By Paul Sylvain
Nashua Telegraph
March 13, 2011
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/opinionperspectives/912295-263/catholics-come-home-campaign-wont-bring-him.html
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We've all heard it said if you want to stoke up the coals on a cold winter's night, just start talking politics or religion.
I'll leave the politics to the other guys who appear here each month, but I am going to roll up my sleeves and take on that other forbidden subject. If timing is everything, what better time is there to do so than Lent?
Let me say up front, I was born and raised Catholic. I remember a time when Catholics were forbidden to eat meat on any Friday, not just during Lent. To yield to that craving and devour a juicy burger on Friday was a "mortal sin" punishable by a one-way ticket to hell. The only way to cleanse that stain was to go to that Catholic institution called "confession."
Then one day that church law was changed and it was suddenly OK to enjoy a Friday steak or hot dog (except during Lent). Whatever became of those poor souls who ate that burger one Friday and died those last days before that rule changed without going to confession?
Tradition is fine, and Lord knows (no pun intended) the Catholic Church is steeped in it. But when you look at the problems plaguing the Catholic Church today, I'd argue that many of those problems are a product of those same traditions.
Less than a decade ago, the Manchester Diocese closed three of Nashua's inner-city churches – St. Stanislaus and St. Casimir in 2002, and St. Francis Xavier in March 2003. The reasons given were chiefly a lack of priests to serve the Catholic faithful in those parishes and not enough parishioners to keep them operating.
The priesthood is a noble calling, to be sure, but until the Catholic leadership does away with its celibacy rule and ban on married priests, the number of men joining the priesthood will not keep pace with those priests who are dying, retiring or just flat-out leaving.
I still believe forcing a celibate priesthood played a role in the sexual abuse scandal that continues to haunt the Catholic Church. Forced celibacy creates an unnatural state of being.
Like so many of the church's rules, this one is manmade and born of an earlier time. Celibacy was a pope's way of stopping the loss of property (i.e.: land) to spouses and heirs of married priests, at a time when a married priesthood was allowed.
Want to increase the number of priests? Allowing those priests who left because they chose marriage over the priesthood to return would cure the priest shortage overnight. Better yet, allow women an avenue to the priesthood and the Church will have more priests than it knows what to do with.
A friend of mine and fellow alumni of Nashua Senior High School Class of 1967 is the pastor of a Congregational church in southern New Hampshire. He has been an ordained minister for decades. Like me, he was raised in the Catholic faith. Unlike me, he wanted to be a priest.
Paul attended seminary for two years before leaving it. He's paid his dues. He served in the Air Force and was even a cop with the Nashua Police Department. He eventually got married and, some years later and with encouragement from his wife, began studies for a ministry that permitted married pastors.
This past weekend, we hooked up at Tortilla Flat in Merrimack. I asked if he'd seen or heard about the new "Catholics Come Home" television ad campaign. He hadn't at the time but since has.
"I'm sorry," Paul wrote me in an e-mail this week, "but I find this to be very sad, because I am seeing this from a different perspective. Why are so many Catholics coming to me, a Protestant minister, to have their babies baptized, or to be married and, yes, even funerals? Because local priests won't help them. How is this 'welcome home'?"
I can relate. Seven years ago, as my mom lay dying of cancer, I called the priest who served her and knew her for some time. I was told, "Sorry. It's my day off." We did find a "retired" priest, but it wasn't her priest.
When I was in high school, one of my aunts died unexpectedly. She was married – her only marriage – to a divorced man.
My aunt, like my mother and her other siblings, was "brought up Catholic" on French Hill and attended Catholic school at St. Francis Xavier. When her husband called the priest to arrange for his wife's funeral, the priest would not allow her body inside the church.
The priest told him she died in sin because she was married to an adulterer. In the church's eyes, my uncle was an "adulterer" because the church did not recognize his divorce. That made my aunt an "adulterer" because my uncle was still considered by the church to be married to his first wife.
The Catholic Church, through its "Catholics Come Home" campaign, hopes to bring folks like me back to the fold. Unfortunately, the church remains sadly out of step with the very people it's trying to embrace.
Until a few years ago, I was active as a lector, religious education teacher and music minister at Catholic parishes in Nashua, Litchfield and Plaistow. But I wrestled long and hard with the inconsistencies and, yes, hypocrisy that pervades the institution.
Eventually, I walked away and haven't looked back. I know of others, with even closer ties, who have also moved on for the same reasons.
These ads might bring a few people back, but I think it's going to remain a hard sell.
Contact: psylvain.telegraph@yahoo.com
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