The former
seminary president who sparked a national debate on the
impact of gays entering the Roman Catholic priesthood
is now tackling another sensitive issue, adding his
voice to those advocating an end to mandatory
celibacy. ''Celibacy used to go with priesthood as fish went
with Fridays,'' said the Reverend Donald Cozzens.
''Over the past 40 to 50 years, I would argue that
more and more Catholics are questioning the need to
link celibacy with priesthood.''
In his book
Freeing Celibacy, Cozzens suggests there may be a
way through the problem by allowing celibacy as an
option but dropping it as a requirement.
Although he is
taking on an institution that measures change over
centuries, Cozzens--a celibate priest
himself--thinks the time is right for a
rethinking of celibacy. He points to the brief stir
Brazilian cardinal Claudio Hummes created last year by
saying the Vatican should reconsider its ban on
allowing priests to marry, and the crusade to change the
policy by excommunicated--and married--former
archbishop Emmanuel Milingo of Zambia.
''There are a
number of factors that are coming together that really beg
for this question to be discussed or urge us to review
mandatory celibacy,'' said Cozzens, interviewed in his
office at John Carroll University in the Cleveland
suburb of University Heights.
There were about
42,000 active priests nationwide in 2005, a 29% decline
from 1965, according to Georgetown University's Center for
Applied Research in the Apostolate. About 3,200
parishes were without a resident priest in 2005,
compared with 549 in 1965. ''Many, if not most, of the
inactive priests would be serving in our parishes if it were
not for the law of celibacy,'' Cozzens writes.
The church
discounts celibacy's responsibility for the shortage, saying
the increasingly materialistic culture plays a far bigger
role. Pope John Paul II was adamant that the church
would not change its celibacy requirement. As recently
as November, a Vatican summit led by Pope Benedict XVI
reaffirmed mandatory celibacy for priests as a nonnegotiable
job requirement for showing devotion to God and the people
they serve.
Cozzens has been
down this road before, having written four other books
on issues and problems of the priesthood. In his 2000 book,
The Changing Face of the Priesthood, later
translated into six languages, he used interviews and
studies to contend that the Roman Catholic Church had
a disproportionately high percentage of gay
priests--nearly half of all seminarians and
priests.
His previous
writings made a valuable contribution to the debate over
homosexuality by raising the issue at a time when many
priests and bishops were pretending it didn't exist,
said the Reverend Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the
conservative journal First Things, who upholds
the Catholic teaching that same-sex attraction is
disordered. ''It was that climate of 'Let's pretend
that we don't know about it' that Cozzens blew the
whistle on in a constructive way,'' Neuhaus said. (AP)