Challenging Celibacy

Two Fridays back, I attended the 13th annual Catholic Charities Loaves and Fishes Dinner, which my wife and I started and ran for its first 10 years. I quickly discovered that the priest pedophilia scandal has reignited the debate about celibacy within the Catholic Church.

Although many contend that there is no direct correlation between pedophilia and celibacy, Catholics in the pews are beginning to discuss the Church’s ban against a married priesthood.

Former United States Federal Attorney Kevin Ryan and his wife Ann sat at our table. As the retired U.S. Attorney in the Region, Ryan was deeply troubled by the revelations of molestation by priests against innocent children.

I recently wrote that the celibacy topic was above my pay grade but Ryan challenged me to focus a column on this important issue.

So, last week I asked my mother – a devout Catholic – whether she favored lifting the ban on a married priesthood. She was baptized as a convert at St. Felicitas Church in San Leandro nearly sixty years ago. Read More »

We called him “Kes”

We called him “Kes.” He was a big, burly guy who played center on the basketball team and hurled the shot put in track.

Kes was an excellent student; very smart. We liked him. He was our classmate at St. Joseph’s High School in Mountain View and St. Patrick’s College/Seminary in Menlo Park during the 1960s.

There were hundreds of students in the seminary and dozens in our class. The all-male seminary was filled with young Catholic teenagers and men studying to become priests from throughout the Bay Area, Sacramento and the Central Valley, as well as Hawaii.

On the two campuses, students ranged from 13 to 25 years old.

Kes and I were both students for the priesthood from the Oakland Diocese so we sometimes commuted home together on Christmas and holidays. I left in 1969 but Kes stayed and was ordained a priest in 1972.

“Kes” was Steve Kiesle, the pedophile priest who was allowed to continue in his role for years after being convicted for tying up and molesting two young boys in a church rectory in 1978.

Kiesle’s story has taken on new weight after recent revelations that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – now Pope Benedict – ignored pleas from Oakland Bishop John Cummins to remove Kiesle from the priesthood in 1985. Read More »

Harboring Pedophile Priests

The sexual abuse of children is so vilified in our society that the mere possession of child pornography by an adult is grounds for an automatic jail sentence.

One well known local writer, Ken Kelley, died in jail after kiddie porn was found on his computer. Radio talk show host Bernie Ward is serving time for sending illicit sex pictures of underage children over the Internet.

Nevertheless, thousands of priest child abusers all over the world – in the U.S., Ireland, Germany, the Philippines and elsewhere – were allowed by both ecclesiastical and civilian authorities to roam like predators molesting innocent children.

Buried stories continue to be uncovered like mass graves at a holocaust site. Now, like Watergate slowly winding its way into the Oval Office and engulfing Richard Nixon, two new stories implicate Pope Benedict himself.

First, there is a sickening account in the New York Times of serial abuse by a Wisconsin priest who went unpunished for decades. He continued to molest children while being transferred periodically by higher ups who were aware of his history. Pope Benedict is linked to the chain of leniency.

Second, Europe has just been rocked by new revelations that Archbishop Ratzinger – now Pope Benedict – allegedly did not oust a known child molester when he led the Munich Diocese as a younger prelate. Read More »

Too Big to Succeed

General Motors. Lehman Bros. The San Francisco Chronicle. The State Capitol. The Church. The Republican Party.

Why are these fortresses under attack?

Formerly impregnable bulwarks of our society – banks and car companies, churches, governments and newspapers – are facing convulsive challenges, wrenching change or extinction.

The printed word, long a building block of our democracy, is passing away in many communities, taking with it the local columnist and the blistering editorial. Many young people no longer find newspapers relevant to their lives.

California’s democratic government has hit the wall. The ever-widening gulf between rising expectations and shrinking pocketbooks has caused Sacramento to grind to a halt. Apparent needs have far outpaced the willingness of citizens to foot the bill. But that’s only part of the problem. The legislature seems increasingly unable to solve problems. Special interest money calls the shots.

Unbridled capitalism has fewer worshipers today than 20 years ago. And Ronald Reagan, the standard bearer of capitalism’s triumph, is a much-diminished figure after his hands-off policies toward the free market nearly ended in global bankruptcy.

“What’s good for General Motors is good for America,” now seems more like an Andy Warhol screen print than a paean to quality. The Republican Party no longer has a message that resonates. Home ownership is a questionable aspiration. The stock market is a casino. The line between borrowing and binging, success and excess, just rewards and greed has closed. The Greek columns that symbolize banks’ timeless stability are now just reminders of false promises made upon rotten foundations.

The church pews are thinning. A clergy shortage continues to pose challenges. A child abuse scandal rocks the Catholic Church. Vigorous debate over such controversial issues as contraception, abortion, gay marriage, married clergy and the ordination of women have wracked Catholicism and Anglicanism on both sides of the Atlantic. Fundamentalist Christians face off in a culture war against “godless elites.”

Our crumbling institutions suffer from many of the same ailments. Read More »

The Big Pushback

Graduation day at most American universities usually isn’t the occasion for a debate about abortion.

But don’t tell that to the tiny minority of Catholic bishops who decried Notre Dame’s invitation to President Obama to deliver the university’s commencement address last month.

In the end, their protests backfired.

Obama’s eloquent plea for common ground in the abortion debate drowned out the polarizing demonstrations against his appearance.

Echoing the words of Notre Dame’s president, Father John Jenkins, Obama asked:

“How does each of us remain firm in our principles, and fight for what we consider right, without demonizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?”

President Obama appealed to our shared values, noting that while we might not agree on abortion, “we can still agree that this heart-wrenching decision for any woman is not made casually; it has both moral and spiritual dimensions.”

Most important, Obama outlined concrete steps for people on both sides of the issue to take together:

Reduce the number of women seeking abortions. Reduce unintended pregnancies. Make adoption more available. Provide care and support for women who do carry their children to term. Promote health care policies that respect science and the equality of women.

Of course, many pro-life advocates remain unconvinced. In the wake of Obama’s call for unity, they cling closer than ever to the venomous rhetoric that has been used to assail pro-choice Americans for 30 years.

Such polemics are the reason why pro-life activists have made almost no headway in changing public policy on abortion in more than three decades. Read More »

Episcopal Partisanship

Certain hard-line cardinals and bishops – whether they get it or not – are coming dangerously close to a permanent alliance with the Republican Right Wing in America.

The long romance among Republican conservatives, the Christian Right and fundamentalist Catholics is walking Catholicism to the brink of extremism in this country.

Let’s examine the record.

After President Barack Obama was invited to deliver the 2009 commencement address at the University of Notre Dame, the school was besieged with 350,000 signatures of conservative Catholics urging the university to revoke the invitation. At the same time, 50 U.S. Catholic bishops also urged Notre Dame to ban the President. Why? Because of his pro-choice position on abortion.

Only a tone-deaf church could warmly embrace President George W. Bush during his two terms, then turn around and sanction Obama at the height of his popularity and power.

Whatever positives Pope Benedict XVI and other church leaders saw in President Bush, he was also the architect of a controversial war, an agent of torture, a tireless advocate for protecting the perks of the rich and powerful, a banal enthusiast for the death penalty as governor of Texas, and a shocking bungler of the response to Hurricane Katrina.

Isn’t that why America overwhelmingly rejected him when it elected Obama and ushered in Democratic control of both the House and Senate? Read More »

Theological McCarthyism

Can we criticize the Catholic Church without having our faith and loyalty called into question?

It seems that the answer is “no.” A climate of theological McCarthyism has infected the institutional church, particularly around the issue of abortion.

Selective public condemnations by a handful of conservative bishops are a Sword of Damocles over Catholic leaders who have experienced drive-by denunciations from the pulpit.

It is unfair that a Catholic presidential nominee – or a Catholic United States senator or member of Congress – who personally opposes abortion but has genuine convictions that a blanket anti-abortion law would not work in a pluralistic society – can be randomly refused communion by any bishop who so decides.

A boldface example of the intolerance for alternative views in the public square that is emerging in the Catholic Church is the push to ban President Barack Obama from speaking at Notre Dame University because of his pro-choice position on abortion.

Great! Let’s not invite America’s first black president – elected with the enthusiastic support of the nation’s youth – to talk about the state of the world at our leading Catholic university. Read More »

A Church Divided

As a lifelong Catholic who spent nine years as a young man in our Archdiocesan seminaries studying to be a priest, and more recently served nearly five years as the first lay President of the Board of Directors of Catholic Charities for the Archdiocese of San Francisco, Catholicism is in my blood.

But today I sometimes find my Catholic blood boiling.

Rather than focusing on solving the problems confronting the church, we Catholics are often at war with ourselves.

The overcrowded Mountain View seminary I attended in my youth no longer exists. It was demolished and the land sold off by the Diocese of San Jose because there were too few students.

St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, where I also studied, still serves as the major training center for new priests. But enrollment is tiny and most of the students are either older men coming to the priesthood as a second career or foreigners.

The Catholic Church in America faces a major manpower shortage as young Catholic men reject the priesthood as a profession. Read More »

Three Inspirational Priests

Last week I saw Doubt, a Meryl Streep/Phillip Seymour Hoffman movie about a nun who accuses a popular priest of molesting a young altar boy. I found myself saddened not only by the actions of rogue priests, but also by the indelible stain they have left on the entire priesthood.

I personally owe much to a series of great priests who helped me immeasurably throughout my life.

I was raised in Saint Felicitas Parish in San Leandro and attended St. Leander’s Elementary School. My mother was a convert to Catholicism and my father was a Catholic by virtue of his Irish heritage and his baptism at St. Peter’s Church in San Francisco’s Mission District.

St. Felicitas had two priests. Pastor Michael McGinty was an older man who baptized my mother and then both me and my sister Jill when we were six or seven years old. Later, all of my brothers and sisters were baptized.

Edward McTaggart was the assistant pastor, a dynamic young priest who had recently been ordained. He managed the parish youth programs including CYO sports. St. Felicitas had a large program that produced many championship teams. I played basketball and baseball, and our baseball team won the Bay Area CYO championship in sixth grade. Father McTaggart was a role model not only for me but for many others as well.

In today’s jaded world, it is almost inconceivable that I decided to become a priest when I was in the 8th grade and went into the seminary in my first year of high school. Read More »

The Faith Based Charade

Barack Obama announced recently that he would increase the federal government’s commitment to faith-based charity programs begun under George W. Bush.

I hope Obama also subjects America’s social services agenda to a much needed re-examination.

In the 1930s and 40s, President Franklin Roosevelt’s brain trust developed a series of federal programs aimed at providing equal opportunity and access to the American dream. By all accounts, most have been quite successful.

Social Security helped provide a decent retirement. The Federal Housing Administration enabled folks to buy homes. The G.I. Bill sent thousands of servicemen and women to college and was the single biggest factor in creating a thriving U.S. middle class.

Successive Democratic administrations expanded Roosevelt’s New Deal to the Fair Deal, the New Frontier and the Great Society. The definition of freedom grew from freedom to worship and freedom of speech to a fundamental right to a minimum standard of living.

But Ronald Reagan’s presidency ushered in a gradual retrenchment of our economic safety net for the poor and underprivileged. Read More »

The Pope is a Republican?

Distinctly separate events occurring at the same moment are often part of a larger whole. A recent week provided a perfect example.

When Pope Benedict XVI arrived for his first U.S. visit, President Bush took the unprecedented step of greeting him at the airport. Vice President Cheney – who rarely emerges from his bunker except for the occasional Republican fundraiser – bade him farewell six days later.

An unpopular president and vice president sought to share the glow of Pope Benedict’s boffo visit.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continued campaigning ahead of Pennsylvania’s Democratic presidential primary, in which Catholics represented a third of the vote. Read More »

Christmas Message

After 2000 years, the message of Jesus resonates on Christmas Day 2007 as loudly as ever. I am a Catholic. Confession of sins is a sacrament in the Catholic Church – luckily for me. “Judge not, lest you be judged” is an apt admonition as is Jesus’ famous warning, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

The Catholic Church is an institution which has survived twenty centuries in spite of the occasional actions of ecclesiastical ministers whose sins have sometimes undermined the teachings of Christ. In our time, the scandal of priests abusing children has thrown back the curtain on the risks of celibate priesthood, the poor screening of seminary students, outmoded personnel policies and the inadequate supervision of troubled priests. In his book, A PEOPLE ADRIFT, THE CRISIS OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN AMERICA, Peter Steinfels wrote, “The American Catholic Church’s sex scandal of 2002 occurred because terrible things were done to thousands of children and young people. It occurred because many church officials…failed to prevent those crimes and do everything in their power to repair the harm.” The huge financial settlements will neither heal the wounds nor restore credibility.

Nevertheless, The Catholic Church is an irreplaceable force for good in America. Read More »

Religion and Politics

The carefully plotted hijacking of the word “faith” by the Republican Party in the 2004 presidential election ought to be warning to church leaders to stay out of partisan politics in the 2008 presidential election. Religious fundamentalists careened across the median line between church and state like drunk drivers. Ignoring lifelong commitments to public service, social justice, and peace by many Democratic candidates, a few church leaders applied litmus tests on selective social issues which were heavily weighted in favor of Republicans. This partisan involvement by religious denominations has ultimately backfired, as the repugnant policies of a Republican Congress and a Republican President has led to a Democratic takeover of both the House and Senate in 2006 and a likely Democratic president in 2008. Today, more Republicans are deserting ship as key Republican Senators and Members of Congress announce their retirements. President George Bush’s job rating is at an historic low. Polls show a disillusioned Christian movement – in no shape to line the barricades for the Republican presidential candidate in 2008. Read More »