ONE MANS VOCATION
Byrne, Harry J.
ONE MAN'S VOCATION My 59 years as a celibate Harry J. Byrne 0 n a spring day in 1944, two seminarians chatted about ordination to the diaconate with its commitment to celibacy, scheduled for...
...I had enjoyed Rome, Siena, and Venice, however briefly, with these charming women of grace and intelligence...
...n those early years of priesthood, the negative images of sexuality gave way to a more balanced view...
...The synod secretariat carefully screened out these requests from the propositions submitted to the pope...
...Furthermore, to make celibacy a strict condition for priestly ministry subjects the individual to a form of institutional control that is nearly total...
...At Rome, I dined alone one evening at the Scolio De Frisio restaurant...
...She married...
...It not only touches his private life but shapes his social and public life as well, and, in today's church, that includes one's employment, compensation, and residence...
...While not VALERRY Commonweal 1 5 July 16, 2004 delighted with the prospect of a celibate life, I viewed it as part of the packaged priestly ministry that I felt called to—a ministry to serve others that would also be personally fulfilling...
...Has the core freedom of the Christian person to marry and to experience a fully human life been diminished by a kind of institutional by-law...
...John Paul II proclaims an eschatological purpose for celibacy when lived "for the kingdom": The celibate is an icon illuminating the condition that awaits all the faithful...
...The clergy sexual-abuse crisis, which has left our church reeling, happened under such conditions...
...Your words, preached in churches throughout the United States, can touch hearts and move mountains...
...Vacations were something else again...
...Celibacy may be mandated, but the person-al and social context so necessary for it to thrive and be supported cannot be legislated...
...Is it facilitated by mandated celibacy...
...Now I wonder if it must be so packaged...
...Commitment is only for weekends • Salary/stipend, paid vacations, health insurance, travel and expenses provided • No relocation necessary • Must have permission from bishop or major superior „Whoever weleo,,, in My name v,r of these child' cn welcomes Me...
...Interestingly, Pope John Paul II has frequently proclaimed marriage as an essential right of the human person...
...Catherine of Siena, I was visiting the house, thronged with tourists, where Catherine had been born...
...For those sailing in these mystical waters, these considerations may well be compelling...
...Couples much more readily than single persons arrange and are invited to dinner parties and other social affairs...
...I felt called to priestly ministry and trusted, perhaps naively, in the assurances of church authorities that celibacy enhanced one's spiritual life and ministry...
...I fail to see priest as Monsignor Harry J. Byrne is a priest of the Archdiocese of New York...
...Our friendship flourished over a couple of ski seasons and the possibilities were obvious...
...I thought of my friend, Clark Oler, an Episcopalian pastor, who often told me how important his wife was to his life and his work...
...Positions are now available at Food For The Poor for English speaking and bilingual (English/Spanish) Roman Catholic priests...
...sidered decisions to remain in ministry...
...But I have always regarded my priesthood as trying to become an alter Christus in service to others—the faithful and a wider circle of humanity—in ministering the sacraments, proclaiming the gospel vision of Jesus, and re-presenting his redeeming sacrifice with the assembly, all the while being a creature of body and spirit...
...But how effective can such control be...
...My casual encounters with the bright eagerness and vitality of the flight attendants, the glimpses of idealism in my dining companions at the Scolio De Frisio, the searching intelligence of the German university student, a long-term intellectual and faith-filled friendship with the elderly widow, and the rock-solid faith of my Vermont skier taught me that relationships between men and women are, indeed, rewarding...
...Even Cardinal Bernard F. Law of Boston, on whose watch the scandal exploded, having resigned after his people and priests rose up, still sits prominently on several Vatican congregations and was recently appointed archpriest of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome...
...History has verified this possibility: witness men in prison or on shipboard, deprived of the company of women, frequently resorting to homosexual practices...
...But the need for intimacy and sociability rather than the earlier pressures of sexuality are now more keenly experienced...
...Such arousal would not diminish with ordination...
...Thousands of children damaged...
...The recent report of the U.S...
...When I spoke at his funeral a year ago, his congregation chuckled as I said, "Rabbi Block and Phyllis were the best argument I ever saw for a married clergy...
...Serve the Po, Join the outreach of Food For The Poor today...
...Mark 9:3 Share the Gospel...
...You never knew what might have been...
...They were very pleasant and after dinner we drove around Rome by night in their rented Fiat...
...bishops' National Review Board, while disclaiming a causal relationship between celibacy and sexual-abuse, nevertheless called for a study of other considerations, such as immoral relationships with adult men and women on the part of some priests, the extent of which is not known...
...It not only touches his private life but shapes his social and public life as well, and, in today's church, that includes one's employment, compensation, and residence...
...Yet we know of no bishop being removed for failure in this regard...
...The world of ministry was too busy to allow preoccupation with the demands of celibacy...
...It is a joy to preside at liturgies, to preach, and to make contact with people as faith and sacraments intersect with their lives...
...The February report of the U.S...
...And, we might add, some clerics without a deeply spiritual and prayerful life, who turn, as we so well know today, to the most available and vulnerable children and young people...
...Regular duties at my parish of residence occupied a couple of evenings a week...
...I did not regret the choice that I had made, while acknowledging that my church might have worked things out a little differently, giving its priests the freedom accorded by other religious traditions to their clergy...
...enormous amounts Now in the end zone, retired for eight years, I find being weekend associate at a Hudson River parish enormously fulfilling...
...For what purpose then, this mandated priestly celibacy...
...It was a delightful trip...
...I was happy in mine...
...Can this self-centered quality linger on into adulthood...
...But the pope goes further when he claims that the priest is ontologically different from the rest of humankind...
...also of my friends, Rabbi Irving Block and his wife Phyllis, an inseparable part of his life and his ministry...
...if $10,000, a mortal sin...
...Willfully lingering over Playboy had the same ominous fiery clouds that hung over adulterous carryings-on...
...I remarked, "For heaven's sake, John, if you can take the step, I certainly can...
...Playing the role of priest, the Roman collar, professional reserve, and a context of parish and friends all proved effective safeguards against anything more transgressing than occasional lack of custody of the eyes...
...To have power over a person's sex life is to have remarkable control of that person...
...They were delighted to have me for Mass in their little church as the parish priest visited only every three months...
...A few resigned when their own sexual abuse of minors became public...
...Goodbyes and I was off to Siena, where in the Villa Santa Bonda, my widow friend proved a gracious host, entertaining some of the local literati...
...Many bishops at the 1998 Synods for Asia and for Oceania and at other synods have re-quested permission to ordain married men...
...hese vacation encounters and others made me more aware that a woman is another world, an-other experience, another frontier, a possible partner in understanding, work, and faith...
...About the fifth day, my friend who had made an interesting acquaintance said, "Harry, let's get out of here...
...Catholic Priests needed to be the voice of Christ on behalf of the poor children of the world...
...Living as an icon is a big reach for flesh-and-blood human beings—certainly for me...
...In 1950, a priest for five years, a ski vacation in Vermont: I became an impromptu bartender in the small lodge...
...Chancery work involved evening meetings in civic affairs and frequent dinner sessions with friends and colleagues...
...A Maine resort with a priest classmate: In mufti, we mixed with young men and women of our own age on the beach, after golf, and on an evening schooner cruise, adroitly handling questions about schools, occupations, and home neighborhoods...
...bishops' National Review Board called the bishops' mismanagement and lack of accountability "shameful to the church...
...I won't be here tomorrow...
...We urgently need priests like you...
...Celibacy has an enormous value to the person and to the church when it is a continuing mandate of the heart—the most total giving of oneself to the Lord...
...We invited them to our hotel but unfortunately they had to fly right back...
...As one grows older, disaffection can develop toward a mandated social climate that, to some degree, excludes a relaxed relationship with half the human race—women...
...I'm out of here...
...ONE MAN'S VOCATION My 59 years as a celibate Harry J. Byrne 0 n a spring day in 1944, two seminarians chatted about ordination to the diaconate with its commitment to celibacy, scheduled for the following morning in the seminary chapel...
...This is getting too hot to handle...
...Subsequently he had many years as a teacher, then left for marriage...
...The bright vision of faith, the spirituality and the sacraments that come from the Jesus of the Gospels, lasting friendships, and the memories of thousands of adventures of being with people while trying to be, however imperfectly, an alter Christus provide a welcome sunset glow after fifty-nine years as a priest of New York...
...On the feast day of St...
...Amen...
...Our easy relation through prayer and devotion to Our Blessed Lady says something about our ability and tendency to relate effectively to the feminine...
...Both were Catholic and easy conversationalists...
...Rome, Siena, Venice: An elderly friend—a widow—and her daughter had taken a villa in Siena and invited me to join them in Rome and then move on to Siena...
...She was the American wife of the Catholic laird of the tiny Isle of Canna in the Inner Hebrides off the western coast of Scotland...
...My married brothers travel on vacations with their wives...
...another distinct category...
...We were warned against the evil of impure thoughts and of impure actions with self or others in a manner that reflected the principle we found later in seminary textbooks: "there is no parvity [smallness] of mat-ter in sins involving sex...
...This, too, goes beyond my experience and my understanding of the onto-logical scale as consisting essentially of mineral, plant, animal, human, angelical, and divine...
...They were on their way to Venice and would I like to join them...
...But life is a series of choices and I was content with mine...
...Here are a few brief snapshots...
...Two college girls at a nearby table, spotting a fellow American with a Roman collar, smiled, came over to chat, and invited me to their table...
...I had seen an evolution in a friend's attitude toward celibacy...
...What kind of mental change was I undergoing regarding celibacy...
...John's response was unnerving: "Well, Harry, I have news for you...
...At the present time, with the collapse of social norms and the old supportive networks, younger men considering priest-hood and those in their early years of ministry may not find sufficient reason or support to undertake or continue the steep commitment celibacy entails...
...Conversation flourished, especially with one, a lovely blond, a devout Catholic, and a person of considerable intelligence...
...But celibacy has not been an easy road...
...Initially, it stemmed from an ascetical impulse derived from early monasticism...
...Without a high-octane spiritual life, other less acceptable activities can come into play: drinking, race tracks, casinos...
...Like His apostles, you have the power to bring the bread of life to those who are near death, to heal the sick, to shed light into the darkness of ignorance, to bring shelter to the homeless, hope to those in despair...
...To my mind, however content I am with my own life choices, this only adds to the current vocation crisis...
...After Mass, we all had breakfast together and met several times in the next few days, while I enjoyed their commentary on Italian men...
...I was pleasantly surprised to encounter my two friends from the Scolio De Frisio...
...But as for celibacy, an ancient Anglo-Saxon prayer might well be addressed to our pope and the bishops as well as to the Lord: "Supply the secret needs of our hearts that no dark cloud of evil passion may overshadow those whom the light of thy heavenly grace has strengthened...
...Has our church for too long put a frequently distorted sexual morality at center stage...
...If you steal a dime—parvity of matter—it's a venial sin...
...In the 1960s and 1970s, it would not be surprising that many of the clergy who stayed would have had to make con of church funds expended...
...The harm done by a minuscule group of miscreant priests was exponentially multiplied when bishops knowingly transferred offenders to other assignments, making the hierarchy actively complicit in the damage...
...Along with several couples, there were a group of five unattached girls and this unattached clergyman...
...Physical awareness was literally aroused in the all-male seminary on visiting days, when the click of the high heels of classmates' sisters was heard on the cloister walk...
...Many bishops, priests, and theologians in the eleventh century engaged in wide-spread debates for and against mandated priestly celibacy, sought by the papacy to prevent the inheritance of church property by the sons of priests...
...Venice was made more exciting by their pleasant company...
...For more information, call Joan Vidal at 877-654-2960, ext...
...My only regret about the trip is that I do not remember their names—those lovely girls...
...It concluded that "We see this crisis as one of the episcopacy as much as it is a crisis of the priesthood...
...To have power over a person's sex life is to have remarkable control of that person...
...Rather than an enhancement, celibacy has been more of a distraction...
...A Bishop Ulric of Imola urged Pope Nicholas II (1058-61) not to ban priests from marriage because it is a natural right and such a ban might drive some of them to homosexual acts...
...Compensations easily insinuate themselves—golf, tennis, bridge, social activities, hobbies—and make disproportionate demands on the time and energy said to derive from celibacy...
...We still exchange Christmas cards...
...Property considerations at that earlier time prevailed, and the ban became part of the church's human apparatus...
...Has it made young people too introspective and self-centered regarding sex rather than presenting it in more relational terms...
...bishops to undertake a study of optional celibacy...
...Yet in the face of all this, together with the priest and vocation shortages, a disproportionate homosexual presence in our clergy, and the possible relation of celibacy to the scandal and other aberrations, John Paul II continues to ban any discussion or study of mandated clerical celibacy...
...The ecclesiastical failure to distinguish between deliberate "self-abuse" and something that T Commonweal 16 July 16, 2004 just more or less happens is indicated in an otherwise beautiful Anglo-Saxon evening prayer: "May we awaken in the morning without stain...
...The household also included two young married couples and a striking blond young lady, a university student from Germany...
...Continuing in the 1950s: I had recently received a woman into our Roman communion...
...Recently, substantial numbers of priests of the dioceses of Milwaukee, New Ulm, and Albany have petitioned the U.S...
...But I was in one context of life and she in an-other...
...AIM FOOD FOR THE POOR, INC...
...The eight flight attendants on board were as amused as we were at the unusual situation and gave us the same splendid attention that we gave them...
...Canna had an interesting cast of characters...
...The airplane was being sent down empty to bring back a crowd of returning week-enders...
...then in the Middle Ages for protection of church property...
...For the retired priest loneliness is accentuated...
...Recent history proves instructive...
...They fitted in easily at Villa Santa Bonda...
...It suggested once again the possibility of a different kind of life...
...As a form of asceticism, celibacy's heroic demands are more at home with a hermit in the desert or a monk in a monastery than with a priest ministering in today's highly charged sexual atmosphere...
...But regarding sex, no parvity of matter whatever...
...How is this to be justified...
...Now at age eighty-three, after fifty-nine years of a happy and exciting priesthood, my early questioning of celibacy has been confirmed...
...I seriously considered a particular prospect of marriage, but stayed, because of an underlying commitment to ministry as packaged in man-made policies of our church and to the network of family, friends—Catholic and non-Catholic—and colleagues...
...A flight to Bermuda: A priest colleague and I found our-selves at JFK Airport...
...Church property is now protected by more sophisticated measures, leaving control of the presbyterate as the chief motive covered by an unconvincing veneer of asceticism...
...Confessors allowed twelveyear-old boys to continue to be terrified at the normal workings of male hormones, telling them to take cold showers and read spiritual books, so that these sudden eruptions might eventually cease...
...the public reputation of the priest-hood seriously wounded...
...The gospel simplicity of the words and example of Jesus, the overarching Catholic intellectual vision and its rich cultural traditions, learning from people, and the camaraderie of fellow men and women gave a coherence and sense of well-being in day-to-day ministry...
...I invited them to my Mass the next morning at Santa Maria Maggiore with my widow friend and her daughter...
...As for my own experience of celibacy, efforts, however faltering, at maintaining a prayer life and a level of devotional and intellectual spirituality have made for a happy priestly life: twenty-four years in chancery administration, another twenty-six years as pastor in two New York City parishes, and eight years retired as weekend associate in a lively parish...
...But is it...
...Commonweal 18 July 16, 2004...
...Our ministry works directly with clergy in the Caribbean and Latin America to feed, shelter and clothe the poor...
...As one matures, sexuality is perceived as a normal part of human existence, without ominous red lights constantly flashing, however much there may be the need for yellow lights of caution...
...I was the one who stayed, however much I questioned the rule of celibacy...
...As an extreme form of asceticism, it would be expected to be accompanied by other ascetical practices and a deep, even mystical spirituality...
...Unmarried, the priest ideally can give more of himself and his time to ministry, but it does not always work out that way...
...6419 Commonweal 17 July 16, 2004 As the ambit of Christian freedom is increasingly felt today, and with Vatican II's more positive attitude toward marriage, there has been an abandonment of ministry by thou-sands of priests, mostly for marriage...
...What might have been is not to be known...
...We two young priests in vacation garb were the only persons at the gate...
...It is not surprising, then, that many priests and those who might consider priesthood have little or no confidence in the authority figures who have so clearly failed in the sexual-abuse scandal...
...Hitherto, in adolescence, prayers were constant for chastity and purity...
...We left...
Vol. 131 • July 2004 • No. 13
