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In a flurry of public addresses and letters, Pope Paul has clearly indicated that he cannot accept the Dutch demand, although he is willing to discuss the possibility of ordaining a few elderly married laymen to the priesthood where pastoral necessity demands it. Alfrink and the bishops are encouraged by what a Dutch theologian calls an "opening in an eternal wall of 'No.' " It remains to be seen whether the papal concession will satisfy the progressives who dominate the Dutch church's lay and clerical ranks. But Alfrink remains hopeful that the hierarchy can avoid a split. "We all mean well, both here in Holland and in Rome," he says. "Somehow we are drifting apart, being ripped apart, even. But finally we shall resolve this."
In the U.S., as in The Netherlands, faith has not prevented many a believing priest and nun from joining the exodus. On the rolls of those leaving today are some of U.S. Catholicism's most eminent names—such as former Jesuit Bernard J. Cooke, one of the nation's leading Catholic theologians. Last November, Cooke announced that he was leaving the clerical state and Marquette University, where he was chairman of the theology department, because he saw "a need to develop new forms of Christian life and priestly ministry outside the ordinary clerical structures but not in opposition to them."
Now doing research on Christian ministry and priesthood at Yale, Cooke believes that some religious are leaving, as others have in the past, because they discover that "this way of life does not fit them as persons." But many others are seeking new modes of Christian life outside institutional structures because "the possibility of creating such new forms seems temporarily denied by the power structure within the Roman Catholic Church, most critically by Rome itself." For others who leave, particularly in recent years, "their decision results from a combination of frustration and disappointment."
Years of Waiting
John Cardinal Wright, the American prefect for the Vatican's Sacred Congregation for the Clergy, believes that frustration is the key word. Frustration, Wright explains, affects many kinds of religious: the lonely missionary who is deprived of the "sufficient means" for his job, lacking books for his school or medicines for his hospital; the alert young curate who fears his views are not being heard or heeded by a national hierarchy top-heavy with age.
Many young priests are simply crushed by years of unproductive waiting. Ordained in their 20s, they often have to wait decades for the kind of responsibility that can come to laymen in a matter of years. Others recoil from the fawning attitudes of lay Catholics, who treat them like embryonic saints. Asks Los Angeles Psychologist Carlo Weber, a former Jesuit: "Do you know how it feels to be spoken to in a set way: 'Yes, Father . . . good Father—so nice to have you here, Father'? Rotten, that's how. Nothing could be more deleterious to a personality."
Studies of the exodus indicate that celibacy alone is not a major cause of priests' leaving the ministry. Sociologist