sometimes it is the other way round: I know of a Methodist minister who was removed from his church, not because of his performance but because the congregation widely detested his wife...
...More parishes will be closed...
...However, "never say never...
...And even if the primaries are conducted fairly, the now-popular Zedillo and now-unpopular PRI could still lose ground if oil revenues--responsible for 39 percent of the federal budget---continue to plummet...
...If conducted honestly, primaries will enhance the legitimacy of PRI candidates in general elections, according to public-opinion surveys...
...Polish friends tell me that the numbers entering Polish seminaries have rapidly declined now that there are many new opportunities for bright, ambitious young men...
...These people are, however, deeply interested in having a pastor to baptize, preach the gospel, lift up the sinful, and celebrate the Holy Eucharist...
...The bishop has closed six parishes and will probably close ten more by 2005...
...There are difficult assignments which Commonweal II | May 22, 1998 a man would hesitate to accept if his wife and children would suffer deprivation or be in danger...
...9 Weaken further PRI oldtimers or "dinosaurs"---concentrated in the party's labor and peasant sectors--who prefer finagling vote tallies to winning the hearts and minds of the electorate...
...By then there will be twenty-four priests serving 13,700 households in forty-one parishes...
...Seminarians are already "rare birds," and priests themselves have started to feel like an endangered species...
...Although no panacea for the party's fortunes either this year or in the 2000 presidential race, unfettered primaries offer the last best chance for the PRI to recover--in part, at least--from the defections and defeats endured in recent years...
...Before the open primary in Chihuahua, the PRI acted like a condemned prisoner waiting for the hangman...
...After forty years in the priesthood I am not unaware of the advantages of celibacy...
...If the world's longest continuously ruling party actually implements intramural democracy, the use of words, long dormant--for example---legitimidad (legitimacy), esperanza (hope), and credibilidad (credibility)--may reappear in the political vocabulary of Mexicans...
...It is an institution that venerates tradition...
...But the church also has the task of pastoral care, of ministry, and ministry, of necessity, must adapt to the conditions of those who are to be served...
Vol. 125 • May 1998 • No. 10
