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PAGE 7 - The Georgia Bulletin, August 23, 1990
Men Religious Challenged To Be Poor, Chaste,Obedient
BY JOE MOTTA
NEWPORT, R.I. (CNS) - Superiors of
men religious met Aug. 8-12 at Salve
Regina College in Newport to examine
the dimensions of their vows of poverty,
chastity and obedience in the U.S. culture.
More than 200 attended the 33rd annu
al meeting of the Conference of Major
Superiors of Men, which represents some
30,000 priests, brothers and candidates of
260 religious communities of men in the
United States.
Focusing on vows took the superiors
"to the heart of religious life," said Arch
bishop Thomas C. Kelly of Louisville,
Ky., a Dominican, who represented the
U.S. bishops as chairman of their Com
mittee for Religious Life and Ministry.
Marist Brother Sean Sammon, president
of the organization, said the "richness of
the vows" need rediscovery and should
not be "something that’s kept on the
shelf."
Sister Luise Ahrens, president and
general superior of the Maryknoll Sisters,
who addressed the conference on poverty,
said that Catholics are "middle class,
mainstream and upwardly mobile" and
"we religious have followed our people
up the socioeconomic ladder."
Noting that religious communities live
well and have adapted to a "professional
milieu," she said they should recall "that
our profession is not to be a teacher, a
minister, a social worker or administrator;
it is to be religious and that calls us to
another way of looking at life, from the
stance of the poor."
Religious leadership, Sister Ahrens
said, "must engage our members in talk
ing about expectations and implementing
long-range decisions about health care
and retirement.
"We do not retire from religious life or
our vow of poverty," she said. "So we
must be prepared to live it out in hard
choices.... Let us not be afraid to lead our
members to fidelity."
Benedictine Father Kevin Seasoltz,
rector of St. John’s Seminary, College-
ville, Minn., said there was little doubt
the vow of obedience “collides with
many of the values most highly prized by
many Americans, including many reli
gious.”
He said that "Christian obedience is
basically a response to Christ’s paschal
call to die to self-preoccupation and self-
centeredness, to lay down one’s life for
God and others."
The profession of religious obedience
today, said Father Seasoltz, "calls us to
grow in Christian freedom understood not
as the ability to do simply what we want
to do but rather to be and become what
we ought to be."
Chastity was addressed by the co-direc
tors of Therapy and Renewal Associates
in Seatde, Franciscan Sister of Perpetual
Adoration Fran Ferder and Father John L.
Heagle, a LaCrosse, Wis., diocesan priest.
The two emphasized that the chastity vow
is a challenge to men and women to grow
in loving relationships in non-genital
ways.
"We are not here to defend celibate
chastity," Father Heagle said, "although
we do believe it will always have a place
in the life of church and society.
"What we wish to affirm is the need
for celibate chastity to be credible," he
said. "We must be able to claim our
sexual energy, recognize it and integrate
it so as to become generative, loving
people. In other words, we cannot be
compassionate without being passionate
with others."
"What we need in the ’90s and be
yond," he said, "is an attitude of self-tran
scendence, one that will move beyond
earlier attitudes of both repression and
selfishness to a Gospel generativity.
"Can we and do we become more
life-giving through our choice of celibate
chastity?" Father Heagle asked.
"If our vow (of chastity) means any
thing to society," said Sister Ferder, "it
will be in terms of our ability to show the
world there’s all kinds of ways to make
love - in words we speak, the tone of our
voices, the moments we stop to talk to
others, the decisions we make in the
voting booth or in regard to recycling and
saving the earth."
"We would like to think that celibate
chastity can be sweet and gentle but at
times also confronting and challenging to
a society that has trivialized sexuality and
interpersonal relationships," she said.
Father Heagle added that "one of the
great missing components in our society"
is educating about friendship.
DOG DAYS - A lone fisherman enjoys his solitude on a lake in New
York. (CNS photo by Joel LaValle, The Catholic Sun)
Author Defends Forthcoming Book On Priestly Celibacy
BY JERRY FILTEAU
WASHINGTON (CNS) - His forthcoming book on
priests, celibacy and sex "is not anti-priesthood, it’s not
anti-celibacy," author A.W. Richard Sipe told Catholic
News Service Aug. 13.
Sipe said he estimated that among 1,000 priests he
interviewed over a period of 25 years, at any given time
about 50 percent were practicing celibacy and 50 percent
were not.
He emphasized that his work was not a survey of
priests in general, as some news reports depicted it.
At the same time he defended projecting his findings to
the general population of U.S. priests, saying the in-depth
findings of psychotherapy reveal patterns of human
behavior from which such projections can be drawn.
Sipe is a former Benedictine monk who is now married
and a family therapist and teacher of family therapy at
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Balti
more.
He received international news coverage for a paper he
delivered Aug. 11 at the American Psychological Associa
tion convention in Boston, in which he summarized the
research in his book due out in September.
The paper criticized the church for an "underdeveloped
and immature" approach to human sexuality and was
widely reported as challenging the church’s rule of
mandatory celibacy for priests. Many reports linked it to
recent sex scandals involving Catholic clergy.
In a telephone interview, Sipe emphatically denied that
he considers celibacy itself detrimental to the church.
"It’s a long-standing tradition of a very powerful
charism," he said.
He said his chief problem with the church’s current
approach to priestly celibacy is that it "demands celibacy
but does not educate for it."
"There is no course in a single seminary in this country
on celibacy. There is no course in a seminary even on the
history of celibacy," he said.
What provoked controversy in Sipe’s paper in Boston
were his figures on the percentage of sexually active
priests.
He said the figures were not based on surveys or
demographic studies, but on counseling work with about
500 priests from 1960 to 1985, on discussions with
another 500 in workshops and seminars over the same
period, and on counseling with about 500 non-priests who
were lovers of priests or victims of abuse by priests.
Of the priests interviewed, he said:
- At any given time about 20 percent were involved in
an ongoing relationship with a woman or in a series of
relationships with women.
- Another 20 percent were homosexually oriented, and
about half of them were sexually active.
- Some 20 percent were involved in patterns of
autoerotic behavior indicative of sexual immaturity.
- About 6 percent were sexually attracted to children or
adolescents, although not all acted out their inclinations.
Father Kenneth Doyle, press spokesman for the National
Conference of Catholic Bishops, objected to reports that
those estimates apply to the general population of U.S.
priests.
From the news reports, he said, "it looks as though Sipe
may have drawn some conclusions about all priests by
relying heavily on a group of priests who came to him for
counseling precisely because they were having sexual
difficulties."
Father Doyle added that he agreed "with what seems to
be Sipe’s principal thesis - namely, that celibacy needs to
be taught and explained in a more clear and thorough way
... so that people can live it faithfully and fruitfully."
"I also agree with another point he makes, that celibacy
has a value of witness in today’s society,” he said.
Sipe told CNS that he objected to news coverage which
had described his study as a survey.
"This is not a survey. It’s not a poll,” he said.
He described the book as "an ethnographic study" and
compared his approach to that of anthropologist Margaret
Mead in studying the culture of the Samoans.
"It’s not moralistic.... It’s not a ‘good guy-bad guy’
situation, but simply (a description of) what is there," he
said.
He said that although he personally favors optional
celibacy for priests, in the book "my position is absolutely
neutral. It could be used by either side."
Father Joseph Gallagher, a Baltimore archdiocesan
priest best known nationally as translation editor of "The
Documents of Vatican II," said he proofread the book for
Sipe and considered it "likely to become a classic."
At the same time, he said, he was sure elements of it
would be "controversial and sensationalized."
Sipe said the book, to be published under the tide, "A
Secret World: Sexuality and the Search for Celibacy," is
divided into four main sections: a description of celibacy
and its history in the church; how it is practiced among
priests today; a description of the "process" of consolidat
ing or integrating celibacy in one’s life; and finally "a
chapter on the achievement of celibacy."
He said colleagues who have read the study have
described his final chapters as an "original contribution."
"No one has ever outlined the process and the structure
of celibate achievement before," he said.
Father Doyle said he had not been able to get an
advance copy of the book from the publisher, so he could
not assess its overall tone or content.
But he said the controversy surrounding Sipe’s statistics
on sexual activity by priests is "damaging to the church
and damaging to priestly morale, because people take such
assertions at face value often and fail to consider the
tremendous good priests are doing with their lives."