The History of Epiphany ABC Religion Report Wednesday, 4 November, 1998.
Lyn Gallacher: Now to definitions of another sort. When the Catholic Bishop of Innsbruck, Reinhold Stecher, retired late last year, he published an open letter that caused huge controversy in the church in Europe. Using strong language, he criticised the church’s failure to do anything concrete about the shortage of priests, and he argued that the church’s opposition to married priests was seriously affecting its ability to serve the spiritual needs of the people.
Reader: It is clear that as long as we continue to insist on willingness to live a life of consecrated celibacy, the number of priests will continue to decline. Priestly celibacy requires that those who undertake it do so in a positive and healthy manner, not merely doing without sexual and human intimacy but dedicating all their powers, spiritual, pastoral, social, intellectual, to creative ministry. This remains the responsibility of ‘those who can accept it’. And there is not the slightest suggestion in the words of Jesus himself that the number of those so gifted will be sufficient for the pastoral and theological needs of a vital church.
Lyn Gallacher: Perhaps surprisingly, the retiring Bishop’s letter received widespread support in Austria, including support from his successor.
Reader: Not long ago, a Bishop renowned for his conservatism said to me with a smile, ‘In our diocese, every priest has three parishes, and things run splendidly.’ That most reverend gentleman has never had responsibility for even one parish, let alone for three. If he had, he could hardly have made such a light-hearted remark. In France I have met worn-out, exhausted priests who have to attend to seven or even ten parishes. Few Bishops know what these priests face. The church’s real needs are never considered.
Lyn Gallacher: Needless to say, Bishop Stecher’s letter received next to no coverage in the Catholic media here in Australia, even though the issue of the declining priesthood and whether priestly celibacy can really continue is on the agenda in this country as well. Now, Australia’s first national organisation of Catholic ex-priests has just been established, calling itself Epiphany Australia. Its membership already includes 40 ex-priests, their partners and supporters. Epiphany wants to encourage the Catholic church to reconcile itself with ex-priests to deal with their pain and suffering, and ultimately to reconsider the possibility of accepting married priests.
Jim Madden, a former priest himself, is the driving force behind the new association.
Jim Madden: Before we can really start talking turkey to Bishops about married priests and reactivating celebrants who are married, we have to iron out these things about our standing in our church, that we’re welcome in the life of the church, we can do all the things that the ordinary layman does; we can be involved in other official and unofficial ministries. So that we don’t want to impose on their zone of comfort, but find out where that zone of comfort is, and build up from that and extend that zone of comfort till ultimately we do reach a point where they accept a married priesthood.
Lyn Gallacher: Part of the problem is surely that you’ve kind of broken some of the rules.
Jim Madden: That’s certainly a big issue, but the underlying issue is that is that rule a valid rule? Like, does the church really have the power to impose celibacy as a condition of entry into, and remaining in, the ministerial priesthood as we know it in the church today? Now, a priest who is married, has a whole field of experience behind him that the celibate priest doesn’t have, and he is able to offer spiritual benefits to people in a different direction. And so it’s an enriched kind of ministry as we see it, and we’re asking the church to take a second look at that.
Lyn Gallacher: What you’re almost saying is that you’d be a better priest now than you were then.
Jim Madden: I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Lyn Gallacher: The truth is, that many of these men left the priesthood in order to get married, but they left unwillingly, and many of them want the chance to celebrate mass again. Here’s Bruce Tuncks, and his wife Christine.
Bruce Tuncks: When you resign from the active ministry, it’s very much like a divorce: similar grief, lost confusion, and with all the things of grief, anger, disappointment and in some ways a regret that you can no longer go on as you’d hoped. But there is such a compelling drive to go forward and to make a new life. And it’s not as though you reject the old life completely, or that is for me, but you embrace a new life of marriage with Christine here that has given me a richer life and I hope that I will be able to return this to the people around me in the church that I know.
Lyn Gallacher: OK, what about you, Christine, did you have to deal with some of that as well? Did you feel guilty for making Bruce leave the priesthood?
Christine Tuncks: No, no, I didn’t feel guilty because we really loved one another and we felt this was the right decision for us. No, I don’t think there was any, definitely no guilt.
Lyn Gallacher: So how did you cope with his being rejected by the church?
Christine Tuncks: I felt for him very much like the other wives with their husbands too, that they could not participate in the things that lay people can, and yet they’re so experienced and have all this knowledge, and yet they can’t do so many things that they’re so qualified for.
Lyn Gallacher: And that was Bishop Stecher’s point. Why does everything have to be done by a celibate priest?
Reader: The tendency to place human laws and traditions about our divine commission is the most shocking aspect of many church decisions at the end of this millennium. It seems, for instance, to disturb no-one at the highest level of the church that literally hundreds of millions of Catholics are unable to come to the sacraments of forgiveness, which are morally necessary for salvation, and because they now cannot come, in a generation they will not want to come. At a time when health care is directing greater attention to the whole person, there is a wonderful opportunity for the anointing of the sick. Millions are unable to encounter Christ the good physician in this sacrament, however, because we insist that it can be administered only by a celibate priest.
Lyn Gallacher: Do you actually miss not celebrating mass?
Bruce Tuncks: Very much so. It hurts more than anything else.
Lyn Gallacher: And would you like to be able to receive mass from your husband?
Christine Tuncks: Definitely. And I think a lot of the other wives would too, from their husbands, yes.
Lyn Gallacher: Celibacy didn’t suit Michael Breen either.
Michael Breen: The difficulty and the courage that ex-priests have to go their own way is far greater than the courage it requires to be ordained, to go in with a fanfare of trumpets and so on. When one leaves, other people start to ask about what’s happening with their faith and so on. If you’ve been highly committed, well then is it just a tissue of beliefs that really doesn’t hang together? Now often I think, clerics are totems for the tribe, they are expected to be the people who believe, they are expected to be the people who don’t screw around, they’re expected to be the people who have shiny shoes and are honest. The rest of the community may not want to be like that, but they expect the totems to be like that, and so when one of the totems shows their humanity or shows that they’re not really a totem at all, there can be quite a shocking experience for other people.
Lyn Gallacher: Particularly perhaps if you leave the priesthood over the issue of sexuality.
Michael Breen: Yes, and I think often sexuality has been a major issue, but it’s a difficult one to address. Often it’s the unaddressable one. In my case, I’d made a vow of celibacy at the age of about 21. Now I don’t think I was really capable of making that, nonetheless it was a life vow at that stage, it was a perpetual vow.
Lyn Gallacher: And you lost your virginity while you were still a priest?
Michael Breen: Yes, while I was teaching at Xavier College in Melbourne. I realised that to be true to myself I had to work some things out, and whether I remained celibate or not, this was something I needed to do for me and in that particular relationship.
Lyn Gallacher: What are your hopes and visions for this organisation?
Michael Breen: Well I hope that it will become a strong advocate about issues of justice, issues of sexuality and proper settlements with the church, perhaps a class action on behalf of ex-priests to get wages and superannuation payments, for work that they have done and justly have a right to.
Lyn Gallacher: What do you think that the church has done to deserve such an action?
Michael Breen: The church has tipped out many of us, most of us, without a brass razoo. Now if we were in any marriage relationship or de facto relationship, that would not be acceptable before the law. Family law would not allow people to separate without some sharing up of the goods. Secondly, if one was a member of a religious order, one owned things in common. That means that you had a vow of poverty and what was owned by you was partially shared by other people. Now if that’s the case, it should be some sharing at the point of separation.
Lyn Gallacher: So you’re actually comparing it to a divorce settlement, rather than severance pay or the employer/employee relationship?
Michael Breen: I think there are elements of both in there really, that there are elements of divorce and there are elements of severance pay within an organisation.
Lyn Gallacher: And so what would your pay-out be?
Michael Breen: One-300th of what the Jesuits owned in 1972, when I left, plus wages for 3-and-a-half years teaching and a year of parish work, and some interest on the wages earned.
Lyn Gallacher: Well, he might be pushing his luck.
Bishop David Walker represents the Australian Bishops’ Committee for Priests and Religious, and he attended Epiphany’s inaugural conference in Canberra. The fact that a Bishop was there at all was taken to be a sign of reconciliation between the church and ex-priests.
David Walker: I think the very sensitive issues for them are that they feel that the work they did in the past has not been recognised, and that the work they’re doing now is not being recognised. And I think it’s important that those issues be addressed, and I think probably in the future something needs to be done to affirm this group.
Lyn Gallacher: Part of their line of argument too is though that if they were affirmed it would be better for the church. Do you agree with that?
David Walker: I think it would be better for the church if they were affirmed. I think there are a lot of issues that go beyond the affirmation, and they’re important issues that they raise with regard to celibacy in clergy and the nature of priesthood, and all of those need to be addressed and they’re not the only ones that are wanting those issues addressed. So I think if there was an affirmation, some form of reconciliation, I think that’s a beginning. I don’t think that answers all of the issues that are there, and I think that the Catholic church is in the process of a major change in its history, and I don’t think any one issue is the answer.
Lyn Gallacher: And one of the deeper issues is surely what is ordination all about. If you decide to include ex-priests and so on, does that mean that those who are staying within the rules of the church are being undermined?
David Walker: Well not necessarily. But you’re pointing to the fact that what is the nature of priesthood, what is the role of priesthood, and I think as there has been a great awakening in the church of the importance of laity and what they can do, that’s called definitions into question, that basically we’ve defined laity in the past in terms of not being priests, and I think what we’re endeavouring to do today is to ask the positive questions of who are the people in the church.
Lyn Gallacher: And there are some people who would take a fairly tough stand on this group of people and say, ‘Well you knew what the rules were when you joined the priesthood. Now you’ve decided to break them. Why should the church change, it’s you that’s changed.’
David Walker: Well I think that’s a common perception, and there are issues to be worked through there. And not everybody who’s left the ministry left it in a way that they would be welcomed back. So those issues are there, and I think that the bigger issue is the issue of married priests in general, and I think that if that issue was ever to be resolved, then within that framework it would be much easier for priests who are no longer in official ministry to return to it.
Lyn Gallacher: But many of these men are still dealing with a real sense of hurt. Their separation from the church was acrimonious and reconciliation is still a long way off. Let’s leave the last word with one of them, Brian Jory.
Brian Jory: When I left seven years ago I had nowhere to live, I had no job, and I left in poverty. And that I was left to leave like that. My story’s a little bit different in that I wasn’t in a relationship when I left. The priesthood was causing me deep distress and unhappiness, particularly celibacy and the loneliness that it was associated with.
Lyn Gallacher: And so in your experience the church was fairly unforgiving when you made that call.
Brian Jory: Yes, and the Bishop when I was a priest said to me, he asked me if I was with a woman, and I said No, I wasn’t. He said to me, ‘If you were with a woman I wouldn’t let you go back to your parish and say mass the next Sunday.’ So I mean, that’s the bullshit that they go on with, and I was deeply insulted by that. I’ve just come from the national gathering, and one of the things that I’ve just said is that I’ve a right to maintain my rage against the injustice that happens to blokes like me when they leave. That the fact that the church is uncaring and is – I gave 20 years of my life to the church and I was basically treated like shit by a church that didn’t want to know me, and I sweated blood for that institution for 20 years and that’s how they let me leave, like a leper. I was entitled to, say, at least 26 weeks long service leave, or the equivalent pay of, and no redundancy payment, no leave loadings and all that stuff, nothing basically. Because of the technicalities of it, the church doesn’t see priests as employed by it, it doesn’t see itself as an employer. So because it doesn’t see itself as an employer therefore it can wash its hands of responsibility for just financial recompense to blokes that leave.
Lyn Gallacher: So will things change?
Brian Jory: I think yes. I think this weekend is a sign that things are changing. Things are changing, yes. And eventually the church, which is still cold, distant, unapproachable, and this Papacy is a living example of how the bastions are still trying to be stored (sic) up. But the walls will fall, and things will change I believe. I carry a hope in my heart very strongly.
HYMN: “Priestly People” sung by a choir of priests and seminarians of the old St Patrick’s College, Manly. From CD “Be Thou My Vision”
Lyn Gallacher: And that’s it for today’s program.
The Religion Report is broadcast every Wednesday at 8.30am and 8.30pm on Radio National, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s national radio network of ideas.
