Posted on 06/13/2003 8:11:29 PM PDT by sinkspur
If God is love and the Catholic Church is about bringing people closer to God, why is it bad for a priest to fall in love?
The continuing child abuse scandal in the church leaves many Catholics asking why devoted priests who want healthy relationships with other adults must leave the priesthood while those who abuse kids get to stay.
In 28 years as a priest in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, leaving never occurred to Bill Proud -- until he met a woman named Pat. He recalls the saying, "True love is friendship that caught on fire."
"That's what happened to me," he says.
Falling in love forced Proud to make a very difficult decision. Ordained in 1965, he had survived the tumultuous 1960s and '70s, when many men left the Catholic priesthood.
"I was very happy as a priest," he says. "I enjoyed every minute of it."
At first, Proud and Pat were friends. After a time of discernment, he realized he loved her.
"At some point you know that it's moved beyond friends," he says.
They considered remaining friends or even waiting until he retired to be together.
"At that point it's when I really had to face what is it that I really want -- and I wanted to be with her," he says. "The biggest thing I had to deal with is I didn't want to hurt people."
'This good old boy club' Proud served as a parish priest in Kenwood for eight years before leaving in 1993. Parishioners were very supportive, he says.
"I probably got approximately 300 notes, letters and cards," he says. "Out of that 300, 295 of them were very positive."
The Catholic Telegraph, the official publication of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, ran some letters from people who supported Proud's choice. Others expressed disappointment.
"I had a few messages that people were going to pray that I wouldn't burn in hell for all eternity," he says.
Proud was concerned about letting down his family.
"I was the only priest in the family, a German-Irish, Catholic family," he says.
He called his sister -- "a good Catholic," he says -- and said he needed to speak with her, but not on the phone. When he arrived and told her his decision, she started crying. She feared he was visiting to announce he had cancer.
Proud says his family supported his decision. He and Pat were barred, however, from marrying in a Catholic church, because he'd left the priesthood without getting permission -- a process called "laicization." Back then, he says, the Vatican wasn't granting such permission -- and it rarely does still.
A liberal Baptist minister with whom Proud served as a chaplain in the Army Reserves agreed to marry the couple in the ceremony they wanted. The wedding was at the Withrow Nature Preserve in Anderson Township.
Proud, who left the priesthood with a master's degree in counseling, does corporate training for Concern: Employee Assistance Program.
"When I was a priest, people felt like they had to come and say something spiritual or (about) the Bible," he says.
But the problems people approached him with when he was a priest are the same he deals with as a counselor.
Proud says he wouldn't return to the priesthood now even if allowed, because at age 63 he's close to retirement. The hardest part about leaving the priesthood was making the decision, he says.
"The difficulty was well before I made the decision to leave," he says. "Going from the priesthood to husband to stepdad to now step-granddad was pretty easy. It was fun. It was an adventure."
Proud and his wife are members of Good Shepherd Parish in Montgomery. "People will often say, 'You left the church,' and I say, 'No, no, I never left the church. I left the priesthood.' "
He still goes skiing with friends who are priests, trips he's taken for the past 20 years. He says the priests at his church couldn't be nicer.
Nearly 10 years after leaving the priesthood, Proud still is licensed by the state to officiate at weddings. Many times the couples he marries have Catholic roots but the church has denied them annulments from previous marriages or their hearts are set on outdoor weddings, which their parishes won't allow.
Allowing priests to be married wouldn't solve all the church's problems, Proud says; but he believes it would attract more people to the priesthood. He also believes women should be ordained.
"I think women have so much to offer," he says. "It would break down this good old boy club, and it just has to happen."
'They're so out of touch' It's not only former church professionals who believe priests should be allowed to marry. So does a woman serving as a pastoral associate in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Speaking on condition of anonymity, she says most Catholic parishioners would agree.
"The way the people think is so far from what the hierarchy thinks," she says. "They're so out of touch."
The pastoral associate believes many men who left the priesthood to get married feel they can't contribute to the church's ministry anymore -- especially those who, like Proud, left without being laicized. An additional loss is the effort and cost the church put into educating and training them.
"That's an injustice to all those people who make contributions to the church," she says.
She rejects some of the reasons given for mandatory celibacy, including practical questions such as housing priests' families. There are empty rectories within the archdiocese that could house two or three families each, she says.
The pastoral associate says ending mandatory celibacy would benefit the church, because priests' wives and children would get involved. Ministry isn't something that you can do as a job separate from your family, she says.
"If we had married priests, we'd probably get their whole family to minister in the church for the price of one priest," she says.
As it is, men who leave the priesthood to get married often move away, leaving people they've ministered to for years.
"I think most priests who leave don't stay in their same parish and often time they don't stay in the same city," the pastoral associate says. "I don't think (the parishioners) blame the priest. If they're looking to blame anybody, they blame the system that drove the priest away."
The problem isn't celibacy, the pastoral associate says. The problem is mandatory celibacy.
"I don't have any problem with celibacy if someone is called to that, but a lot of people aren't," she says.
Having other priests leave affects those who remain in the clergy.
"It doesn't do much for the morale of the priests who stayed," she says. "It probably affects them as much or more as it would the parishioners."
A priest forever The irony is that not all priests have to be celibate. The Rev. Gregory Lockwood is a Catholic priest who's married and has five children. He currently is pastor of St. Vincent de Paul Church in Riverside.
Lockwood was a married Lutheran minister when he converted to Catholicism. Although married, he was allowed to become a priest because, raised outside the church, there was no expectation of celibacy, he says. The Vatican determined he had a vocation and approved his ordination.
Converting to Catholicism wasn't the first conversion in his life. A nuclear engineer in the U.S. Navy, Lockwood didn't believe in God until he was 22. His wife was a lifelong Catholic.
"I was an atheist at the time, loudly complaining about all the kneeling," he says of their wedding.
He was 400 feet under the North Atlantic, serving on a submarine, when he changed.
"I came to a point in my life where I realized my biggest flaw (was) my lack of faith," he says.
Although Lockwood is living proof that married men can serve as Catholic priests, he doesn't believe removing the celibacy rule would lead more people into the priesthood.
"The priesthood has always been a sacrificial kind of giving institution," he says. "If you put up one barrier to the call of service and that barrier is removed, there's probably going to be another one."
Being a priest isn't a job with high prestige or high pay, according to Lockwood. He says a call from God is unconditional.
"We live in a very self-indulgent culture," he says. "The call to church service is a radical thing."
After Vatican II -- the church council that modernized the Catholic Church -- many men in the seminary came to believe a lot more would change, including celibacy, according to Lockwood.
"They were ordained thinking things were going to change," he says.
The result is many disappointed middle-aged priests, which is hardly good for business.
"I have folks that come to the parish down here, and it's because I'm happy," he says.
Lockwood knows the priesthood isn't a popular profession now.
"It used to be that having a son in the seminary was a mark of honor for the family," Lockwood says. "Now they try to talk them out of it."
Irish, Italian and German Catholics are no longer ghettoized, he says, and they often want their children to accomplish what the mainstream considers success.
"That's what I hear from my parishioners: 'We're glad you're a priest, Father. But we wouldn't wish it on our own kids,' " Lockwood says.
When he taught in a seminary in St. Louis, his wife spent a great deal of time talking with students about the difficulties of being a priest and having a family. The hours required of a priest often make it hard to participate in family activities. For example, Lockwood says, his daughter plays select soccer, and he hasn't been able to see any of her out-of-town tournaments in three years.
Meanwhile, the counselor and grandfather formerly known as the Rev. William Proud, who left the priesthood to find love and family, still encounters affection and respect for what he used to do.
"I get a lot of people still call me 'Father,' " he says.
At an outdoor wedding he performed for a bride and groom from large Catholic families, the bride's father offered a toast for "Father Bill and his lovely wife, Pat."
"In his mind, I was Father Bill," Proud says. "Theologically it's true -- you're a priest forever."
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Guess who replaced him? You got it. A married priest, a convert from the Episcopal Church.
I made a decision to leave; it was my choice because I didn't feel I was mature enough to commit to celibacy. I "fell in love" with three women during my final two years in the seminary (they didn't know it), and I didn't trust myself not to keep repeating this experience. It was childish, I know, but my spiritual director actually laughed at me for asking him how to deal with these "crushes." I suspect he didn't know.
There's a bit of resentment, yes, that the Church is accepting married Protestants into the priesthood, but just can't seem to bring itself to welcome married Catholics.
I look around and see some of the men recently ordained, and think "Well, it's the Church's loss" that men like me can't serve. We've got one associate who tosses candy to kids during his sermons; the other associate has to read every word of his homilies because English is his second language.
The best preacher we've had in our parish was a married Episcopalian who raised the roof with his homilies and was one of the best confessors I've ever approached.
But, hey, it's just me talking here. Most on Free Republic think I'm a nutty liberal because I'm comfortable with the Novus Ordo (done properly), and because I'm of the opinion that it makes no sense to accept married Protestants into the priesthood while married Catholics have to accept the diaconate.
But married men as priests in the Latin Rite?
There's no reason to keep the door closed to those married Catholic men who feel called (start with the 15,000 married deacons).
It's a matter of gifting; maybe the "crushes" were the Lord telling me I didn't have the gift.
OTOH, I'm still pulled in that direction, and have been all these years.
Maybe I was called to celibacy, but just wasn't mature enough to accept it, or didn't have the courage to accept it.
After 26 years of marriage and two kids, however, I'm pretty comfortable as a married man.
Celibacy is wonderful for those men called to it, and I know some priests for whom it is a fit. For others, their lives are a constant struggle. I've had priest friends of mine tell me they were envious when they've come to our home. Of course, some always think life's greener somewhere else.
I'm where I'm supposed to be, but I could give a lot more than the Church is allowing me to, at the present time.
Translation" they think of themselves as Americans first, and Catholics second.
Proud says his family supported his decision. He and Pat were barred, however, from marrying in a Catholic church, because he'd left the priesthood without getting permission -- a process called "laicization." Back then, he says, the Vatican wasn't granting such permission -- and it rarely does still.
How terrible. A whole family wallowing in sin and hatred for God and Holy Church because of this man's inability to keep his vows. If he wasn't married in the Catholic Church, he wasn't married, period. He's simply a fornicator and an adulterer against Holy Church, who he married with his vows.
A liberal Baptist minister with whom Proud served as a chaplain in the Army Reserves agreed to marry the couple in the ceremony they wanted. The wedding was at the Withrow Nature Preserve in Anderson Township.
Isn't that special!
"The difficulty was well before I made the decision to leave," he says. "Going from the priesthood to husband to stepdad to now step-granddad was pretty easy. It was fun. It was an adventure."
Did he marry a divorcee to top it all off? What a way to go!
Proud and his wife are members of Good Shepherd Parish in Montgomery. "People will often say, 'You left the church,' and I say, 'No, no, I never left the church. I left the priesthood.' "
No, so-called "Father", you left Holy Church as surely as a husband who deserts his family for a prostitute or adultress leaves his marital vows and home and wife. You are a schismatic who leads other Catholics astray by pretending to officiate at weddings as if they are blessed by the Catholic Church.
"That's an injustice to all those people who make contributions to the church," she says.
No lady, its an injustice for the men to leave and break their solemn vows to God. The education was paid for by Catholics with the expectation that the promises he made would be kept. If he didn't want to keep them, he should never have allowed himself to be ordained. And having broken one vow, he certainly cannot be trusted to take another. This is why he cannot legitmately marry.
The pastoral associate says ending mandatory celibacy would benefit the church, because priests' wives and children would get involved. Ministry isn't something that you can do as a job separate from your family, she says.
"If we had married priests, we'd probably get their whole family to minister in the church for the price of one priest," she says.
Ahh! They could all say Mass together around the altar! Wouldn't that be special!
As it is, men who leave the priesthood to get married often move away, leaving people they've ministered to for years.
They should, seeing as they are open sinners.
"I think most priests who leave don't stay in their same parish and often time they don't stay in the same city," the pastoral associate says. "I don't think (the parishioners) blame the priest. If they're looking to blame anybody, they blame the system that drove the priest away."
The only thing which drove the priest away were his sinful desires because of his uncontrolled lust and unbridled contempt for religion and vows.
Although Lockwood is living proof that married men can serve as Catholic priests, he doesn't believe removing the celibacy rule would lead more people into the priesthood.
Of course married men can be priests. But priests cannot marry. That has never been allowed, and is probably of divine law. All this agitation to let these traitors to Christ and Holy Church back in our midst!
The result is many disappointed middle-aged priests, which is hardly good for business.
Self-delusion can be powerful.
"It used to be that having a son in the seminary was a mark of honor for the family," Lockwood says. "Now they try to talk them out of it."
"That's what I hear from my parishioners: 'We're glad you're a priest, Father. But we wouldn't wish it on our own kids,' " Lockwood says.
Here in a nutshell is the problem of birth control and hypocrites and the priest shortage. These "Catholics" deserve to have all their priests die out. I hope these "Catholics" die of apoplexy one day, because their only choice to receive the sacraments is from a Latin mass group, like the FSSP, or better yet, the SSPX.
At an outdoor wedding he performed for a bride and groom from large Catholic families, the bride's father offered a toast for "Father Bill and his lovely wife, Pat."
How amusing. It wasn't a wedding, he's not "Father Bill", the families were no longer Catholic because of this act, and Pat is not his wife, however much he and the relatives wishes it were otherwise.
"In his mind, I was Father Bill," Proud says. "Theologically it's true -- you're a priest forever."
Only by the sacramental character now staining your soul to your eternal detriment, you evil hypocrite so-called "Fr." Bill. Holy Church has deprived you of all our priestly powers though, as just punishment for your sins.
It's a way to weasel around the celibacy law.
Catholics are absolutely bound to it, but men who didn't believe in God at the age of 22 can later find themselves in the priesthood, preaching to lifelong Catholics who feel called to the priesthood, but the Church tells them they aren't.
It's nuts.
Fine. Bar priests from marriage, but it's bizarre to keep Catholic married men out of the priesthood when the Vatican is accepting every liturgical Protestant minister convert into Holy Orders.
Switching Rites is a tough thing to do; Paul Weyrich spent years switching to an Eastern Rite, where he serves as a deacon.
He may be. But, marriage is not the issue, is it? We've got married Protestants jumping the fence and being ordained Catholic priests, but Catholic priests can't contract the sacrament of Matrimony.
Marriage is not enemical to the priesthood, obviously, if the Church is accepting married Protestants into it.
It's the tradition of not allowing priests to marry that's the problem.
So be it. What's stopping Rome from allowing some of the 15,000 married deacons from advancing to the priesthood? They're all mature men, and, by most accounts, are a credit to the Church.
I do. But, it bothers me more than a little, Steve- if you'll forgive my bluntness-- that you could convert and be a priest, and I can't be, unless my wife dies.
Sinky, I hope you are not in favor of his guy ever being allowed to be a priest again either. He and the rest of that crowd are rebels and traitors. The Church has never allowed Priests to marry, and this distinction is clearly seen in Canon Law. Canon 1041.2 declares Clerics who attempt Marriage to be "irregular" for further orders, aside from the fact that they receive a latae sententiae suspension courtesy of Canon 1394.1, Canon 1087 simply states their attempted marriages are invalid, and Canon 1079.1 makes clear that their crime makes them "vitandi" and not "tolerandi" since even in danger of death, their Bishop cannot absolve them of their crime; while Canon 1042.1 says married men are "simply impeded", which means that they can be ordained with a dispensation.
Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with ordaining men already married to the priesthood, provided they have only been married once and understand that they can never marry again. However, I don't see the Latin Rite breaking off from 1700+ years of tradition here in requiring celibacy of the clergy, married or not. Would you want a clergy where the men may have been married prior to ordination, but must live celibately afterwards?
I thought there were certain conditions regarding this -- it's just a blank check for married priests of any denomination of Protestantism?
That's not what I said. I have no problem with converts, such as myself, becoming Priests, provided the canons regarding the ordination of neophytes are observed. I have a big problem with hypocrites like so-called "Fr." Bill attempting marriage after ordination. That's a big no-no, and appears to me to be contrary to divine law. The only way around this is to have the Holy See strip the person of the clerical status and dignity.
As far as the ordination of married Catholics, this is a matter of long-standing discipline in the Latin Rite. I don't see any reason to overturn it at this time, but wouldn't have a conniption if it was, provided the man had only been married once.
Did you know that for every sin we commit, even though we have forgiveness, we will have to be expiated of the damages of that sin through the purging fires before we enter heaven. But Baptism washes away all stain of sin -- temporal and eternal -- so that no expiation is necessary. Consquenly, people who are lifelong Catholics, baptized as babies, will logically face a much more "intense" purging fire than those who convert later in life and are baptised. I often joke w/ my Dad (who converted to marry my Mom, and was baptised in his late 30s) how he's lucky he got all those sins of his previous life wiped out, whereas I'm gonna have to get a good scrubbing before I can enter Heaven, if by God's Grace I make it there.
But it can be done.
Are you sitting down?
The Diocese of Dallas has accepted two men who left the priesthood, married without benefit of laicization, and then divorced, back into the active ministry; my diocese of Ft. Worth is accepting one of my best friends back into the ministry. He was invalidly married for 15 years, his wife left him, and he's been accepted, via Rome, into the active priesthood.
This jesuitical dancing around the celibacy laws is maddening.
Playing by the rules gets you the diaconate. The priesthood is reserved for celibates, Protestants, and men who dipped their pens into the marriage well invalidly.
Does that make sense to you?
Not if they're currently married. But, the Protestants aren't celibate.
Episcopalians, Lutherans, and I know of a couple of Presbyterians and one Methodist.
No evangelicals, at the present time.
If I may say so, you're hung up on sin, even sins that have already been forgiven. Pray the Divine Mercy chaplet, or wear the Brown Scapular as I do. I accept the promises of both of these, so I'm hoping the Blessed Mother helps me avoid the pounding I deserve.
Give me another ten years, and I could take a vow of celibacy with no problem. And my wife would probably be grateful!
This excuse seems much to overwrought by many today. Perfect knowledge in human affairs is generally an impossibility. It suffices to commit a mortal sin that one realizes that the act they are about to commit may be a mortal sin; so a suspcion of serious matter creates serious matter, as does feigned ignorance. Additionally, the excuse of unintentional ignorance is only applicable to human laws, as "... no one is deemed to be ignorant of the principles of the moral law, which are written in the conscience of every man." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1860) The only exceptions to this are semi-wakefulness, intoxication, very great distraction, and lack of the use of reason (young children and the insane). The planting of the fanciful notions within the heads of men that mortal sins are difficult or impossible to commit because of a lack of consent or knowledge are useful but deadly tools of the Devil.
As far as Ecclesial laws and matters of divine Faith go, they bind only Catholics - those who live apart from us and without sanctifying grace grace cannot be expected to have the faith to follow the laws of belief, or the knowledge to follow Church law. But it is difficult to believe that a priest has any sort of invincible ignorance of Ecclesial laws, especially regarding the well-known prohibitions on abandoning the clerical state and attempting marriage. There is in addition a violation of the precepts of the Decalogue, since the miscreant priest is breaking an oath to God. And its difficult to understand how any adult could think this is not a grave offense to the Almighty. The mental anguish "Fr." Bill recounts makes it clear that he knew he was doing something gravely wrong.
This jesuitical dancing around the celibacy laws is maddening.
This isn't dancing around the laws, it is following them. Even a priest can be a tremendous sinner, such as these were. Provided they are not dismissed from the clerical state, with repentance and penance, there is no reason they cannot return when they come to their senses.
Playing by the rules gets you the diaconate. The priesthood is reserved for celibates, Protestants, and men who dipped their pens into the marriage well invalidly.
The invalidly married were simply fornicators. They are no different really than priests who engage in horizontal counseling of the women of the parish.
Does that make sense to you?
Yes. I do agree it may seem unfair to you, but the laws are not unreasonable.
Another can of worms, Hermann. You don't distinguish between sins of malice and sins of weakness.
Mortal sins, that is, actions that separate one eternally from God, are not as common as Thomas Aquinas asserted.
And, that has nothing to do with consent or knowledge; it has to do with matter.
Another thread, another discussion.
Proud would be hung up if he was worrying about being forgiven for sins he'd confessed. There's nothing wrong with worrying about expiating your temporal punishment.
And yes, do wear the brown scapular with the faith intended in the promises.
Only if he mutilated the form of the sacraments. If he celebrated them following the rite of the Church, there is no reason to doubt his intention to do what the Church does, which is all that is neeed of him. Heresy does not destroy the priestly power.
The laws are unreasonable. Massive sinners, though repentant, are deemed worthy to resume the ministry of priesthood, but those who seek to follow the rules are shuffled off to the diaconate.
Maybe we should all sin mightily, in hopes of a Prodigal Son experience!
Well, I have no doubt he probably followed the proper form, but I wouldn't bet my life on him having the necessary intention to do what the Church does. After all, if he can so easily leave the Real Presence, then maybe he never intended to change bread and wine into the body and blood of God in the first place.
And the Scriptural basis for the requirement that priests be unmarried is? If this is actually a requirement from God, what about the Tribe of Levi? An unmarried priesthood is nothing more than a man-created tradition.
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