Roman Catholics: What I Wanted as a Person

ROMAN CATHOLICS

As head of the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus, which extends from North Carolina to Ohio, the Very Rev. Edward J. Sponga, 50, was, in effect, the Jesuit equivalent of a bishop. Last week Father Sponga quietly abandoned his vow of celibacy to marry Mary Ellen Barrett, 33, a nurse at a Roman Catholic hospital in the Philadelphia suburb of Darby, Pa., and the divorced mother of three children. In so doing, he became the highest ranking ecclesiastic of the 350 or so priests who have left the Catholic Church in the U.S. within the last two years in order to wed.

The marriage came as a considerable shock to Father Sponga’s fellow Jesuits, none of whom had any clue to his intentions. Born in Philadelphia, he joined the Jesuits at the age of 17, earned a doctorate in philosophy from Fordham, and became a strong advocate of reform within the society. In 1957 he was named head of the Jesuits’ Woodstock College, where he helped develop a brilliant staff of teaching theologians, which included the late Father John Courtney Murray. Three years ago, Sponga was named Maryland provincial, supervising 800 priests, lay brothers and seminarians.

Sponga first met Mrs. Barrett several years ago, when she came to him for spiritual counseling. She was divorced from her husband last February and was granted custody of the children. Although automatically excommunicated for marrying, he insists that he is “still Catholic” in outlook and will continue to attend Mass. “I had to make a decision between those values I had lived as a priest and new values,” he says. “It was a question, basically, , of what I wanted as a person. It’s not that I reject the values of the priest hood.” Nor does he reject the value of celibacy. “I can see many difficulties,” he adds, “if priests tried to operate as married men.”

Another Jesuit priest is about to marry. The society announced in New York City last week that the Rev. Joseph F. Mulligan, 48, former dean of Fordham graduate school, had asked to be released from his vows in order to marry. His fiancee is Patricia Plante, 36, who resigned last month as dean of Thomas More College, Fordham’s four-year-old liberal arts branch for women. Unlike Sponga, who simply quit, Mulligan adhered strictly to church rules in such matters. Three months ago, he requested a leave of absence from his supe rior. He then, said the Jesuits, “petitioned Rome through the regular ecclesiastical channels for laicization with permission to marry.” The Vatican has yet to make its decision.