. . . A priest forever, according to the order of Melchisedec. —the Rite of Ordination THE Vatican last week announced that all Catholic priests would
henceforth be asked to make an annual public affirmation of their vows
of celibacy and obedience. The day chosen for this oath was Holy
Thursday—the feast day that, in Roman Catholic theology, commemorates
Christ’s founding of the priesthood. Obliquely, the decree was yet
another negative answer from Rome to the Dutch Pastoral Council , which last month advocated optional celibacy for priests. On
a deeper level, the proposal was a nervous, defensive papal response to
a more enduring crisis: the most notable mass defection of priests from the service of the church since the Reformation. Honest Rebellion History’s most famous priestly rebel, Martin Luther, proudly uttered his
defiance of church authority—”Here I stand; I can do no other”—before
the Diet of Worms. With an equivalent sense of drama, some of today’s
priests-in-exodus have proclaimed their departures at televised press
conferences or in defiant, soul-searching manifestoes. But whether
their departures are public or private, the vast majority are in honest
rebellion against what they feel is an authoritarian, outmoded church
organization that unfairly limits their freedoms and responsibilities
and frustrates their desire to serve God by serving man. Catholics are
not alone in experiencing this problem. Increasingly, U.S. Protestants
are losing ministers as well, often for similar reasons; as many as
3,000 Protestant clergymen are leaving U.S. pulpits every year. “We have been born in an important age full of kaleidoscopic
experiments, adventures and clashes,” writes Nikos Kazantzakis in
Report to Greco, “not only between the virtues and the vices, as
formerly, but rather—and this is the most tragic of all—between the
virtues themselves.” All too many of the priests and nuns who are
turning in their collars and habits today find themselves caught
between the passive virtue of obedience to an ancient, troubled
structure and the active virtue of creative response to a turbulent
world. No one knows exactly how many religious have jumped over the
wall—partly because it is so easy today for a priest, nun or brother
simply to take a leave of absence and never return. One Vatican
official estimates that 6,500 nuns left
last year alone. As for priests, the Vatican acknowledges that it has
on file at least 10,000 requests from priests asking to be dispensed
from their vows, and there are undoubtedly thousands more who have left
without asking at all. In the U.S. alone, an organization called
Bearings for Re-Establishment, which helps former priests, ministers
and other religious find their way into the secular world, handles
about 165 new priest-clients each month—2,000 per year—and this may
be less than half of the total number in the U.S. who leave.
