In
Seminaries, New Ways for a New Generation
March 25, 2002
New
York Times
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Copyright
2002 The New York Times Company
MUNDELEIN, Ill., March 22 - In the next three months, 43
men who have trained here at the nation's largest Roman Catholic
seminary are to be ordained as priests. They include a former soybean
farmer, an astronomer, a former minor league baseball player and a
Vietnamese-American who feels a debt to the church that saved his
refugee family.
This class of seminarians has been selected and shaped in radically
different ways than the generations before it. The seminarians have
been subjected to Rorschach tests and criminal background checks, and
interviewed about their dating history and sexual orientation.
Throughout their training, they have had to worry not only about their
grades, but also about surviving regular evaluations from fellow
students, psychologists and laypeople, each of whom, with enough
critical comments, could have derailed their march to the priesthood.
Seminaries now offer courses on topics once considered taboo -
sexuality, addiction and the struggle to be celibate. Seminarians
study the history and theology of celibacy in the Catholic tradition,
talk about it in confidential sessions with their spiritual directors,
and listen to priests share their own struggles to keep their vows.
The talk at Catholic seminaries today is about the need to produce a
new breed of priest: spiritually prepared and psychologically and
emotionally mature. After nearly two decades of scandals involving
sexual abuse by priests - in some cases priests who preyed upon their
seminary students - some Catholic leaders concluded that seminaries
themselves were part of the problem. Now they are trying to make
seminaries the solution.
Among those in the forefront has been this school about 35 miles
northwest of Chicago, the University of St. Mary of the Lake, also
known as Mundelein Seminary, which agreed to grant a reporter access
to its seminarians and administrators for wide-ranging discussions.
In more than two dozen interviews here, students and faculty members
said they were grief-stricken over the church's latest sexual abuse
scandals, and also angry. Not at the bishops who protected the
abusers, but at the priests who, as one student put it, "have
brought us all down."
They said they expected that wherever they went in their Roman
collars, they would be suspect. Yet the students expressed a confident
idealism that they would be the priests who restore the trust broken
by the previous generation.
"I think we're going to see a whole different priesthood in this
next generation," said Deacon Burke Masters, 35, the former
baseball player, who will be ordained in June in the Diocese of
Joliet. "The guys here are solid, we're talking openly about
these issues, and we've been prepared well."
It used to be that the road to the priesthood was a straight march
beginning in parochial school, through a high school seminary, a
college seminary and finally a graduate-level institution like
Mundelein, which is run by the Archdiocese of Chicago. Unless he
displayed some egregious academic or behavioral failing, a candidate
was promoted from one institution to the next, and had become a priest
by the time he turned 24 or so. He may not have known himself very
well, but he and his family were usually known by the bishop or
priests in the diocese.
"When I was in college, we just moved up," said the Rev.
August Belauskas, Mundelein's vice rector and dean of admissions.
"No one asked me personal questions about relationships or my
family or even why I wanted to become a priest."
These days, many of the men who show up at bishops' offices saying
they want to be priests are unfamiliar faces. They have already had
careers and life experiences, and on average they are in their early
30's.
Take the first-year seminarians at Mundelein, 48 of them sitting in
the Rev. Robert Barron's introductory course "Doctrine of
God." They included a 911 operator, an obstetrician-gynecologist,
an actor and two prison guards. Only a few had come to seminary the
old way - straight from college seminaries. Seven were from other
countries. Two were Catholic converts.
Given this diversity, the screening starts in the chancery office. A
candidate must first be vetted in his diocese, which is expected to
pay his tuition, and then go through a second admissions process in
the seminary. Forty-six bishops from around the country send their
candidates to Mundelein, one of 51 American seminaries. From then on,
the road to the priesthood is full of false starts, obstacles and
scrutiny.
"We ask them things nobody ever asked me," Father Belauskas
said.
Among the questions: Are you sexually attracted to young people? Have
you fathered a child out of wedlock? Do you frequent gay bars or
singles bars?
A yes to any of these questions automatically disqualifies a
candidate, as does a positive result on the mandatory H.I.V. test,
Father Belauskas said.
Homosexual orientation is not grounds for rejection, but participation
in a gay lifestyle or gay sex is. Catholic teaching holds that
homosexual orientation is not a sin, but homosexual behavior is. All
priest candidates, no matter their sexual orientation, must convince
the admissions interviewers that they have remained celibate for two
years before they applied to seminary.
"What we look for is a person who is generally healthy,"
Father Belauskas said. "There's no pathology, their motivations
are good, they're capable of growing spiritually and they display
qualities of generosity, compassion, dedication and love of other
people."
John Fain, a sharp 28-year-old, must have been a strong candidate when
he applied in the Diocese of Lansing. He was already working as a
director of religious education in a parish there. He is also a
military officer - an ensign in a Navy program that trains military
chaplains.
Nevertheless, like all other applicants, he had to sit for three
interviews with seminary administrators and faculty, write an
autobiography and submit letters of recommendation. He also spent a
day taking a barrage of common psychological tests: the Minnesota
Multi-Phased Inventory, the Thematic Apperception Test, the Rorschach.
"I went through more screening to get into the seminary than to
get a security clearance in the military," Mr. Fain said over
lunch in the dining hall with four other students, who laughed in
agreement.
But none of these tests, psychologists say, can identify a potential
pedophile or sexual abuser. Experts say that such problems often do
not emerge until later, when someone is under stress, struggling with
substance abuse or has access to children. Mundelein administrators
acknowledge that their screening is not foolproof.
"We're not infallible," said the Rev. Thomas Baima,
Mundelein's vice president and provost. "We can't know, and I
pray to God every day that we don't miss something. But it's not going
to be for want of trying."
Catholic leaders say they are well aware that they have had to become
more selective just when the church is most desperate for new priests.
The shortage has built over 40 years, while the Catholic population in
the United States grew with an influx of Hispanic and Asian
immigrants. In 1960, there were 54,682 priests serving 42 million
Catholics, one for every 768 Catholics. By 2000, there were 46,603
priests serving 62 million Catholics, one for every 1,330 of the
faithful.
Despite the shortage, diocesan vocation directors are not opening the
door to every Catholic male who knocks. The Archdiocese of Chicago,
which as one of the more successful recruiters can afford to be more
selective, received 130 applications for seminary students last year
and forwarded only 30 to Mundelein, Father Baima said. But even with
its rigorous admissions process, Mundelein accepts almost everyone. In
all, the bishops sent 80 candidates to Mundelein last year, and the
seminary admitted 75. Sometimes those who are rejected apply to other
seminaries, and sometimes they get in, Catholic officials said in
interviews.
But being admitted to seminary is only the first hurdle. Seminary
training lasts four years, and many students take a remedial year of
"pre-theology." Many do not last. Mundelein has 224
students, and every year an average of 10 percent leave, Father Baima
said - either on their own or because they are dismissed.
John Boucher, 37, was among the students who in interviews openly
admitted that they were using their time at Mundelein to decide
whether the priesthood was their calling. A mechanical engineer who
left his job making Velcro products in New Hampshire, he is a
first-year pre-theology student.
"I've always wanted to get married and have a family, and I still
do," Mr. Boucher said. "This may sound overly dramatic, but
I feel like I'm Abraham and I'm bringing Isaac up the mountain. Isaac
is my future wife and children, and I'm asking God whether they should
be sacrificed."
He said he had come to the seminary because "I was feeling I was
living the wrong life." He said he wanted to devote himself to
something more meaningful than making Velcro.
But still, he said, he was uncertain about celibacy. He talks it over
in regular sessions with a counselor, a married layman provided by
Mundelein. He acknowledged that in the Bible, God ultimately told
Abraham not to sacrifice Isaac.
"If I leave this, I may go into education," he said.
In the past, most seminaries treated doubts about celibacy as a matter
for private prayer and confession. Now it is openly discussed from Day
1 of orientation, and in courses and seminars every year.
Students and faculty members alike refuted the notion that more than
half of today's seminarians are gay, an idea that gained credibility
with the publication in 2000 of the book "The Changing Face of
the Priesthood: A Reflection of the Priest's Crisis of the Soul"
(Liturgical Press), by the Rev. Donald B. Cozzens, a former rector at
St. Mary Seminary and Graduate School of Theology in Cleveland.
Father Cozzens pointed out that many of the priests accused of abuse
targeted not prepubescent children but adolescent boys. His book
furthered the discussion of whether a preponderance of immature
homosexual men in the priesthood helped give rise to the sexual abuse
scandals.
In an interview in the rector's office, a trio of Mundelein's top
officials said they believed that the root cause was not homosexual
priests, but a seminary system that was once closed and unaccountable
to the outside world.
They have set out to change that, said Mundelein's president and
rector, the Very Rev. John F. Canary, who has thought about the issue
more than most. Ten years ago, as vicar for priests, Father Canary was
responsible for rooting out sexual abusers in the Archdiocese of
Chicago.
The cure, he said, is openness and accountability. His seminarians
serve internships in parishes and hospitals. Afterward the staff and
parishioners send evaluations to the seminary. Seminarians have cars
and are free to come and go. They are counseled by psychologists who
are laypeople. And if they should experience or detect abuse on the
part of their peers or faculty, they know they should report it to
their advisers.
"Where systems are turned in on themselves, like in orphanages,
problems can occur. When you have open systems, it's a healthier
environment," Father Canary said. "These seminarians
understand much better than we understood when we were ordained the
professional responsibilities that are entrusted to them."
At the request of his students, Father Canary appeared in the dining
room last Thursday night to talk about the scandal gripping the
church. For over an hour he responded to their anguished questions
about pedophilia, whether bishops covered it up, and how they can be
certain it won't happen again. At the end, he passed out copies of the
Chicago Archdiocese's policy on sexual abuse, a document he helped
write and a model used across the country.
The session helped comfort the students, who this week return to their
home dioceses for Holy Week anticipating that parishioners will put
the same questions to them.
"We are confident and unafraid," said Jerry Arano-Ponce, a
third-year seminarian from the Diocese of Kansas City, "because
we know we are being better formed than priests were 30 or 40 years
ago."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/25/national/25PRIE.html?ex=1018062141&ei=1&en=cf8c461815dd0f73
