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	Should Priests Live in Community? Reflections Inspired by the Case of Father Corapi By Scott P. Richert About.com July 5, 2011 http://catholicism.about.com/b/2011/07/05/should-priests-live-in-community-reflections-inspired-by-the-case-of-father-corapi.htm One of the oddest aspects of the case of Fr. John Corapi (a.k.a. "The Black Sheep Dog") is the fact that Father Corapi is a member of a diocesan society of apostolic life, whose members live in community in Texas, while Father Corapi lives by himself in Montana. There is a good reason why Father Corapi does not have to live with his fellow members of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLT): He was granted an exception because, at the time that he joined SOLT, the requirement for communal living was not yet in place. Still, after Father Corapi announced on June 17 that he is abandoning his priestly ministry, Fr. Gerard Sheehan, Father Corapi's superior in SOLT, "expressed disappointment" in an interview with the National Catholic Register that "Father Corapi chose not to remain in SOLT and to refuse the order’s invitation for him to live in community, leaving his Montana home." SOLT may not have seen communal life as a complete solution to the case of Father Corapi, but they clearly regarded it as part of a possible solution. But, you may ask, doesn't that suggest that SOLT had already judged Father Corapi and found him guilty? I don't think so. Instead, it is a recognition that, by not living in community, Father Corapi was unable properly to protect himself from the allegations against him. Late last week, I received a copy of the civil lawsuit that Father Corapi has filed against his accuser. In it, Father Corapi reveals some of the allegations made by his accuser. I considered writing an article revealing the substance of those allegations but decided against it. (I'll explain why later this week.) Without revealing the substance of the allegations, however, I can say that, if the allegations are true, Father Corapi would have been much less likely to be able to do the things that he is alleged to have done if he were living in community with his fellow members of SOLT. Conversely, if the allegations are false, Father Corapi's accuser would have had a much harder time making such allegations if he were living in community with his fellow members of SOLT. Or, to put it another way, Father Corapi would have a much easier time demonstrating that the allegations could not be true. In other words, it's not just that community life can help a priest (or anyone, for that matter—a Christian family is another model of community life) avoid temptation; it can also make it much harder, if not impossible, for a malicious person to make false allegations. The acts that Father Corapi is alleged to have engaged in are not just morally incompatible with community life; they are incompatible in practice. The opportunities to engage in them would be much more limited, if not entirely nonexistent. Pope Benedict XVI has long been an advocate of communal living for all priests, not just those who are required to live in community as part of a religious order. In his recent book Light of the World, he told his interviewer, Peter Seewald, that I believe that celibacy becomes a very meaningful sign, and above all becomes possible to live, when priests form communities. It is important for priests not to live off on their own somewhere, in isolation, but to accompany one another in small communities, to support one another, and so to experience, and constantly realize afresh, their communion in service to Christ, and in renunciation for the sake of the Kingdom of heaven. In an address to the Priestly Fraternity of the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo on the 25th anniversary of its founding, the Holy Father and went on to say that it "may certainly be true" that living in community is "a form of help in the face of the solitude and weakness of man." Still, he stressed, communal living is about more than this: Communal life is in fact an expression of the gift of Christ that is the Church, and it is prefigured in the apostolic community from which the priesthood arose. . . . Communal life thus expresses a help that Christ provides for our life, calling us, through the presence of brothers, to an ever more profound conformity to his person. Living with others means accepting the need of my own continual conversion and above all discovering the beauty of such a journey, the joy of humility, of penance, but also of conversation, of mutual forgiveness, of mutual support. Community life provides a unique opportunity for sanctification, which is why the Church, following the example of the Apostles, who lived in community, developed the institutions of monastic life. But in the wake of clerical sexual abuse scandals, both real and false, it is hard not to see the practical advantages to community living as well. Would Father Corapi have been entirely protected against the allegations his accuser has made if he had been living in community with SOLT? Perhaps not; people can—and do—claim almost anything. But it would have been much easier for Father Corapi to defend himself if Pope Benedict's model for community living were more widely instituted.
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