Roman Catholics: Priests in the Secular World

More and more U.S. Roman Catholic priests are giving up their parishes for secular life. The reasons are many: some have chafed too long under arbitrary authoritarian discipline; others have succumbed to love of a woman. Still others have, in the old-fashioned phrase, simply lost their faith. While the break with the ministry is still an emotionally harrowing experience for most, this growing battalion of unfrocked clerics are finding it easier to marry, raise a family and get a decent job. The ex-priests are no longer the pariahs of Christianity.

According to the National Association for Pastoral Renewal, an organization of renewal-minded priests and laymen, 463 clerics have resigned from the active priesthood so far this year, compared with 400 in all 1967. That figure may be conservative. A group called Bearings for Re-Establishment, which operates offices in three cities to counsel disaffected clergymen and to help them find new jobs, claims that 1,000 applications for assistance have been processed so far this year.

Judas Complex. As their numbers grow, former priests are approaching a new life in the secular world with an increasing confidence. In the past, priests who abandoned their vocations felt so disgraced that often they suffered for months and even years from a “Judas” complex—the feeling of having betrayed Christ. Things are more civilized now. Patrick Best, a Detroit priest who left last May and has gone back to school, boasts that “my congregation even gave me a couple of going-away parties.” George Frein, a St. Louis priest who married an ex-nun in June, has been hired by Archbishop Leo F. Dworschak to teach religious studies in North Dakota. “There has been no hostility at all,” says Frein. “The weekend we arrived the pastor stopped over in his golf clothes and welcomed us.”

The initial problem facing a former priest is finding a job. For some, this task is still a very difficult one. Stripped of the comforting shelter of parish life, the secularized cleric is transferred, in the words of one ex-priest, from “total security to total insecurity.” Many have no means of support. Others have too willingly settled for the first menial job that comes along. Their training, often exclusively in theology, is not exactly a marketable commodity.

Still, many corporate employers now seem to have a friendlier attitude toward ex-priests. The Manhattan branch of Bearings for Re-Establishment reports that starting salaries for ex-clerics now range from $7,500 to $20,000. While some have found work as stockbrokers or industrial executives, most former priests tend to translate their spiritual concern into academic or community service. Many seek jobs as teachers—some have even been hired by Catholic schools and colleges—or as social workers. A large number of ex-priests have married former nuns—an understandable result of their common background.

Priests who leave the ministry to marry generally must contend with hostility from two major sources: their parents and the Catholic hierarchy. “Many in my family were ready to consider my wife just a beautiful siren who had tempted me away,” explains Frank Ostrowski, 38, who left his Minnesota teaching post after eleven years as a priest. “But I finally got my parents to accept what to them was almost like death—that their dear, darling son was no longer a priest.”

The ecclesiastical structure is not so easily swayed. If a priest wants to leave the ministry and marry, he must send a letter to his bishop or the head of his religious order asking for laicization. Even if he is released from ministerial duties, a priest must also apply to the Vatican for a dispensation from his vow of celibacy. Some prelates simply ignore these requests, and Rome has been equally reluctant about dispensing men from vows. As a result, most for mer priests have married without permission, thereby incurring automatic excommunication. Few feel any guilt about doing so. “The church has its rules,” says Don C. MacLeaish, 42, a married priest from Texas, “yet I don’t think I’ll go to hell.”

Without Bitterness. Surprisingly enough, the majority of former priests have no sense of bitterness toward the church and still consider themselves Catholics in good standing. Many attend daily Mass and receive the sacraments. Still others celebrate Mass, either privately, for their new families at home, or in underground churches. St. Louis and Detroit, for example, have cells of former priests and nuns who meet regularly to discuss their common problems.

If they were allowed to, many former priests would return to the service of the church. They are firmly convinced that Catholicism must sooner or later allow its clerics to marry. That eventuality will not take place during the papacy of Paul VI, who last year reaffirmed the rule of celibacy for the church. Nevertheless, many former priests continue to informally practice their ministry, and still consider themselves priests. For them, the truth is that they have not left the church: they are simply ahead of it.