Holy orders surrounded by controversy

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 20, 1995 by Robert McClory

The Roman Catholic priesthood is a lightning rod today, attracting to itself virtually every controversy in the church. The equality of women, the shortage of clergy, the role of the laity, the availability the Eucharist, the implications of sexual identity, the value of celibacy, the very nature of Catholicism - the priesthood is bound up and implicated in them all.

Once the object of awesome reverence, or at least good-natured affection, priests are now often regarded with pity - or with scorn in the wake of countless sex abuse charges. Small wonder then that the number of men attracted to what Vatican II called "this intimate sacramental brotherhood" continues on a steady decline. Last year 522 men were ordained in the United States, 83 fewer than in the previous year. The downward spiral has been relenntless for three decades.

But even if the priesthood were not under siege from many diverse directions, it would in and of itself be an institution in a state of mutation and flux. The Second Vatican Council's "Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests" set the scene for putting a new face on the old presbyterial institution. Commenting in the mid-1960s on the Vatican II text, council observer John Oliver Nelson said, "The overall mood is: Come out of your solitary Masses, your prelatical doting upon rank or affluence, your privileged station at altar or confessional - and identify radiantly, humbly with Everyman. Again and again the... calling of the whole people of God to be a royal priesthood is underlined."

That mood shift has not been without pain and a certain amount of resistance. In his book The Last Priests in America, Tim Unsworth, a Chicago author, notes the tendency of priests to think like cops." Just as police regard themselves as the thin blue line between an inert, helpless public and the predatory criminal element, so priests under the old theology viewed themselves as appointed mediators between the unsaved, needy masses and an awesome deity. Duly consecrated, both cop and priest wore distinctive uniforms as signs of their exclusive endowment with certain powers - both even had weapons of enforcement. In both cases it was easy for an elitist culture to develop - a culture that lent itself to separation from the people to be served, sometimes even to outright abuse of those people.

This domination-subordination relationship was not only tolerated by both sides, it was often extolled as a matter of divine institution.

In the egalitarian mood of Vatican II, priestly claims of superiority and exclusivity were no longer accepted at face value. The whole people was the priestly people, and if the implications were not quite clear, the concept nevertheless had a great impact on imagination and attitude. A better-educated laity no longer deferred automatically to Father as the assumed positions of responsibility in parishes, Catholic schools, even chance offices. It was as if the citizenry were taking over the duties of the police, leaving the guardians insecure and frustrated.

No more 'lone ranger'

The shift is reflected in the new rite of holy orders authorized by the Congregation of Divide Worship in 1990 and still in the process of being translated by the International Commission on English in the Liturgy. According to Fr. Jan Michael Joncas, a liturgical theologian at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., the rite puts "the heart of the presbyterial ministry" in the "preaching of the word." In the older rite, presiding over the Eucharist came before preaching in the list of priestly responsibilities; now the order is reversed. "That move was deliberate," said Joncas, "and it's pretty interesting in what it says about how we should list our priorities. In addition, he said, old references to the priesthood as a civic honor have bee removed, and an emphasis on the importance of priests working collaboratively for the good of the whole church has bee added. The image of priest as some so of spiritual "lone ranger" finds no justification in the new rite, said Joncas.

The rite of bishops' ordination has also undergone change. The older military, chain-of-command model yields collegial images in which episcopal responsibility is seen as extending beyond diocesan boundaries to embrace a whole nation, even the world. Administrative duties come second to the demand to "keep in communion" with all the churches an exercise authority collaboratively for the good of all. This stress, said Joncas, would seem to support the idea of national bishops' conferences as organizations with power in their own right.

Fewer and older

Meanwhile, priests and bishops are more and more burdened with the responsibility of providing the Eucharist regularly to a swelling Catholic population - a responsibility that is becoming nearly impossible to fulfill. The trends her are widely reported and appear to be irreversible: a reduction in the number of diocesan priests from 35,000 in 196 to 21,000 in 2005, with parallel reductions among religious order clergy, while the Catholic population is rising fro 45 million to 74 million in the same 40 year period. Only nine dioceses in the country are projected to have more priests in the early 21st century than they had in the 1960s; these are mainly in area of the country such as California an Florida, where total Catholic population is mushrooming. Meanwhile, other dioceses are experiencing devastating declines - more than a 60 percent loss of priest over the 40 years in places like Indianapolis and Milwaukee.