Fr. Stephen J. Rossetti, president of the St. Luke Institute in Silver Springs, Maryland, a psychologist and consultant to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ ad hoc committee on child sexual abuse, has reported in the September 13th issue of America on the impact of the sex scandals on the morale of priests in the United States. The results are not as bad as one might expect.
Fr. Rossetti conducted a survey of 834 priests on the following statement: “Overall, I am happy as a priest.” Ninety-two percent either agreed or strongly agreed. Only 6 percent were thinking of leaving the priesthood. When asked if they would do it all over again and join the priesthood, 83 percent said “Yes.” Rossetti concludes, “priests like doing what priests do and find great satisfaction in it. Their lives are filled with sacraments, preaching and being with people; and they find it intensely rewarding.” Seventy-four percent of the respondents said they would actively encourage family members to become priests.
These are impressive figures. In a CNN poll of 5000 Americans, only 63 percent said they were “happy with their current job.” Seventy percent of the priests surveyed said, “Celibacy has been a positive experience for me.” Rossetti speculates on the results we would get if married couples around the country were asked to react to the following statement: “Marriage has been a positive experience for me.” Would 70 percent of married couples answer in the affirmative? I have my doubts.
All this is good news. It suggests that priests are reacting to the sex scandals in a way comparable to most lay Catholics: We understand that only a small minority of priests were involved in these horrible crimes against young people. I will repeat something I have said before: I attended Catholic schools from first-grade through graduate school. I was taught by Dominican nuns, Marist Brothers and Jesuit priests. I taught for 4 years in a high school run by Marist Brothers. I never — not once — heard about a sexual impropriety on the part of a member of the clergy. Almost every other Catholic I know says the same thing.
That said, let’s not pretend that there has not been a serious change in the way ordinary Catholics view the clergy. I do not have the facilities for conducting the survey, but I would venture the results would not be good if the following question were given to a cross-section of modern Catholics: “If your son told you he wanted to become a priest, or your daughter told you she wanted to become a nun, would you actively encourage them to pursue their vocation?” I don’t want to be unkind, but it could be that the priests who told Fr. Rossetti that they have few morale problems should have some. Maybe they are guilty of whistling past the graveyard. The shortage of young men entering the seminary is a reality that cannot be ignored.
Let’s not hide our heads in the sand. Something has changed in the ordinary Catholic’s perception of their priests, not all of it attributable to the sex scandals. I don’t think it is nostalgia that leads me to conclude that modern priests do not enjoy the prestige that was once attached to the priesthood. When I was a boy in the 1940s and 1950s, and a young man in the 1960s, a priest was a highly respected and admired member of the Catholic community.
Back then, when priests entered the room at Communion breakfasts and parish social events, men and boys would eagerly gather about them, seeking to bathe in the glow of the priests’ status. The women of the parish would scurry about to attend to their needs. Legends attached to them: that they were once great baseball players who turned down a major league contract to follow their vocations; that they were the favorites of all the pretty girls when they were in high school, great dancers, crafty boxers who once took on the town’s tough guys looking for trouble at a parish dance; that they were war heroes, who could have been wealthy stockbrokers, lawyers or doctors, if they had not followed their vocation.
Were these stories true? Probably not. The point is they were plausible. There was an aura about priests back then that made it seem as if they could have done all these things. They were perceived as manly men of character, indistinguishable in appearance and demeanor from the local policeman or corporate executives. They were almost always well-dressed and groomed. It was no accident that Hollywood made so many movies with priests as heroes, casting actors such as Spencer Tracy and Bing Crosby in the leading roles.
I don’t like to say it, but all of that seems gone. Priests nowadays may be liked, but “liked” is about as far as it goes. The near-veneration is a thing of the past. Why? Is it that the priesthood lost much of its prestige because the kind of man who once entered the seminary no longer does? Or do these men no longer seriously consider the priesthood because of the changes in the Church and society in recent decades? It seems a classic case of which came first, the chicken or the egg.
One thing seems clear: the world has changed in recent decades in ways that redefine what it means to be a priest. The ordinary Catholic’s loss of the sense of sin and the fear of hell is one of those changes. Many Catholics have succumbed to the lure of moral relativism. Judging by the way we all go to Communion, row after row, every Sunday, it is self-evident that we all think we are in the state of grace these days, or don’t care one way or the other. The manner in which Catholics joke and socialize in Church before and after Mass is part of the story too. There is no escaping that the Real Presence has lost its meaning to many Catholics.
Consider the implications. These changes in the way so many Catholics view the Eucharist makes a difference in the way Catholics view their priests. People who do not feel any great need for the sacrament of penance or for the spiritual nourishment of the consecrated Host are not likely to feel a reverence toward a priest. They are more likely to see him as a “presider” over what they see as the communal meal of the Mass and as a “facilitator” in parish discussion groups. (These titles are favored by a good number of those looking to remake the Church in the “spirit of Vatican II.”) They will judge the priest by his ability to interrelate on a personal level with the members of the parish and promote tolerance and interfaith dialogues with non-Catholic neighbors, more than by any resemblance he may bear to St. Francis Xavier or the Curé of Ars. They will judge him the way they would judge a high school guidance counselor or social worker — on human terms. They will be unlikely to even know what is meant by an alter Christus, much less how to react to those who play that role in our lives.
More to the point, there is no need for young men who want careers as facilitators and presiders to become priests. They can cut to the chase, and become social workers and guidance counselors without all the clerical folderol and self-denial. And young men who yearn to emulate St. Francis Xavier or the Curé of Ars will not be drawn to a vocation where heroic sacrifice and a dedication to the life of the spirit are seen as sidebars. It will take great leadership in the Church, or a hard-to-predict intervention by the hand of God to get us out of this pickle.
James Fitzpatrick's new novel, The Dead Sea Conspiracy: Teilhard de Chardin and the New American Church, is available from our online store. You can email Mr. Fitzpatrick at fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net.
(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
