The Voyeurs
Swenson, Karen
The Voyeurs It's noon. Lhasa lives inside a jaw snaggled with the broken teeth of mountains. Beijing Street—conqueror's renaming—is, except for two policemen cramming rickshaws with ruffled...
...One not forced to bow has eyes spent as empty cartridges—the world has disappeared...
...I am suggesting that the establishment of the possibility of a limited term of service in the priesthood makes a virtue of necessity (see my Priests: A Calling in Crisis, University of Chicago Press...
...These, in ironed uniforms, stand, close as Saturday night dates, beside their captives—they'll execute them at the gutted temple outside town...
...Commonweal 20 July 16, 2004...
...When a man has served his term, we permit him, if he wishes, to go forth with our gratitude and blessing—and in the case of some, perhaps with a sigh of relief...
...In the present restorationist situation in the church, many leaders are satisfied with the middle-aged vocation with a biretta on his head, an ample cassock, and a conviction that he must teach the laity to obey him...
...More to the point, my research evidence shows that priests are, on average, the happiest men in the country: happier about their lives and their work than doctors, lawyers, teachers, university professors, and even married Protestant clergy...
...The hard-line anticelibacy ideology and the equally hard-line priest-forever ideology won't permit it...
...I've heard it argued that it shouldn't be easier for a priest to leave the active ministry than it is for laypeople to end their marriages...
...I wonder who said so...
...You'll like it...
...I have never been able to understand why this seems so absurd to church leaders...
...Another, with a ripple of smile, looks out, wolf-eyes ravening the mountains' rock...
...A miserably unhappy priest is not an asset for his people or a good sacrament for the church...
...Marriage is a commitment to another person...
...Even a lowly sociologist knows well enough what bad theology that is...
...It is hard to see any Christian charity in this gratuitous punishment...
...None of these enthusiasts shows any sign they are aware of the problems of marriage and family life among the Protestant clergy...
...I understand that there is not a chance in the world of this happening...
...If you don't want to join the Peace Corps, then give the priest corps a try...
...Some priests contend that this is a compromise solution rather than a radical abolition of compulsory celibacy—a solution about which they sign petitions (cheap grace, it has always seemed to me) and for which they vigorously campaign...
...The process is often cruel and humiliating...
...priesthood is a commitment to a role in the church...
...Why oh why do we want to force such a person to remain in the active ministry under pain of humiliation...
...In this era when volunteering has become so popular, what would be wrong in inviting a young man to volunteer to be a priest for five years (or ten), renewable, so he could find out if he liked the work—with no obligation to remain in the active ministry if he did not like it...
...Last glimpse of gold braid gone in a white car, we gawkers at death and danger, queasy with blood we've almost seen, go off to lunch...
...A white van, whose important passenger wears khaki and gold braid, is followed by a motorcycle phalanx with more braid in sidecars...
...Instead of thanking a man for the years he has generously given and wishing him well in his new ventures, we force him to debase him-self...
...If we accept the notion of a limited-term vocation we might keep open the possibility of asking the man to help out on certain occasions, or even permit him to return to ministry at some future date, in both cases with honor and dignity...
...We might not have to settle for the biretta-and-cassock crowd we are now attracting who think they can find a sacred identity in the priesthood (which wasn't to be had even fifty years ago when I washed up in a parish...
...Finally the cause of this parade in the beds of two baby-blue Chinese trucks—in each, ten men, Tibetans, are accompanied by Chinese soldiers...
...The Voyeurs It's noon...
...I suspect that we could attract many more young men to the priesthood with the offer of a limited (renewable) term of service, and that most of them would find the life satisfying—if exhausting...
...Yet for those few priests who still try to recruit young vocations, would it not be helpful to say, "Try it...
...In an era of greatly increased life expectancy, such a modification of policy is not only for the benefit of the man departing the ministry but also for the people he might otherwise be forced to serve...
...Beijing Street—conqueror's renaming—is, except for two policemen cramming rickshaws with ruffled canopies into an alley, empty for a breath before it's filled by a siren's inexorable howl...
...Now they force them to bow down laying a gun on a back and leaning, or raising a pair of hands manacled behind a back, so pain creates obeisance...
...Ah, says my purple-buttoned interrogator, But the priesthood is a marriage to Jesus...
...I will not take them seriously until they have read Jackson Carroll's work on this subject for his Duke Divinity School research project...
...We now permit priests to leave the active ministry and remain (or become again) good Catholics, albeit "reduced to the lay state"—as infelicitous a phrase as the canonists have ever devised...
...Karen Swenson In fact, it would appear that it does not...
Vol. 131 • July 2004 • No. 13
