The nine profiled married priests in this moving volume often mention Paul
VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae as a watershed moment in their
decisions to either leave the active priesthood or speak out against the
pathology of the papacy and be “fired.” It is, as poet W.H.
Auden said in a more general context, “the crack in the teacup”
which “leads to the land of the dead.” As Jim Drane, a
particularly gifted, Rome-trained, Ph.D. put it: “Sex undoubtedly is
important and serious, but based on my little experience, it was neither the
evil act nor the source of all other human evil.”
The diverse accounts Robert Brousseau assembles in A Dying Breed were
painful and exciting reading for a former Jesuit and married priest like myself
who had relatively few “run-ins” with the episcopacy or even the
clerical caste during seventeen years as a Jesuit, three and a half of them as
an ordained priest. Some of the nine writers struggled not only against
authoritarian pastors in parishes, classmates consciously climbing the clerical
ladder, monsignors, and seemingly oblivious prelates at every turn; they also
found themselves in various states of arrested development both in their
dealings with women and with the entire culture of the Church. The late Anthony
de Mello, no stranger to ecclesial censure, put his finger on one of the saddest
aspects of Church failure: "Religion as practiced today deals in
punishments and rewards. In other words, it breeds fear and greed -- the
two things most destructive of spirituality." And herein lies the
bravery of the eight priests Brousseau knows and in his book gives voice
to. Each refused to remain complicit with the fear and greed which was
diminishing him. For some, their lives were decidedly happier. For
others, loneliness, bitterness, and family ostracism were their only rewards for
inviting or at least receiving the stigma of “failed priests.”
Jim Drane realized that since infallibility means that “the Church in
the sense of the Pope does not err, consequently every error must be covered
up.” He left, married, and, after he and his wife raised five children
together, she walked away from the marriage of twenty-five years. He hopes
he has learned enough about dialogue to keep relational bonds strong in the
future, but, obviously, there are no guarantees this will be the case.
Bob Westerman is a relatively conservative priest who served the Church and
humanity for many years in Guatemala, then literally built parishes back in the
states.
He later fell in love, married, and continued to minister in his parish,
wanting to prove that “a married man could serve very effectively as
parish priest.” When he suggested as much to Bishop John Quinn, the latter
turned from friend to foe and cut off Westerman’s medical coverage,
withdrew priestly faculties, and told him he and his wife were not to attend the
parish he had been ministering to. Westerman ends his narrative insisting
that optional celibacy “should be recognized and accepted as a full
Christian commitment.” Bob Westerman and Jim Drane, and a few others
remain close to the Church, but excluded from it in fundamental ways. Several,
like William Lally, have “no bitterness toward the Church because I see it
as the people of God,” and “I am one of these people and the leaders
are only temporary servants of us all. We will be Church despite them and not
allow them to have power over us.”
Other writers in A Dying Breed, Thomas Cahill, Joseph Dillon, Walter
Chaney, John Carl, and Robert Brousseau exhibit a wide range of behaviors.
Some seem like loose cannons, others slow to catch on to the manipulations
of the hierarchy and the elitism of the Church “system.” John
Carl, the youngest man featured in the book, says of his many friends still in
the priesthood, “I see them as Dutch boys with fingers in the dike. I
entered the priesthood to be someone special. I left when I figured out that I
already was.”
All are shown to be brave and good men who earnestly committed themselves to
service in God’s name and found great happiness or great torment or a
mixture of both.
Like all heroes, they challenged the dominant culture. Those whose
relationships thrived and whose families love them are happy men indeed. The
others escaped with their consciences intact. However scarred, they are
like us all, doing their best, in virtually every case, conscious of working for
justice for millions of oppressed people, including those whose lives have been
negatively impacted by the Roman Catholic Church. This timely volume reinforces
the call to action rumbling through the Church. It holds up a mirror to the
clerical culture and to various manifestations of the spiritual sickness at the
heart of that culture.
Don Foran is a professor of English and Philosophy at Centralia College and The
Evergreen State College. He was named Professor of the Year for the state of
Washington by the Carnegie Foundation in 1995. He and his wife, Maggie, live in
Olympia, WA. His daughters Amanda and Erin are flourishing as college students.