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Nonetheless, the Rev. Raymond Potvin, sociology professor at Catholic University, says that it may be time to "start applauding the heroism of those who limit their families for the sake of building a better society." Priests, themselves celibate, "talk about 'sacrifice' as if it were giving up smoking for Lent," says Novelist-Critic Wilfrid Sheed. It is estimated that about half of married Catholics use some form of contraceptive some time during their lives; a Detroit priest reports that couples "come back again, month after month, with the same confession." Parish priests worry about the number of couples who leave the church or stop receiving the sacraments over this issue.
At least two theologians have written in diocesan papers that since the question of the morality of the pill has been reopened by a number of reputable scholars. Catholic couples are free to use the pills on the principle that lex dubia non obligat (a doubtful law does not obligate). "I cannot in good conscience do anything to enforce the church's position because I don't believe it," says one Kansas priest. When couples confess to using contraceptives, says a priest in Chicago, "I don't tell them to say 200 Our Fathers. I just don't say much at all."
Crisis of Authority? Debates over birth control—and such questions as the role of parochial schools—have been primarily raised by Catholic laymen. Once notable for his quiet acceptance of church discipline, today's Catholic, says Frank Begley, a lay official of St. Louis' Catholic school system, "is twice as intelligent, three times bettereducated, and he doesn't look to the priest as the end-all." He is ready to challenge the dicta of old-line authoritarian pastors. "What we really need," says one Miami layman, "is freedom to dissent from the Pope."
Some church leaders believe that American Catholicism is heading for a crisis in authority. Many bishops are worried about the number of potentially good priests who leave seminaries rather than submit to picayune rules and a dry, unappealing curriculum. Younger priests chafe under an archaic system that puts them completely at the mercy of pastors. "Some of the bitchiest old women in the U.S. are wearing cassocks, not dresses," says a Colorado priest. There are reportedly between 4,000 and 5,000 priests who have left the clergy in the U.S. with frustration high among their reasons. In today's age of the layman, there is also the danger of anticlericalism, which, says Edward Marciniak, an executive director of the Chicago Commission on Human Relations and a leading layman, "comes when the layman feels he knows more than the clergy."