the questioning attitude that remained after the council was concluded. All we ever did as kids-and adults-was learn and take orders. We never questioned. But when we finally did, we found out there weren’t all that many good answers around.
“We went back to our origins, and asked things like where and when did the cultic priesthood come from? When did the successors of the humble Apostle Peter get all the trappings of a king? When did they get to be infallible and why? Where did a mandated clergy come from and why?
“For a lot of us the answers of old weren’t good enough. For ten, fifteen, or twenty years, it was worth the sacrifice of being celibate. And then it was not. We didn’t leave and get married because our hormones suddenly got to be too much for us to control. We left because we saw the Church in a new light. And the changed Church we now saw was not worth the sacrifices it Still demanded.”
Hershey delivered the argument with a flourish. The by-now attentive audience almost applauded.
But Fred Stapleton was not vanquished.
“Cass”-Fred had his eyes on Hershey, but he was openly addressing the entire gathering-”we have lived our entire lives intimately bound up in the Church. You can joke about it, but we don’t call it ‘Mother Church’ for nothing. Especially us, Cass. Think! Remember! If not all of us, then a very high percentage, came from devout Catholic families who treasured the priesthood. That’s certainly where the idea of becoming a priest began for us. We were altar boys and we memorized the Latin euphonically. We served Mass for every kind of priest imaginable-old, young, thin, fat, devout, irreverent, fast, slow, saints, and sinners.
And all the time, that’s what we wanted to be. That’s what we wanted to do.
“We spent up to twelve years in the seminary while we made up our minds and the faculty made up its mind about us. We were ordained. It was the culmination of our dreams. We spent years of committed service as priests before, for whatever reason, we left … so far, a fair enough picture?”
“So far.” In all honesty Cass couldn’t fault the narrative even if, in the light of the council, it was, he thought, a bit simplistic.
“As a matter of self-examination,” Fred continued, “why do I want to return to the active ministry? Lots of reasons-but then no one does anything for a single reason.
“Why do I want to function as a priest again? Because the same things that attracted me as a boy draw me now. I love the cultic priesthood and I really don’t care where it came from or why. I miss the miracles only a priest can work in counseling sessions. And, believe me, as a practicing psychologist, I can clearly tell the difference between purely psychological therapy and the opportunity to soothe a troubled conscience by making contact with God’s love. I love and miss all of the small day-today miracles a priest performs.
“But mostly, ‘Mother,’ as we call the Church, whether sarcastically or fondly, is in trouble. She doesn’t even realize how much trouble she’s in. Soon there will be so few nuns the vocation will be little more than a memory, and a dusty memory at that. The median age of priests is so high now and there are so few remaining active that ‘burnout’ vies with retirement and death in thinning the ranks. Seminaries are virtually empty, especially when you contrast the few enrolled with the need for many times that number.
“Lots of reasons are given for the drastically low number of seminarians. But part of one reason-a large part I think-is us. You said it yourself, Cass: The priests we knew before the council remained active into the next life. When we were kids and we thought of becoming priests, we subconsciously put our ambition in the context of permanency. Young men today cannot overlook us. We were good priests and now we function as priests no more. Young men don’t have to argue about why we left. All they need know is
“Finally,’ Mother’ is in trouble because she can’t or won’t see any of this. The Church needs us. She needs our experience, Our expertise, and our presence. The Church needs our unique contribution. But ‘Mother’ believes she can get along quite well without us. Here is a’Mother’ who thinks she can get along without some of her most completely trained and most needed children. Not only would it be a joy to return to the active ministry, it would go a long way to repay the debt we owe the institution that nourished our religious lives since we were children.
“Cass, in the final analysis, we must save the Church from herself.”
The hush in the room was remarkable. What had begun as a lighthearted party had evolved into a debate between two of the most successful people at that party. Hershey and Stapleton had started their adult lives as simple parish priests. Abandoning that, the former quickly rose to the top of the local chapter of Massachusetts General Insurance. He was now impressively wealthy.
The latter, while not in Hershey’s financial stratum, was prosperous, but beyond that, he was respected, well regarded in his field, and, at least on the local level, a celebrity.
Among the listeners to their debate, an aura of agreement seemed to flow from one to the other. When Hershey scored a point, though there was no literal movement in the room, one could sense that the majority had been convinced. Only to feel the conviction shift as the other made his point.
Stapleton, with his emotional appeal to affection-even love-that everyone here at least once had for “Mother Church,” had the upper hand at the moment.
“Fred,” Hershey came back, “it’s a mighty strange ‘Mother’ you want to save from herself. Take the two of us, her children, for example. Me first.
“I left the priesthood in about as filial a way as any mother could expect. I didn’t cause any sort of ruckus; no press conferences, no public statement of any kind. I didn’t make any demands about eventually getting a pension, even though I had worked for the Church better than ten years. Now, just about any conscientious organization you can think of gives an employee a vested right to some sort of pension after ten years of employment. Fortunately, I don’t need one. But other guys do, and they’re not going to get it. If big bad businesses can care enough for their employees, you’d think a mother would be at least as decent to her children.
“Instead of rewarding us for our service, ‘Mother’ excommunicated me. Not for leaving the priesthood-no, for getting married.”
“No,” Fred interrupted, “that was because you didn’t get laicized.”
“Which,” Cass returned, “brings us to you. You went through the process, and almost as luck would have it, you got it. You were laicized. So, although you, like me, got married, you are not excommunicated. But what did ‘Mother’ demand as a price for granting the dispensation?
“I’ve read the rescript and I’m sure you have too.”
Fred winced inwardly. He knew what was coming.
“In return for keeping all the rules and going through the whole demeaning process, ‘Mother’ threw some new rules and regulations at you. I can’t hope to remember them all, but here’s a few:
“Outside of being able to absolve someone who is in danger of death-something, by the way, that even I in my state am empowered to do-you cannot exercise any function of a priest. You can’t preach a sermon. You can’t take any part in a liturgy anywhere your ‘condition’ is known. Like you had leprosy and people would be shocked if they knew about it.
“Almost anybody in any parish can be delegated to distribute Communion. They’re called ‘extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist.’ You, who gave Communion almost every day of your life for twenty years, you can’t even be an extraordinary minister.
“You can’t do anything in any seminary in the world. Not only are you barred from teaching theology, you can’t even teach a language in a seminary. You can’t teach in Church-related colleges. You can’t even teach in Church-related schools unless a bishop specifically okays it, and even then, you can’t teach religion there. Of course, the bishop just might-and that’s a heavy-duty ‘might’-let you teach religion as long as it wouldn’t cause scandal. Once again, you are the leper.
“Your marriage has to be the sort that used to be performed in a rectory rather than a church. It has to be performed as if everyone involved is ashamed of what’s happening.
“You are supposed to move out of the locale where you were a priest to somewhere where no one has a chance of knowing that once upon a time you were a priest. Again, a bishop can dispense with this atrocity.
“And finally-and most damaging to your whole argument-it’s final. You can never go back. As excommunicated as I am, I haven’t been put in your category. Were I to be divorced or-God forbid-become a widower, theoretically I could function as a priest again, though they’d probably try to send me to Ethiopia. But you: You’re
