It is better that scandals arise than that truth be silenced. St. Gregory the Great

The sexuality (or asexuality) and sexual practices (or celibacy) of holy people have always fascinated other mortals. When moralistic televangelists have their adulteries exposed, the news pushes superpower politics to page three. Morris West's story of the spiritual and sexual struggles of a candidate for sainthood in The Devil's Advocate sells over sixteen million copies, and is made into a film. Another bestseller - John Updike's A Month of Sundays - describes in erotic detail the scandal of Rev. Tom Marshfield's adventures with ladies in his parish. Andrew Greeley's novels about the sins of cardinals etc. make us wonder how a celibate priest can know so much about some things. And for some real-life stories about the sexual frustrations of Catholic priests and religious there is the 525-page book (with index and selected bibliography) Desire and Denial: Sexuality and Vocation - a Church in Crisis by Gordon Thomas (London: Grafton Books, 1986).

Priestly and pastoral infidelity is now a matter for serious sociological study. The book Sexual Practices & the Medieval Church has been placed in the two-hour loan reserve section of Melbourne's Monash University library. An article titled 'Puritan perverts' in The Sociological Review (February 1985) lists amazingly disparate male and female religious leaders accused of various improprieties. (Why? Researcher Steve Bruce suggests two factors: opportunity, and emotionally charged settings in which people are 'religious o'ermuch'). Conservative evangelical Christianity Today's 'Leadership' magazine devoted its Winter '88 issue to such matters as 'After the Affair: A [Pastor's] Wife's Story', and 'Private Sins of Public Ministry'. I photocopied an excellent article from Ministry (January 1987) - 'Battling Sexual Indiscretion' ('Is your sex drive under control? Why are ministers more vulnerable than most other people?') - to hand out at clergy conferences. A recent issue of Australian Ministry (May 1990) contains an evocative fable 'Sexual Harassment in the Church'. Then we have Newsweek (Sept. 11, 1989) and other magazines running articles like 'When a Pastor Turns Seducer'...

The latest offering in this genre, David Rice's Shattered Vows: Exodus from the Priesthood, is a passionate plea to the Roman Catholic church to make celibacy optional and open its priesthood to married clergy. His statistics are alarming: an estimated 100,000 priests worldwide have left active ministry over a 25-year period, with another 200,000 priests 'failing to observe celibacy' (p.171). During the same period we have witnessed a serious decline in vocations: in the year 2000 the U.S. will have seen the number of priests diminish by half, with an average age of 65!

David Rice is a laicised Irish Dominican, and head of the Dublin School of Journalism. He spent a year traveling the world talking to priests, bishops, and ex-priests (442 of them) and their families. Rice is careful to preserve anonymity when requested, but a lot of people are willing to be identified. He chronicles many heroic commitments to ministry and but also struggles (by priests wearing 'give-away' grey faces) with loneliness, and disillusionment with the church-as-unfeeling-institution. He is brutally honest - particularly about 'the shadow side of celibacy' (that will be the chapter you'll hear about in the secular media when this book hits the fan). He writes as a participant observer: Rice left the priesthood in 1977 to marry.

This book offers a devastating critique of two related matters: the institutional bureaucracy of the Roman Catholic church, and that Church's rationale for clerical celibacy.

1. The Church-as-institution. Malcolm Muggeridge once said he'd like to take Jesus around the Vatican and watch his reactions. Well-known parish priest in London's Bayswater parish, Father Michael Hollings, said to the author: 'Canon law is strangling the Church. I think if Jesus Christ came today, he'd be condemned by the Curia' (p.144). 'The deeper into the institutional Church I penetrated,' Rice complains, 'the higher up the pyramid of Church authority I went, the more indifference and sometimes cruelty I encountered' (p.66). '[Other groups'] harshness is usually softened by structures like courts and juries to ensure fair play. But the Church has not yet developed such structures, so there is nothing to protect the individual from the fury of its defense mechanisms' (p.89). Happy priests tend to distance themselves from the issues and agendas of the institutional Church (p.146). And one study published by U.S. bishops found the most frequently mentioned reason for priests leaving was a 'feeling that they could no longer live within the structure of the Church... Priests leave because they perceive the changes in thinking at Vatican Two have not been made concrete through parallel changes in structure' (p.177).

The worst structure, says Rice, is clericalism, the essence of which is a kind of ecclesiastical apartheid. And 'the great bulwark of clericalism [is] enforced celibacy' (p.190).

2. Celibacy. Priest-sociologist Andrew Greeley (Confessions of a Parish Priest) says his research proves that Humanae Vitae (the birth-control encyclical) is the main reason Catholics are leaving their Church. David Rice is absolutely sure that compulsory celibacy is the main reason priests leave that Church. Celibacy, when it works, works very well, but when it does not work, it can be horrid. Celibacy is not chastity: celibacy is the permanent state of being unmarried. Chastity, for the unmarried, means abstaining from genital sexual activity. Compulsory celibacy, says Rice 'simply does not work' (pp.157, 172 etc.). He cites one study which estimated that at any one time no more than 50 per cent of American priests practise celibacy (p.170).

There are powerful arguments for freely chosen celibacy, but none for enforced celibacy. So why insist on it? For part of the answer we must go back to the Council of Trent. Protestants were recommending marriage for priests, insisting that celibacy was God's gift only to a few. 'Therefore', says Rice, (quoting a Professor Jedin), 'the Church entrenched its position and did not let itself discuss the problem...' (p.222).

And so you have anomalies like a resigned married priest in Columbia being put in jail after celebrating Mass, for 'usurping the powers of the clergy' (p.123), whilst in other dioceses bishops are sometimes allowing married priests to continue their ordained ministries. Indeed, the American National Opinion Research Centre says 79% of Catholics would prefer a married priest as their pastor (p.198).

The final article in the Code of Canon Law is 'In ecclesia, suprema lex, salus animarum' - in the Church, the supreme law is the salvation of souls. But millions of souls now exist without priest and eucharist because of the Vatican's 'putting people's needs last, and the institution's survival first' (p.190). Sociologist Robert Merton has shown that bureaucracies are degenerative. They end up defending their own entrenched interests (especially their power) before the needs of those they were founded to serve. Pharisaism is essentially putting mechanical obedience to regulations above the human needs of people (p.185). The ban on contraception and the enforcement of celibacy are both undermining the credibility of the Church-as-institution. As is the widespread practice of turning a blind eye to the priest and house-keeper living in adultery, but withholding dispensations from those who want to legitimize their relationship. 'So we find the Vatican forbidding employment of married priests, withholding dispensations from men long married, sometimes until their deathbed, and failing in the simple courtesy of even acknowledging receipt of the petitions for dispensation. And we hear of the Pope saying, "I'm in no hurry. We didn't leave them: they left us." I suppose it is understandable: the institution perceives the married priest as a threat to its structures. But it is sad, and so different from the father of the Prodigal Son, who came running to meet him' (p.242).

A footnote: David Rice wonders (p.44) why ex-priests 'are not sought out and cared for by the Church they once served.' It's the supreme 'forbidden topic: those 100,000 have ceased to exist' (p.238). It's not only a Catholic problem. Many of the estimated 10,000 ex-clergy in Australia from all denominations feel betrayed by their churches. This reviewer is currently researching this phenomenon in the Protestant and Pentecostal churches, and plans to send questionnaires to 1,000 of them, followed by personal interviews with some who so indicate. Anonymity will be respected. Help in locating names, addresses and phone numbers of ex-pastors would be appreciated. Send to Rev. Rowland Croucher, 7 Bangor Court, Heathmont, Victoria, 3135.

David Rice, Shattered Vows: Exodus from the Priesthood (London: Michael Joseph, 1989, hb, 280pp. Available in Australia from Penguin Books, 487 Maroondah Highway, Ringwood, 3134. RRP $35).

Rowland Croucher

Rowland Croucher is an Australian Baptist pastor, working full-time as a writer and speaker at clergy and church leaders' conferences. He is currently doing research on the topic 'Ex-Clergy: What Happens when Pastors leave the Parish Ministry'.