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The Changing Face of the Priesthood
Donald B. Cozzens (Liturgical Press:
Collegeville, MN)
I first heard of Fr. Donald Cozzens'
book from seminarians whose reaction to it ranged from fury to scorn.
A sample of reactions from diocesan seminaries was strongly negative,
including some students who had been at the seminary where Fr. Cozzens
is the rector. Admittedly, those I spoke to would be likely to be
strong supporters of Pope John Paul II. The fault they find is that
they believe Fr. Cozzens' picture of the contemporary seminarian is
biased and inaccurate. They were also strongly reacting to Cozzens'
assumption that a large number of seminarians are, to use his word,
"gay." A number of seminarians thought that the book was
simply another addition to the liberal agenda under the guise of
objectivity.
When I first began reading The
Changing Face of the Priesthood, I realized how many things the
author and I had in common. We both have been working with priests,
specifically, diocesan priests, for the last three decades. We have
both been teaching and working with seminarians for as long, although
I had a broader range of students because I also work with many
members of religious orders. (A fact that is worth mentioning is that
this book leaves out religious order priests except to mention that
the spirituality of diocesan priests in the past had been a
"monastic" spirituality imposed upon them by their teachers.
Oddly, none of the orders he refers to in this regard —
Dominicans, Franciscans and Sulpicians — are monastics at all.)
Nevertheless, I found many similarities
between Fr. Cozzens and myself. We both had substantial psychological
training and we both share some strong psychoanalytic background. We
differ in this regard because I have always tried to retain some
critical sense and to be cautious about various psychological
theories. Although never a seminary rector, I have interviewed, since
the early 1970s, 400 priests who have taken leaves from the
priesthood. Our Trinity Retreat House founded by Cardinal Cooke to
assist priests, has been a place where many (about 200) have resolved
their difficulties or regained their strength and have been able to
return to work with a new enthusiasm. We have given retreats at
Trinity to thousands of priests and I have directed retreats for
priests in over 50 dioceses in the English-speaking world. I am
delighted to say, at this writing, 82 priests on leave have returned
to the active ministry through Trinity Retreat. I mention all of this
to lend credibility to my criticism of Fr. Cozzens' book.
The first thing that one observes in
this book is that Fr. Cozzens loves the Catholic priesthood. In many
passages he writes with respect and enthusiasm, but with a very
particular point of view, which I believe is quite lopsided. His book
reminds me of a visit I once paid to a progressive seminary. The
librarian, a priest, boasted that 80% of the books had been written
since 1965. He was less than amused when I told him that the place
reminded me of a large pamphlet rack. There are similarities to that
library in the index of Fr. Cozzens' book. There are 11 references to
Sigmund Freud and in fact several whole pages given to his
psychoanalytic theory, which right now is very passé in the
behavioral sciences. There are also eight pages on themes of Carl
Jung. There are only two references, both of them rather negative, to
John Paul II. Although the Pope has written extensively on the
priesthood and the theology of love, chastity and sexuality, none of
this monumental work is even alluded to. There are four references and
two pages of Andrew Greeley's thought but no mention at all of saints
like Augustine, John Chrysostom, Thomas Aquinas, Alphonsus Ligouri and
John Eudes, who all wrote extensively on the priesthood. One might
offer the defense that these are writers in the past who did not share
the contemporary Catholic concept of the priesthood. Well, Hans Kung
and Richard McBrien each get several references but no mention of
Avery Dulles' superb book The Priestly Office. De Lubac,
Congar, Guardini and von Balthasar are all missing. They all wrote on
the priesthood and shaped its identity since the Council and still
inspire many.
There are several other indicators of
the lopsidedness of Fr. Cozzens' position. His view of the priesthood
is very much limited to what might be called progressive American
Catholicism, an approach that has been co-terminus with the drastic
reduction of the number of seminarians and the loss of vocations. It
is my impression that his view of the priesthood is rejected by a
large number of Catholic seminarians today. If Cozzens is correct
about where the priesthood is going, it will get there without most of
the men studying in the seminary today.
Fr. Cozzens concentrates on ideas of
the priesthood only from the immediate post-Vatican II era. This was a
confusing time, perhaps unavoidable, that saw an immense decline in
vocations — a time that thankfully appears to be coming to an
end.
I must confess my own biases. For the
past 25 years I have been suspicious of fads. I taught in a seminary
that long ago disappeared where the ultimate answer to every problem
arrived about every six months. I learned to hold on to the faith and
solid teaching and to be patient with the fads. I owe some of this
caution to my teachers at Columbia University and the doctoral program
in psychology. They have seen it all. People ask me if being a
psychologist ever challenged my faith. Not one bit. Faith is a rock.
Theories like those of Freud and Jung and many others are just that
— theories. In science older theories are supposed to give way
to better ones or at least to ones better related to that moment.
Faith is a rock; psychological theory is snow. You fit the snow around
the rock.
Fr. Cozzens does not appear to be
adequately aware of the limitations of theories and he certainly seems
to blow caution to the winds with the Oedipal theory of the priest's
relationship to the bishop. This gets 20 pages, and again religious
order priests are left out. I felt like singing, "I ain't got no
daddy." Along with a fourth of the priests in the United States
who are not diocesan priests, I still managed to be validly ordained
without an Oedipal relationship to a bishop or abbot.
The point that needs to be emphasized
and explained is that the particular psychological theories that Fr.
Cozzens is using, those of Freud and Jung, are outmoded at the present
time. You may have to take this on faith, but the whole field of
behavioral science has moved from a psychoanalytic emphasis to a
bio-social approach to human behavior, for better or for worse. It may
surprise Fr. Cozzens and those who agree with him that because there
is no empirical evidence for Freud and Jung's ideas, these two
venerable figures are often called "mystics" by
psychologists who don't know what a mystic is. They're so designated
because they are seen as creators of myths, and very time-bound myths
at that. This book contains an evaluation of the Catholic priesthood
based on the point of view of a psychologist in Vienna in the 1920s.
On a far deeper level, I have a
criticism that I hesitate to make but it is at the core of the problem
of this book. Fr. Cozzens is obviously a sincere, dedicated priest. I
give him an "A" for effort and I admit we probably could
have a great dialogue on the fraternity of priests, which he
celebrates. My prayerful conviction is that Cozzens' concept of the
transcendent and his use of this idea is the core of the problem. He
uses transcendence in an abstract philosophical way. He describes
transcendence on page 29 as "those elusive moments in which we
experience, literally, an unspeakable, harmonious, liberating union
with creation . . . One feels both infinitely small as (the soul)
experiences the vastness of the universe and yet significant, as a
part of it, in communion with it . . . the soul, was created for such
experiences."
I categorically and emphatically reject
this philosophical notion of transcendence as the Christian
experience. Indeed, it may well be antecedent to Christian prayer and
grace-filled contact with God, but it is not what the Christian
writers mean by transcendence. Paschal said in his description of his
mystical encounter with God, "Not the God of the philosophers,
but the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."
Christian spirituality is not
philosophy, scriptural exegesis, theology or liturgy, although all of
these may serve to help us relate to the transcendent God. Christian
spirituality is a personal relationship with the living Christ and
through Him to the Father and the Holy Spirit. This is Christian
transcendence. It is, in every sense of the word, personal as
is seen in the lives of such fervent Christians as St. Stephen who
called out in his martyrdom to the living Christ.
Fr. Cozzens, having given us a very
inadequate description of transcendence, then takes up the other
dimension of priestly development, namely — intimacy.
His thoughts on friendship and intimacy
show a depth of pastoral experience and understanding, although the
ghost of Sigmund Freud seems to be standing in the corner.
He never seems to refer to that
intimacy which is an essential part of Christian spirituality —
intimacy with Christ which spiritual writers, Catholic, Protestant and
Orthodox, all describe in a surprisingly similar way.
As someone who deplores the loss of a
real sense of religious devotion as an essential component of a
balanced personality I think that this lack of recognition of intimacy
with Christ, Our Lady or the saints suggests a rather secularized
approach to the Christian life. This is a key objection because this
ultra-objective, emotionally uninvolved, ultimately defensive approach
to the Christ of faith and of the sacraments has produced a crippling
spiritual anemia in seminaries, religious orders and in Catholic life
in general. Liturgical fads and the complete attention to liturgical
details with no personal involvement have left most formation programs
pale and intellectualized. It's no wonder that few seminarians hold
on; and most of those who stay do so in spite of the isolated prayer
forms they encounter. If I brought some of the simple good Gospel
Christians of Harlem or the enthusiastic Latin American Catholics of
the South Bronx to one of these intellectualized liturgical events
they would all think we were mad or at least "that we didn't know
Jesus at all." As Paschal said, "Fire, not the god of the
philosophers. I have betrayed Jesus Christ."
Now we come to a part of Fr. Cozzens'
book that I totally agree with — his criticism of the
pre-Council seminary. I think he is too kind in his assessment. I
thought seminary life was awful, oppressive, inhuman, arbitrary, and
impersonal — even though these institutions were run by very
good men who were themselves victims of the system. We went to the
seminary fired up by the Holy Spirit to do anything for God and we
spent years with no apostolate learning to do nothing for God; and
some never got out of the rut.
Seminaries did change. New and fresh
ideas came in. Only these ideas were often uncritically accepted
— especially psychological ones at a time when psychology was
undermining the moral foundation of 80-90% of college students. The
same ideas were brought into the seminary.
This assessment by Professor Donald
Campbell was given in his presidential address to the American
Psychological Association in 1975. And mea culpa! I was part of
this circus for a while, but then realized that something was terribly
wrong.
Christian morality and tradition were
replaced by very flimsy psychology and moral philosophy based on it.
We had to change but in some coherent way integrated with what we
already were. Just looking at Catholic higher education and seminaries
in particular you could write a great book on the theme, "The
children of this world are wiser in their own generation than the
children of the light." I recently heard the new archbishop of
New York, Archbishop Edward Egan, wisely observe that "We don't
want to go back to the 1950s but we don't want to go back to the 1970s
or 1980s either. We should go ahead."
Fr. Cozzens rightly places a great deal
of emphasis on the ability of a priest to make good friendships
particularly because he leads a celibate or solitary life. I could not
agree more. However, even his discussion of intimacy leaves me with
some serious questions. He makes such excellent observations as the
following: "If the celibate intimacy with a few close friends is
authentic, the priest discovers that the core of his heart remains
fixed on God alone."
However, Fr. Cozzens falls into the
trap of equating psychological maturity with spiritual growth. This is
a semi-Pelagian idea, which has been so popular in recent years that
it is accepted as a truism. The actual fact is that a review of the
lives of saints or even people being considered for canonization at
the present time does not reveal a great many people who fit into the
modern psychological category of very well-balanced people. While I do
think the saints have spiritual maturity, often very saintly people
and profoundly religious people struggle with other personality
conflicts. Fr. Cozzens makes a mistake even Pope Pius XII fell into at
one time. Addressing a group of Italian health professionals, Pius
said that all of the saints had the highest degree of mental health
and stability. I seldom disagree with Popes but this is simply not
true. My own patron saint was a mentally ill homeless man — St.
Benedict Joseph Labre. Yet, whatever there was left of the poor soul,
he gave it all to God.
What's the point of making this
distinction? The point is that grace may build on nature but they are
not the same thing. Persons become spiritually mature by surrendering
themselves to God with all they have and as sincerely as they can.
This is true of a priest as well. Because some have personality
conflicts (and don't we all) they should not despair of the
possibility of genuine spiritual growth. I am not disputing Fr.
Cozzens' contention that a priest needs good friends. I consider good
friends one of the greatest blessings of life, but the ability to make
good friends is not the same as the ability to surrender oneself to
God. It is that angular and somewhat difficult personality, St. John
of the Cross, who made the observation that "It's best to live in
a monastery as if you lived there alone." Yet this was a man of
great charity and generosity. Nevertheless, his own confreres never
understood him.
I think Fr. Cozzens equates the natural
with the supernatural too easily and in this way looses some of the
beauty of transcendence and the mystery of Christianity. This
shortcoming is not unique to Fr. Cozzens. One can find it in much
religious writing at the present time.
I do agree with Fr. Cozzens that the
lack of transcendence leads religious people to boredom. Along with
many young seminarians and priests as well as many committed young
Christians. I find much of our attempts at worship, liturgy and even
theologizing very boring. The glorious 1970s bring back perhaps an
example of one of the most boring religious events in Catholic
history. This was the "Bible vigil." Younger readers will
not remember it. It was a pathetic attempt to supplant Eucharistic
Adoration with a Bible procession, reading and sermon. It was so
terribly boring that it disappeared out of sight almost immediately.
The central hypothesis of Fr. Cozzens'
book is that priests and even bishops are engaged in a Oedipal
conflict with the bishop and Pope, respectively. His reasoning on this
is complex, in fact a tour de force — and one really
would have to be familiar with psychoanalytic theory to understand all
of the connotations of what he's saying. If I had the time and was so
inclined I would be prepared to do a book on this subject and I might
have done just that in the early 1980s.
However, Fr. Cozzens' rather orthodox
Freudian point of view is not relevant at all to the present thinking
on personality development. If we were to announce a Saturday seminar
in New York on applications of the Oedipal theory, it would be largely
attended by elderly Jewish women therapists. The men would be already
dead of old age. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy elderly Jewish women
therapists. In fact, it would be a lot of fun, but not very relevant.
Fr. Cozzens sees the unresolved
clerical Oedipal conflict as the source of much unhappiness and
immaturity and lack of fulfillment in the priesthood. He describes a
priest who is still dominated by an unresolved Oedipal conflict as
either a "pious effete cleric" or a maverick. I object to
the use of the word pious as a negative quality. I happen to know many
devout (pious, if you will) priests who have remained the loyal
opposition of very liberal bishops. They have not been effete and they
have not been sycophants as Fr. Cozzens suggests. As a matter of fact,
lots of them have toughened up by living in an atmosphere where they
are rejected and marginalized. In more traditional dioceses, I have
observed some progressive priests who have been marginalized and
become a respectable loyal opposition. Being at odds with the bishop
on a number of serious issues is not a fate reserved for more
progressive members of the clergy. Quite the opposite.
I would like to propose that a far more
effective and time-tested and scripturally-based analysis of priestly
maturity is the classical theory of the three levels of spiritual
development and the intermediate steps. Writers as different as Fr.
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange and M. Scott Peck have explored these
classic teachings and described the spiritually mature person in
contemporary terms. I attempted to bring these steps into some
agreement with contemporary psychology in two books, Spiritual
Passages (Crossroad, 1983, still in print) and The Journey
Toward God (Servant, 1999).
The initial steps of moral integration,
maturity of faith and trust in God leading to a life of love of God
and neighbor and dependent on the gifts of the Holy Spirit seem to me
to be a far better framework for discussing personal growth as a
priest, religious or even a dedicated Christian lay person. We all
have the same road to travel and making a bishop or Pope Oedipus Rex
ultimately seems to be a distraction. We are on the road of
discipleship called by the Son of God — a road that has been
well laid out in the New Testament.
Space does not permit a proper
criticism of Fr. Cozzens' picture of his inadequate priest. While
there is certainly some validity to his observation about priest
archetypes and even about the Puer Aeternus (the eternal
child), his observations can be hurtful and wounding to a number of
people who simply don't fit the stereotype of the American
self-actualizing personality. I am puzzled that anyone with this much
experience could so blithefully fall into the culture-bound
stereotypes of what is healthy and what is not. I have seen some of
the very people whom Fr. Cozzens seems to dismiss as hopelessly
inadequate grow and, by good will and grace, learn to serve God's
people well, guided by the moral teaching of the Gospel and the
Church. They have gained truly impressive reputations as priests. I've
also seen some of the beautiful people he describes throw the
priesthood over. He would tend to dismiss the healthy aspects of some
who don't fit in well with his thinking. They come closer to his
scathing caricature of saintly people whom apparently he does not
like.
Finally we come to what is the most
objectionable part of Fr. Cozzens's book. This is his discussion of
what he calls "gay priests and seminarians." I object to the
use of the word "gay" because it is a serious ambiguity.
This cynical word was generated by the active homosexual community
years ago in order to communicate the fact that people were not happy
with this life-style. In the film The Boys in the Band there is
a sarcastic remark — "Show me a happy homosexual and I will
show you a gay corpse." Unfortunately, this word, which, if one
is honest, means a life-style contrary to the teaching of the New
Testament and the Church, is used here simply to mean homosexual, and
not gay. Homosexual is a neutral word. A person could be homosexually
oriented and a saint. A homosexual can lead a totally chaste life and
many do. On the other hand, the word "gay" refers to the gay
scene — an immoral subculture, one of many in our society. While
Fr. Cozzens may not be using it that way, his use is entirely
ambiguous.
Throughout this section of his book Fr.
Cozzens discusses in a very detached way the behaviors and
misbehaviors of some seminarians and priests. I did not find any clear
moral statement that the engagement in homosexual genital acts is
wrong and morally unacceptable. Those who without repentance are given
to this behavior or even support this behavior without repentance
should not function in the Catholic priesthood because they have a
commitment to a life-style or to the defense of a life-style that is
contrary to the explicit moral teachings of the Catholic Church.
When we put this anomaly into a
spiritual context it's even worse. Any life-style at all which commits
a person to immoral behavior — it can be heterosexual
misbehavior, it can be simony, it can be calumny and detraction, it
can be anything — such a life-style is utterly inconsistent with
the life of a person publicly committed to the service of the Gospel
and to Christian discipleship. I'm not saying that Fr. Cozzens denies
this, but in his entire discussion I do not see any clear statement on
the moral aspects of this whole question.
Also, the characterization of people as
homosexual is problematic itself. What does the word mean? Does it
mean behavior? Does it mean attractions? Does it mean conflicts? Some
of the authors that Fr. Cozzens quotes with approval, including John
Boswell and Richard Sipe, hide under ambiguity and use statistics in a
way that I would simply call dishonest and a purposeful distortion. I
have read their works and I am appalled that these and others would be
positively cited in a book on the Catholic priesthood.
Much damage has been done and many
vocations lost or destroyed because those in charge of formation
programs for priests and religious were confused or even complicit in
immoral behavior. If they were sinfully involved and they repented and
asked pardon, an evaluation could be made as to their ability to
remain chaste and to serve the Church in an appropriate way. This is
exactly what was not done in some cases. Sins can be forgiven and
sinful habits overcome but only if one repents them. A very simple
line from the Psalms could have guided the confused in these decades.
"Blessed are they who walk in the law of the Lord." And
unblessed are they that do not.
I have known a number of persons,
clerical and non-clerical, who have confronted and deeply repented
homosexual behavior. They have struggled to put it out of their lives
and with the help of grace almost always succeeded. The Courage
movement throughout the United States assists Catholics of all
vocations to lead a chaste life even though they may have compulsions
in a homosexual direction.
Last year in the Seminary Journal
there was a very fine article called "A New Generation Is on the
Rise in Seminaries" by Fr. Richard Marzheuser. His untimely death
was quite tragic since he was making a significant contribution to the
faculty of Mt. Saint Mary's Seminary in Cincinnati. Generally
speaking, those who knew Fr. Marzheuser said that he was of a more
liberal cast of thought. This is especially interesting because his
article makes the point very strongly that a new kind of seminarian is
emerging and that among other things the new seminarians abhor
passivity and moral delinquency. He says the new seminarians read and
carry on intelligent conversations with educated people; they love to
pray; they set high moral standards for themselves because they are
weary of scandal and they are transparent, which means that they do
not lead double lives. They are strongly committed to the Eucharist.
Anyone who reads Fr. Cozzens' book would do very well to read Fr.
Marzheuser's article in the Seminary Journal (Fall 1999, p.
21-31). They are writing about different populations.
I have been very critical of this book
and I feel badly about this because its author is a Catholic priest. I
am sure that Fr. Cozzens is a dedicated priest who sees things in an
entirely different way than I do. He's expecting a new Church and I'm
expecting the Church to reform.
We have very different views of the
Catholic Church and where it is going. I can only say that I hope he's
wrong and he's surely hoping that I'm wrong. But, let's put the
differences out on the table. Let's admit that there are profound
differences of approach, values and even, perhaps, belief. At the same
time, we do belong to the same priesthood and the same Church.
I can only pray that in the future
these profound differences will be resolved. Since both of us are
getting on in years, I suspect that we will have amply opportunity to
discuss our differences when we arrive in purgatory.
Fr. Benedict J. Groeschel, CFR, is a
psychologist, seminary professor and Director of the Office of
Spiritual Development of the Archdiocese of New York. He's one of the
founding members of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal.
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© 2000 Robert
Moynihan
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