So after I got done writing my piece about keeping kids Catholic and the Rod Dreher conversion, my family and I decided to attend the new “Youth” mass at a local parish. A few of our friends had started attending and really given it a high recommendation. Our Sunday mass schedule with PSR etc. is a mess right now anyway, so we thought we would give this 5:30 p.m. Sunday mass a try.
At first we were very pleasantly impressed. The priest was one that we knew from another parish. He has a reputation for working well with teens and college kids. The music was GOOD! They were well rehearsed and it was vibrant. The church was packed and you could tell that the kids had done a lot of the planning and taken a lot of responsibility for the other ministries. The homily was great and really brought out the gospel reading. Really we were starting to think that just maybe we had found a good alternative mass for our family on Sunday evenings.
Then the associate pastor of the parish got up to speak. I had heard him a year or so ago when he returned from South America to share his experiences serving there. He seemed like a very holy, spiritual, sincere, hard working, brave young priest and a real asset to the local Catholic Community. He was dressed in black, looked like a hooded sweat shirt. I thought I saw his Roman collar but I couldn’t really tell from the back.
He was there to tell us that he had asked permission and had been granted a leave from ministry and was leaving the priesthood. Immediately all the flash backs to all of the other priests in my youth who stood up and gave this same talk when I was a kid 30+ years ago. I really didn’t want to hear another one. Yet, Father John thought it was important to say publically that he was leaving and why, because of the recent abuse scandal. He did not want any rumors flying around. OK, so that was good. He wasn’t being asked to leave for fondling a teenage boy. Good news!
But Father John couldn’t leave it at that. He started to go into how he was leaving to marry the woman he loved (groan) and that he disagreed with the pope’s stand on married priests. Fine. If only he would have just said good bye and left then, but no, he started on his well written, mini-apologetics course on why he was right on this and the Popes were wrong, there in front of all of those teens and their parents at the youth mass.
I was seething.
How many vocations did he destroy that night? How many young men who had even the slightest inkling that they would have liked to investigate the priesthood decided last night that if Father John couldn’t hack it, then they probably couldn’t either. How many young people got the idea that it’s okay to rationalize their way around church teachings they don’t like because hey, a guy like Father John did and that turned out okay. Okay for whom?
Mr. Pete and I left when he started to go into his biblical exegesis on Corinthians supporting his stand against the Church’s requirement for celibate priests in the western rite. At least I could protect my children from this flawed thought and willful public dissent.
I really don’t care that he’s leaving to get married. I can’t judge his heart or his relationship with anyone. The Bishop has granted him a leave and I can be thankful that at least he recognized the bishop’s authority. What I object to was his timing to presenting a public defense for what he was doing in front of the youth at a youth mass. It was inappropriate and a tad selfish.
What I did do was explain my objections to my children on the way home, especially to my 13-year-old who possibly might have a calling to the priesthood. I also reminded him that although Father John may see marriage as the green grass on the other side of that fence, Sam should know that marriage has its own problems and struggles. Father John is simply exchanging one set of crosses for another. Additionally marriage requires a committment and obedience to church teachings as well. Once you find a way to break a lifelong vow, once you find a way to wriggle your way out of a church teaching you don’t like, it seems to me that it would be easier to do it the next time, and the next.
Articles for further reading:
Lumen Gentium 25
his religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will. His mind and will in the matter may be known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking.
Additional resources from my e-mail:
1 Corinthians 7:32-35 “I should like you to be free of all worries. The unmarried man is busy with the Lord’s affairs, concerned with pleasing the Lord; but the married man is busy with this world’s demands and occupied with pleasing his wife. This means he is divided. ….I am going into this with you for your own good. I have no desire to place restrictions on you, but I do want to promote what is good, what will help you to devote yourselves entirely to the Lord.” This passage goes on to say that marriage is good but you must choose between the two.
Matthew 19:11-12 “Not all men can receive this saying….and some there are who have freely renounced sex for the sake of God’s reign. Let him accept this teaching who can.”
Cathecism of the Catholic Church (1579) “…Called to consecrate themselves with undivided heart to the Lord and to the affairs of the Lord, they give themselves entirely to God and to men. Celibacy is a sign of this new life to the service of which the Church’s minister is consecrated; accepted with a joyous heart celibacy radiantly proclaims the Reign of God.”
Taken from Splendor of Love by Fr. Walter Schu: (this is a book written in study format for JPII’s Theology of the Body)
Regarding the nature of the call to celibacy from Pope John Paul II’s general audience of March 10, 1982, p. 263 – “In the Church’s doctrine the conviction exists that these words do not express a command by which all are bound, but a counsel which concerns only some persons – precisely those who are able to receive it.” Fr. Schu goes on to say that the decision to live celibacy must be a mature and free choice, motivated by love for Christ and a desire to consecrate one’s entire life to establishing His kingdom.
Here’s the beautiful part: Fr. Schu writes, “Celibacy is a charismatic sign of our future life in heaven after the resurrection… there people will no longer marry. God will be everything to everyone. ” John Paul II – “It (celibacy) is a sign that the body, whose end is not the grave, is directed to glorification”.
Regarding JPII’s general audience on March 24, 1982, p. 270, Fr. Schu elaborates that “those who sacrifice physical paternity or maternity, by consecrating their lives to Christ, discover that they become spiritual fathers or mothers to countless persons.”
The General Audience of April 28, 1982, in The Theology of the Body, pp. 281-282, JPII writes, “It is natural for the human heart to accept demands, even difficult ones, in the name of love for an ideal, and above all in the name of love for a person. (By its very nature, love is directed toward a person.) Therefore in that call to continence for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, first the disciples themselves, and then the whole living Tradition of the Church, will soon discover the love that is referred to Christ himself as the Spouse of the Church, the Spouse of souls. He has given himself to them to the very limit, in the paschal and Eucharistic mystery. In this way, continence for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, the choice of virginity or celibacy for one’s whole life, has become in the experience of Christ’s disciples and followers the act of a particular response of love for the divine Spouse. Therefore it has acquired the significance of an act of nuptial love,that is, a nuptial giving of oneself for the purpose of reciprocating in a particular way that nuptial love of the Redeemer. It is a giving of oneself understood as renunciation, but made above all out of love.”
Fr. Schu goes on to indicate that “for each person the only thing that matters is to discover and pursue the vocation God has prepared with love from all eternity.” Neither (celibacy or marriage) is superior to the other, they both complement and affirm each other, however Christ’s way of life is objectively superior because it is lived for the kingdom. “Celibacy must be valued within the context of the three evangelical counsels: poverty, chastity, and obedience. Christ reveals in the Gospels that the counsels are a way to perfection…” (p.124-124 referring to JPII’s Vita Consecrata March 25, 1996)
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