An organization of former priests finds it is no longer needed.
For about three formative years in the mid 1980s, my fiancee (now wife) and I belonged to the Catholic faith community at Northwestern University, the Sheil Center. Neither of us were affiliated with Northwestern at the time, but a friend from our undergraduate days at Loyola was a grad student at Northwestern,. She had started playing guitar for one of their Sunday masses, and invited us to get involved. So we did.
In those days, the Sheil Center was very different from the chapel at Loyola where Therese and I had met. At Sheil, the student population was greatly outnumbered by "associates", i.e. adult Catholics for whom the college years were varying distrances in the rearview mirror but who liked the community. It was a liberal, intellectual environment.
One year during Triduum, a couple invited us to join them at their Evanston, IL condominium after the Easter Vigil - the invitation pitched it as, "the celebration continues!" So we went. I thought the gathering would be people I knew from the Sheil community, but it was a little different. There must have been 20 or 30 people there, most of whom appeared to be about the same age as our parents. The majority were men, although quite a few seemed to be there as couples. Not knowing the others, our small group of young adults sort of ended up seated apart from the main throng. Our hostess graciously came over and spent an hour with us.
She told us something which I think I had known already: her husband had been a priest earlier in life. I believe he had been a member of a religious order, although I don't remember the details now. He had left some time earlier - I think it had been 20 years at least. They were now happily married. He was a business executive in the IT field, and she also had a nice career. But in his heart of hearts, he was still what he had been as a priest - a scripture scholar. Sheil was a place that accepted him for who he was, and gave him a place to hang out with other scholarly people. It also gave him various outlets for sharing his love of scripture.
She told us that virtually all of the men in the room were former priests. That was kind of a jaw-dropper for me; I had been vaguely aware that some men left the priesthood now and again, but I didn't know there were so many - and that they hung out together.
These memories are occasioned by a National Catholic Reporter article, CORPUS, group for married priests, disbands after 50 years. According to the article, at its peak CORPUS's mailing list had 10,000+ contacts, but now it is down to 300.
I hadn't previously heard of CORPUS. NCR's article implies that CORPUS provided a way for former priests to continue to do what they were trained to do, and what their hearts probably were still leading them to do: be ministers. The article states these former priests ministered especially to divorced and remarried Catholics.
It doesn't state why CORPUS has dwindled. Perhaps part of the reason is that divorced and remarried Catholics don't feel as connected anymore to the Catholic Church, and so aren't looking for weddings, baptisms, burials etc. that look and feel Catholic.
I suppose another reason could be sheer numbers: there simply aren't as many priests anymore, so there are fewer to leave (and fewer to stay).
I also have the impression - but I don't know whether or not it's accurate - that priests are leaving in lower percentages than was the case in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.
I think, in the dotCommonweal days, there was a discussion among former priests about how awful it was to be booted from the priesthood. When you were laicized, the church simply dropped you like a hot potato. You'd be given a very short deadline (e.g. 24 hours) to get your stuff out of the rectory. Where you were to go was up to you - the church didn't see it as its problem. The NCR article doesn't mention that CORPUS saw providing these newly-former priests with a soft landing as part of its mission, but I hope it was.
I once knew someone in a different, now-long-defunct Catholic forum who had a humane and merciful notion of what exiting the priesthood should consist of. His take was, if the man had given 20 years of his life to the priesthood, then the institutional church, as well as the communities he served, should thank him profusely for his years of faithful service. And then the institution should give him some sort of transitional housing, and perhaps educate him for a different profession. This view was based on what we all understand to be the case: we change significantly from the time we are young adults until the years of middle age and beyond. If we find we can no longer abide by the promises we made when we were 26, then there are other holy ways of life, and it would behoove the church to help these men find alternatve paths.
Part of the reason for the demise is demographics. The many priests who left have died, retired from providing "alternative services" or are simply old. There are fewer young men being ordained, therefore fewer leaving.
ReplyDeleteHowever, one reason might be the greater availability of "women priests." Around here at least several women involved in Catholic ministry have been ordained by organizations who claim their orders descended from legitimate Catholic bishops. Most of these have set up house churches or meet in Protestant churches but one bought a former Byzantine Church and has a larger community but virtual and physical. These are probably far more attractive for people who want to live on the edge of the Church than seeking the services of old former Catholic priests.
CORPUS was the product or a particular time and place. Many Catholics thought that the Church would evolve to include married and women priests. When many priests, religious and laity decided that was not going to happen they left and found one another.
Finally, CORPUS never attracted any bishops who were willing to consecrate other bishops as was the case with the people who left over the Latin Mass. If that had happened, it might have been a very different ballgame. I think there are former bishops who have quietly lived with women after their retirement, but they have not been very public about it.
I agree that priests who have served for a number of years deserve help from the church in transitioning to lay life if they have decided they no longer want to be active priests.
ReplyDeleteI think women religious in general did a better job of helping members who no longer wanted to be nuns transition out. It seems like a lot of former nuns remain in contact with the orders they were members of.
I have read that it could be kind of a sticky wicket in the past to be released from solemn vows, as opposed to simple vows. But I think some of them just "quiet quit".
"His take was, if the man had given 20 years of his life to the priesthood, then the institutional church, as well as the communities he served, should thank him profusely for his years of faithful service."
ReplyDeleteOrdination and marriage are both sacraments. Most women I know who have been married 20 years to a guy who decides he's a "different person" now and wants a divorce are not going to thank him for his years of service and offer him a soft landing. Possibly this explains the Church's harshness.
One solution, of course, is to get rid of the rule of celibacy.
Another is to allow priests to "stray" occasionally, which seems to have happened with brothers of my Catholic girlfriends who became priests. At least three that I know of had affairs with one or more women, but made it clear to their partners that they would never leave the priesthood. I don't know the details, but I presume they made a full confession, did penance, and that was that.
Andrew Greeley once proposed another solution, that priestly vows could last 10 or 15 years with renewals periodically.
I don't hear that priests leaving are a big problem any more. I presume the JP2 generation, unlike the Vat2 priests in the 1960s, have no expectation that celibacy would be lifted and are better equipped for it.
I think I remember Greeley using the term “ Priest Corps” for his proposal. Greeley was a prickly character. I miss him. He spiced up the Church scene.
DeleteI read one of his mystery novels during a hospitalization cuz that was pretty much all they had besides Christian romance. He wasn't no Graham Greene and had a penchant for pale Irish heroines in push-up bras, but it kept me from climbing the walls, so thank you, Fr Greeley.
DeleteYears ago the parish we attended had a great young priest. He left - after years of struggle apparently - his turning 40 mid- life crisis. He finally gave up the struggle between the priesthood, and his wish for marriage and family life. He wanted both. I think that the arrival of a new, older priest in the parish was the final shove. The new priest was married with three adult children, and a few grandkids. Of course he was a convert - a priest coming from the EC that couldn’t abide the opening of the priesthood to women. A married man with a family, fast tracked as a Catholic priest while thousands of men left the Catholic priesthood. The younger priest who left was a great priest. Sadly, that as around the time when the new uber- conservative would be priests were going to seminary, who are now driving progressive Catholics from the pews.
DeleteMy priest friend who lived in the DR for 14 years said that in Latin America many Catholic priests had wives, and kids. This didn’t bother the people of their parishes because they considered celibacy to be un- natural and are less legalistic in general than their North American counterparts.
About the new priests, they're a mixed lot. Pretty much like they've always been. I can really only speak of the young priests and seminarians I know. Which have been several. One is the oldest of two kids, always loved music. Learned Spanish, they all have to be bilingual now. He serves in a large parish, with a lot of people who work in a packing plant. Another one is middle aged now, because he didn't start formation until in his 30s and had a career as civil engineer. One seminarian from our parish has two years left to go, his diaconal ordination is next spring. He has wanted to be a priest since 9th grade. Unfortunately his dad died under tragic circumstances a few years back and didn't live to see his son ordained. Another young man who just graduated high school is entering undergraduate seminary this fall. He is a middle kid of about ten kids, and was homeschooled through grade school. No they're not Latin Mass family, just an ordinary big farm family that was more common in the past. His parents both have college degrees. The kid is a nice helpful boy who knows how to do a lot of stuff. If the parish needs something fixed, he is there. He is also musically talented.
DeleteMy point is that we don't know them until we know them. I've known some "pain in the patoot" priests, but they are older than these guys. I think the diocese is doing better at vetting candidates now because they kind of learned the hard way about accepting every warm body.
About the ones in Latin America who have a wife (she would be common law and not legally married )and kids, it's certainly not healthy for the wife and kids. Because though people might know about them, they are in the shadows.
DeleteThanks, Katherine. I expect deacons and wives know a much broader cross section of newer priests than I do. Neither Raber nor I will ever be Catholic enough to understand the celibacy requirements. In my view, a wife would have been great for one of the local parish's old priests who was in poor health and for the current one who is an egomaniac who acts like women are some whole other species and keeps them off EM, lector, and altar server duty. The other two guys up there were happy bachelors, and I miss them.
DeleteCould any mentally healthy woman stand to be married to an egomaniac like that? You can't cure them, that's hard wired.
DeleteI couldn't stand him, but I've always assumed other women had way more patience with male egos than me.
DeleteKatherine, you obviously have a lot more experience with priests than I do. In the parishes I’ve belonged to in my life there was always a group of priest groupies - women who took care of “Father”, had him o er for dinner regularly, treated him to a nice restaurant now and then, who hung on to every word as if it was Jesus himself talking. I was active in certain ministries - Mothers of Young Children, the children’s liturgy of the word, and later Social justice ministries, especially the twinning relationship with the poor parish in the Dominican Republic. I was active enough that in our parish of four thousand families (registered) the priests knew my name and my volunteer activities. But I was never a groupie and didn’t know these men as people - so I went by their homilies, their staff decisions, their handling of staff they wanted to get rid of, etc. One pastor who had a lot of old women fans was especially nasty to staff he didn’t like, but his cherubic smiling demeanor fooled most of the parishioners. I was enough on the inside to be aware of these things. I was close - friends- to the priest who taught my theology class when I was a 19 year old student in Paris, and with the American pastor of our twin parish in the Dominican Republic starting around 1996. Sadly he died several years ago,
DeleteI remember once speaking to a newly ordained young priest after mass because I found his homily less than inspiring - he was condescending, apparently so convinced of his clerical ontological superiority that he assumed he knew “ more” about prayer, spirituality, faith, life etc than the inferior laypeople in the pews. But I was very respectful, thanked him for being there, and then as diplomatically as possible, told him how he seemed to belittle the lay people. The shock on his face would have been worth a photo, but this was before cellphones. To give him credit, he mumbled an apology, said he hadn’t realized how he sounded, and said he would try to do better. He was quickly moved to another parish ( priest shortage) but I’m hoping he matured into a “ good” priest and not a petty tyrant like Jeans pastor.
According to my priest friend in the DR ( we stayed in touch for years) the common law wives and families of the priests in Latin America did not stay in the shadows because the situation was considered to be a healthier lifestyle for the priests than celibacy. They liked the priests having families. He also said that one of the attractions of the evangelicals who came to these countries seeking converts ( successfully according to the data on how many Catholics have left in Latin America) was that they are usually married, with families, and that they could relate better to family issues than the celibate priests. And, of course , the wives provided parish support services - as is true with most wives of Protestant ministers. Unofficial, Unpaid extra help.
Just my opinion, if they don't think they can be celibate, they don't need to be priests. If the evangelical model seems more natural for them, then be an evangelical. Don't make promises you don't intend to keep, and don't live a lie.
DeleteI get the impression that the present pope served for decades in South America and kept his vows as an Augustinian order priest.
Pope Leo was not a native of the culture. My friend in the DR was American - Polish American. But he was ok with those who strayed, mostly indigenous priests. I’m confident that he kept his vows. But he didn’t report “ irregular” situations he learned of. .I’m guessing Pope Leo looked the other way too more than once.
DeleteFinding priests for the geographically huge rural, extremely poor parishes is very challenging. My priest friends’s parish in the DR had 30,000 parishioners, scattered around multiple mountain villages, many reachable only by horse, mule or climbing on foot. Before a second priest was found for part of the region he served, he had 60,000 parishioners.
It would be hard to be evangelical if you don’t buy into their theology. These priests have Catholic roots, Catholic “imagination”, and would not become evangelical just because they don’t mandate celibacy. The Latin American bishops wanted Francis to ok married priests but it’s one step he wouldn’t take, unfortunately .
According to the studies I’ve read, around 50% of priests violate their vows in some way at any given moment - not only affairs (with men or women), but including addiction to pornography, especially child porn, and masturbation. As I recall, JPII had to close a huge seminary in Austria because of the extent of usage of child porn downloaded to the computers, and the many affairs among seminarians and the priests there. The RCC is, unfortunately, a haven for some with aberrant sexual preferences. Celibacy does not ensure chastity.
I would rather have married priests in normal , healthy love/sexual relationships ( straight or gay) than so many priests trying to keep to their vows, and failing.
"I would rather have married priests in normal , healthy love/sexual relationships ( straight or gay) than so many priests trying to keep to their vows, and failing."
DeleteIt's worth noting that CORPUS was for priests who were ordained as single men and then left the priesthood, presumably to get married. Even if married priests were permitted in Roman Catholicsm (as they were at one time, 1,000+ years ago), the priest would need to be married at the time of his ordination. As I understand it, that is how it is in Orthodoxy - and that's how it is today in Roman Catholicsm with the diaconate.
I hadn't heard that before about Latin Americans being comfortable with priests who don't abide by their vows of chastity. I have read that African some cultures struggle with the celibacy requirement. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that some priests are able to leverage culture to be able to keep a woman (or more than one) on the side.
"...maybe it's more accurate to say that some priests are able to leverage culture to be able to keep a woman..." I'd say that is very likely accurate.
DeleteAbout Andrew Greeley, mixed feelings. I read quite a few of his books and enjoyed them. But I get the idea that he was pretty impressed with himself.
ReplyDeleteSome books of his that I liked, The God Game, Irish Gold, and The Angel of September. Irish Gold had a lot about Ireland and the emmigation experience. The Angels of September was about a survivor of the Our Lady of the Angels school fire that killed so many in the 1950s. I guess I was more interested in history than some of his steamy sex scenes. I understand that sells books, but it seems like dreaming all that stuff up would just have made it harder for him to honor his vows. And yeah he did get a lot of things wrong about women and sex. Another book of his that was a page turned but flawed was Virgin and Martyr. No amount of good and caring sex by a loving partner is going to heal being gang raped. I'm not actually sure what would.
I liked The Catholic Imagination (nonfiction). He articulated some ideas that keep me connected to the elements of Catholicism I have always admired. I think many of them are antiquated now. Some guy with an MBA writes a column about bringing Catholic values for managers in the diocesan rag. Pretty much how to accommodate your faith to being a corporate puke.
DeleteI confess to not reading Greeley. The idea of sex scenes written by a celibate priest was definitely not a draw. I always found Stephen King’s sex scenes to be gratuitous and clunky but I guess they worked for him. If those turned me off, I don’t know how I could take Greeley’s fiction. As for the guy with the MBA, the wedding of official Catholicism and neoliberalism is a real maggot gagger. That made me cancel my “First Things” subscription.
DeleteI read a few Greeley novels, but they never grabbed me. His depictions of women and sex and marriage were also too remote from reality to be interesting. I found those aspects of his stories to be annoying. The inside the Vatican or Chancery politics plots were more interesting to me. I did like some of his non- fiction books based on his research studies, but didn’t really relate to his stuff on the Catholic imagination and the “ stories” told by stained glass, statues, etc. I figured that was because I didn’t relate to his ethnic, Catholic parish settings since I never experienced those. Not in my part of California- no Polish, Irish, Italian etc parishes, just a big mix and no particular cultural aspects. But neither did Jean experience these things, and Greeley’s writings on those subjects did interest her.
DeleteI don’t like grisly fiction. One Steven King novel was enough for me. Never finished it.
LOL, Anne, I wasn't a Stephen King fan either. My mother in law passed along The Shining to me because she "...didn't want it in her house." (Thanks a lot!). I read it but it was too creepy. I passed it along to my son's friend who "just loved" Stephen King. The next one I read was Cujo. That finished Stephen King for me, just a hard "nope".
DeleteI like King, largely because he taps into the schizophrenia of American culture and faith--the helpful and good are always assailed by the violent and machismo. Sometimes both in the same person. Some of his pulpy novels written as Robert Bachman are better than his blockbusters. But that's just me.
DeleteI read one Greeley novel, a long time ago. Didn't love it for the reasons mentioned here. Plus, he was a little melodramatic. As a general rule, "Catholic writers" don't really appeal to me for some reason.
DeleteNever read King.
I did just finish an excellent mystery, The Long and Faraway Gone by Lou Berney. I recommend it. Now I'm starting to tackle a biography of James Madison.
I watched King movies. I was then curious as to how closely the movies followed the books and got into reading him. I like the baby boomer nostalgia in the books. He has human and non-human monsters in his books. I only ever encountered the human kind. Violence and gore doesn't put me off, I must admit. But cringeworthy stuff does, like someone embarrassing themselves in public. Or ignorant unreflective racism. It's like fingernails on a chalkboard. My biggest problem with King now is that he's a cheerleader for the Democratic Party, which has, let's face it, been a 100% genocide supporter, bombs and all.
DeleteLou Berney's book looks interesting. I go thru crime fiction in spurts, usually around Christmastime. I will put it on my TBR list.
DeleteI'm on "Burntcoat," an interestingly layered novel about a sculptress that looks at the effects of illness and death on human relationships. I'm in the midsection that pivots around the protagonist's COVID isolation. It's not depressing (so far, anyway), but uniformly somber, which is getting a little tiresome.
I just audiobooked "All the Water in the World" by Eiren Caffall. I find myself more interested in climate change fiction now, "cli-fi", since I consider civilizational collapse due to climate change to be a more likely outcome than all the AI, interstellar flight and transhuman stuff. Chris Hedges' interview with Caffall is on YouTube. She relates climate change and denial of it to the hereditary kidney disease that she has and that has run in her family for a hundred years. A Netflix series "Families like Ours" covers the experience of some Danes as Denmark closes down and they become sea level rise refugees. One young Danish guy gets beaten nearly to death by Polish vigilantes. One series on Prime Video covered climate change in three time periods. I found it improbable that the technical progress would continue while everything else goes south. If you need lots of power for AI, I see it as being an early victim of climate collapse. But the tech bros will probably want to continue to power their liebstekind even if the rest of us have to suffer power blackouts. We'll see.
DeleteBased on his research, Andrew Greeley maintained that priests were among the happiest people in the world. They play highly respected key roles in lives of many people: birth, marriage, death.
ReplyDeleteFrom my own research in the mental health system, I found that therapists often focus on their successful cases and forget about the people who dropped out of therapy after a few sessions. I suspect most priests and college professors maintain their happiness by doing similar things.
From my observation of parish priests, they have their own fan clubs, even if they are loathed by many in the parish. Greeley maintained that the laity give priests a lot of undue adulation especially given the poor sermons and liturgies found in many parishes. In research done here in the Cleveland Diocese people gave parishes mediocre marks for liturgies, being a community and listening to the people. I suspect most pastoral staff think they listen to people in the parish because they can point out many occasions when they have been influenced by what the people thought. On the other hand most parish members can point out the many more occasions when they have not listened.
Greeley thought the sexual revolution was overrated. We did not go from life-long marriage to sexual liberty. We went to serial monogamy: monogamous premarital relationship followed by one or more monogamous marriages, and gay marriages.
Priests being unfaithful to their vows is not recent or limited to Latin America (and Africa), although more widespread there. In the parish my mother was raised, one of the priests fathered a child to his housekeeper. When she became pregnant, she went away supposedly to help a relative that became pregnant. She came back with the relative’s child. While there may have been suspicions early on, they were abundant when she grew up to be the image of her father. They priest continued to pastor until he died and was buried in the parish cemetery.
In the same town the local Episcopal pastor was a former Roman Catholic who left to be married.
One of the bishops involved in founding the National Shrine was widely understood to have had a relationship with a wealthy woman involved in founding the Shrine.
There is a group - a support group I suppose - for the children of priests based in Ireland.
Deletehttps://associationofcatholicpriests.ie/the-children-of-priests-coping-international/
I recall the scandal several years back when the handsome poster boy priest of the Legionaries of Christ - a public speaker often invited to discuss the need for traditional, conservative, sexual morality - was revealed to be the father of the child of the daughter of the conservative American Harvard Law professor, Mary Ann Glendon, who was Ambassador to the Vatican at one time and later an adviser to Pope Francis.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/religion/disgraced-priest-to-wed-pope-advisers-daughter/2155773/
When my husband and I were engaged, we had one pre- marriage session with the pastor, and two more with the young assistant priest. That was all that was required then. We contacted the church three months before the desired wedding date. No problem. Far fewer hoops to go through back then. ( I couldn’t believe what the son who married in the church 12 years ago had to go through). Years later an Episcopal priest, a woman, told me that she had presided over our young prenup priest’s marriage in the Episcopal church. I don’t know how long he stayed a Catholic priest before leaving to marry.
"Priests being unfaithful to their vows is not recent ..."
DeleteNobody can read Chaucer and not know that priests and other religious were playing fast and loose with their vows and that people, for the most part, saw it pretty clearly.
"There is nothing new under the sun."
DeleteHuman beings are fallen and weak. But it is a problem if clergy preach chastity and fidelity to one's state in life to "other people" and don't practice it themselves. The result is reverse evangelization.
I guess I can be pretty forgiving of a celibate man who, in the course of his life, "falls" to experience some kind of love and intimacy with another person. Knowing a priest has had an affair wouldn't drive me away from the Church as much as the hellfire and heresy dude up at the local parish right now.
DeleteYeah the hellfire and heresy would definitely turn me off too. I have said half joking that if the homilies got MAGA I would go to the Spanish language Mass in the other parish. I know enough Spanish that I could follow along with the prayers and responses in the missalette but I am not fluent enough to keep up with a homily. There are times when that would be a blessing.
DeleteJean, it wouldn’t drive me away either. But it would be better if celibacy for diocesan priests was voluntary. The religious orders could make their own rules on this. Just as few people truly understand what they are promising on their wedding days, a lot of priests and nuns don’t either when taking final vows. They do have one advantage - they have years of formation to test their vocation . Married people don’t. They have to take those vows without the years of testing the marriage. So in one sense, ordained priests have less excuse for breaking their vows than married people do. I know several couples with very successful marriages of decades whose first marriages didn’t last 3 years even. Perhaps that would be a reasonable time before married couples have to take final vows.
DeleteI have long suspected that there are two reasons for maintaining this failed practice besides a 1000 year tradition that mandates celibacy, promulgated partly because of wanting to ensure that a priest’s personal wealth (property etc) would go to the church upon his death. And not to a wife or children. It’s obviously not a necessary part of the vocation of priest, even under Rome. Not only are married men who were ordained clergy in Protestant denominations welcomed, the eastern Catholic Churches also have married priests, just like their Orthodox brethren in those countries. So why not in the western church, especially given the severe shortage of priests? Two possibilities ( I think both play a role) . One is financial - a priest with a family needs to earn more money than a single man. They have a family to be fed, clothed and housed, bigger health insurance costs, pediatricians, school fees, orthodonture for the kids with buck teeth, etc, etc, etc. and generally they could not share a home with other priests. Of course these days, many priests live alone because there are no other priests in the parish, so maybe in some parishes the priest and his family could live in the priest’s house. Financial considerations are one clue for understanding the perpetuation of mandatory celibacy. The church would rather deal with the scandal of a priest’s affair ( transfer him - quickly!) than shell out the cash needed to support married priests with families. Of course a married priest might have an affair also, just as other married people do sometimes. Divorce? Another embarrassing possibility. So, no married priests. Let the unpaid deacons and the unpaid church ladies do a lot of the heavy lifting if there are too few priests.
The other problem is that married priests would have to deal with the real life problems of the ban on modern birth control. NFP is not very reliable in “real” life ( as opposed to the theoretical ideal use). It presents additional stress on most marriages and married priests would know this. They would also know that there is nothing natural about “ natural” family planning. It requires daily mucus readings by the woman (not at all a natural habit for most women), daily temperature readings using a man- made (not natural) device, and extensive periods of abstinence, essentially turning love- making into a mechanical by- the- thermometer-reading schedule of having sex that doesn’t really support the natural rhythms of marital lovemaking, damaging the unitive role of marital relations. Besides, to be blunt, the church still thinks sex is somewhat “dirty”, so virginity is prized. Blessed Mary ever virgin - in spite of the several scripture references to the children she had after Jesus’s birth (twisting the translations to turn those children into cousins of Jesus is more than a bit far- fetched). If Mary and Joseph had consummated their marriage, then Mary would no longer be “pure”. (They would also qualify for a quick annulment these days if the marriage wasn’t consummated .)
DeleteSo what would these married priests do? Continue to hand out penances to the over scrupulous who confess to using birth control, and feeling a lot of guilt because they also use it? Or submit their own marital well being to the stressful, not terribly reliable practice of NFP and end up with more kids than the priest and his wife can afford, or have the stamina to care for?
I expect lifelong Catholics have a better sense than me of what celibacy means in the context of Christian life and priestly vocation. I don't get it, but I assume that celibacy can be both a gift from and path to a deeper love of God. If it becomes a burden and a fetish for some individuals, time to rethink the path they're on, even if it doesn't mean throwing out teaching and tradition.
DeleteI have no idea whether Church marriage lessons are helpful. Friends who went thru pre-Cana said they were helpful but that they dragged on. We did OK without it. Coming up on 41 years next week.
One reason I didn't use hormonal birth control was that I was afraid it would give me cancer. So I ended up getting it anyway late in life. But I think that had more to do with hormonal imbalance post menopause than anything else. I still would have been reluctant to alter my body chemistry when things were working okay.
DeleteEach woman has to consider her own situation. That’s the point - one size does not fit all women or couples.
DeleteThe pill is not the only possibility. I too was afraid of breast cancer, stopped the pill at 40 because of that worry, but continued to use other methods. The idea of having another baby - in my 40s - terrified me ( I knew several women who had that happen). I did get cancer at age 74. My eldest sister who did not ever take the pill got it too - the bad kind, not the ‘ easy” to treat kind that I had, so she had the whole works, including chemo that caused permanent neuropathy and damaged her heart.
I was far more afraid of an unwanted pregnancy than I was of the possibility of breast cancer. Millions of women got breast cancer before the pill was invented, so who knows for sure what causes any of our cancers.
The data show that after age 35, the most commonly used method is permanent sterilization for one of the couple. But there are IUDs, condoms, spermicides, long lasting hormone injections,, diaphragms etc. Rhythm ( calendar method) and NFP combined are used by less than 5% of the population.
NFP is more helpful I think for those who are trying to get pregnant than for those trying to prevent pregnancy.
But the clerics are not in a position to decide the right family planning methods for couples. It’s rightfully each couple’s own decision to make. This was the recommendation of the BirthControl Commission by an overwhelming majority vote. Sadly Paul VI was too afraid of the powerful men in the Curia to rock the boat. As I recall, Greeley thought that HV was a prime motivator for the beginning of the exodus from the church - that many Catholics figured that since these men who were totally clueless about marriage and family were defining a doctrine that made no sense to them, they couldn’t be trusted to be right about other teachings either.
Summary of Greeley by AI
“Following the 1968 Humanae Vitae encyclical, Greeley became a strong critic. He argued that the encyclical was a major factor in the decline of Mass attendance and increased questioning of Church authority.
Greeley's Argument:
He believed that the encyclical was out of touch with the lived experiences of Catholics, who increasingly viewed sex in marriage as a source of joy and grace, not just procreation. “
Joy and grace - yes grace. The celibates in Rome didn’t get it.
I agree that every woman has to decide for herself about these things. And HV certainly didn't help the decline in church attendance. However mainline Protestant churches which had no contraception prohibition experienced a similar decline in the same time frame. So I think there were a number of contributing factors, things going on in society, as well as HV.
DeleteYes - a whole lot of different stuff converged in the late 60s. So it’s hard to sort out the weights of the various influences.
DeleteIs there an established link or correlation between the Pill and cancer?
DeleteI think women (and couples) always have been free to choose. But there are moral implications to our choices.
I don't know what conversations go on between women and their pastors. Quite a few of the priests I've known, I think would be more likely to turn a blind eye to artificial birth control, rather than preach damnation to women who use it. Being married helps one appreciate the compexity of the decision, but it's not a requirement to be married to see that it's difficult. I think a lot of priests have the requisite empathy.
... and a lot of priests don't have empathy.
DeleteSome cancers are "fed" on hormones. That is, the Pill may not cause the mutations that cause the cancer, but it may make some cancers worse. The Pill can exacerbate pre-existing conditions like hypertension or tendency to blood clots. The Pill can also affect everything from libido to menstrual flow. Like everything else risk increases with age. A lot of how the Pill affects individual women has to do with their own baseline hormonal levels.
I am adamantly opposed to making BC pills OTC for anybody under 18 for that reason. But lots of Catholics are pushing for OTC Pills because they want to put Planned Parenthood out of biz.
“But lots of Catholics are pushing for OTC Pills because they want to put Planned Parenthood out of biz.” lol! Talk about hypocrisy!
DeleteI don’t think they should be OTC either for minors. Just as I don’t think trans minors should get hormones. No long term studies are available yet so it’s pretty high risk right now, especially for fast growing, young bodies. If trans adults want them then they can do their own health risk analyses. .
The pill’s risks early on were higher ( mostly an increased risk of stroke) and the formula was quickly changed. Hormones can cause long term increased risks for cancer issues. But the highest risk for women was from the hormones prescribed for menopause. So I never took those. My sister never took the birth control pill ( I don’t know about other hormones) and she got triple negative breast cancer - the worst kind. I got non- aggressive, slow growing breast cancer. Was it the pill? Maybe. But it could have been chemicals in the food supply or something else. There are also cancer risks from the hormones and chemicals in our food supply ( one reason the EU bans a lot of food imports from the US) so I started buying organic as much as possible, and free range meat. I will never know if the pill caused my cancer.. The risk was worth it to me though.
Both of my parents smoked all their lives from teenage
years on. Neither of them got lung cancer. My dad was a chain (3 packs/ day) eventually got COPD in his 70s. My mom was a light smoker - about 1/2 pack a day. She did not get emphysema like my dad did. All meds can cause issues, so professional health risk guidance is needed for elective meds. I chose to take the pill - balancing the risks of pregnancy/childbirth mortality (which I researched extensively and are greater than those of the pill) and the potential stress on the marriage from NFP, and the pill came out as the best option for us - until I was 40, when risks rise slightly. I guess I was lucky because I never had any side effects from the pill - just enormous relief that an unwanted pregnancy was unlikely. After I was 40, we used a different method.
After studying the church teaching in depth I not only had no moral qualms for myself, I came to believe that the ban is immoral - that it’s a serious institutional sin.
I have a trans niece, and calling for a ban on hormonal therapy for trans teenagers is way above my pay grade. That's for a doctor and parents to determine. Not you, not me, not the Pope, and not Donald Trump.
DeleteI don’t agree, because the long- term health consequences of these interventions on growth bodies aren’t known yet. But my opinion is unimportant. We don’t sell allow cigarettes to be sold ( legally) to under- 18s. I suppose parents might buy them for their kids in spite of the well- known health risks, but I suppose some don’t worry about these things as much as I do.
DeleteIt seems that most European countries allow various interventions for trans teens, at different ages, with parental permission, but several are now taking a more conservative stance than previously because of the health danger uncertainties.
Deletehttps://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2023-07-12/why-european-countries-are-rethinking-gender-affirming-care-for-minors
I get your concern for health risks and I share them, but those have to be weighed against mental health risks of denying hormone therapy across the board for everybody under 18. These situations come with complicated physiological and mental health variables.
DeleteIt’s a complicated issue, no doubt.
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