Religious journeys in the Rochester Diocese

“Getting married?” asks a webpage hosted by the Roman
Catholic Diocese of Rochester. “The Church welcomes you and is delighted you
are considering celebrating this time in your life in the presence of God….
Call your parish to begin the process.”

            This
applies only to the laity, however. Roman Catholic priests and nuns who plan to
marry or pursue love relationships are called to say goodbye.

            But
sometimes there’s a reversal. Nuns and priests leave their vocations to stay in
touch with their faith. The forbidden marriage leads to an engagement — with
the world, with a new spiritual critique, even with the Church.

Consider
the life of one local ex-priest.

            Jack Neary,
a Greece resident, began his adulthood on a path frequently taken by local
Catholic men: He graduated from Aquinas Institute in 1950, then went off to St.
Michael’s College, a Roman Catholic component of the University of Toronto. In
1961, he was ordained at St. Basil’s, a seminary across from “St. Mike’s.” He
also studied math at University College, a secular unit of U of T. The Toronto
atmosphere was different from what most seminarians experience: “We weren’t
quite as isolated,” he says.

            The
non-isolation led Neary far and wide. For a while, he was a schoolteacher in
Toronto. Then in 1971, he left the priesthood to marry and moved south. He was
a teacher and counselor in Lawton, Oklahoma, and later in Houston, Texas. His
wife, Jean Neary, taught music at all levels, including college.

            The couple
retired a few years ago and moved back to the Rochester area. Jack also was
active in Catholic parishes along the way. He recalls working in a 1960s “Model
Cities” social welfare program in Oklahoma.

            “I think
married priests would add a lot to the Church,” Neary says. “Marriage,” he
says, “is something that’s very natural and good.” The institution of marriage
connects with two strands of reality, he says: “the God of Creation that’s
responsible for everything that is, and the redemptive order.”

            Following
this line of thought, Neary says in effect that celibacy is an unnatural
construct. It wasn’t imposed until the year 1139, he says. “It was really
because of property, property that was left to [priests’] offspring.” In other
words, the Church sought to increase its holdings by being sole heir.

            Neary is a
student of Church history, but he doesn’t fixate on the past. He says he’s a
member of the national advocacy groups CORPUS and CITI. (See main article for
more information.) “I don’t think they’ve made much of a dent,” he says, adding
that the groups do offer much support for individuals. “Rome has a way of
cutting people off,” he says.

            But Neary
doesn’t mean only those who challenge the rule of celibacy. The Pope and his
circle, he says, have cut off respected dissenting theologians like Rochester
native Charles Curran and the Europeans Hans Kung and Edward Schillebeeckx.
Thinkers like these, says Neary, embody the reformist spirit of the Second
Vatican Council.

            But it’s
the thought of Creation Spirituality, as expressed by liberation theologian
Matthew Fox, which most interests Neary. Fox — who became an Episcopal priest
after being thrown out of the Dominican order — is founder and president of
the Oakland-based University of Creation Spirituality. Describing his own life
as “the making of a post-denominational priest,” Fox echoes Christian mystics
like Meister Eckhart and Hildegard of Bingen.

            Fox, says
Neary, “is much less into structures and authority” than is the institutional
Church of today. And creation spirituality, says Neary, recognizes “that the
Church does not see sexuality as God created it.”

            Neary is a
member of Spiritus Christi congregation, which separated from Corpus Christi
parish and the mainline Church following official pressure to abstain from
giving women a leadership role and blessing same-sex unions. Yet there’s a
drama of separation going on at Spiritus today.

            Co-pastor
Father Enrique Cadena recently announced he was going to marry a woman
co-worker. After pressures built up, Cadena resigned. And some Spiritus
members, believing the matter wasn’t handled democratically, left the
congregation. Co-pastor Mary Ramerman, who was ordained a priest by an “Old
Catholic Church” bishop last year, says Cadena left on his own. The
congregation’s Lay Personnel committee, says Ramerman, handled the matter
properly, based on a policy that forbids “a dating relationship with someone
under your authority.”

            Ramerman,
who’s married and has children, takes a positive view of priestly marriage.
“Many of the problems in the Roman Catholic Church, not just the recent
scandals, are systemic, isolating men from healthy relationships,” she says.

            “The whole
system of celibacy is unhealthy,” says Ramerman. “I’m for choice” of
relationship. Marriage, she says, “is a great strength for me in my ministry.”
It helps her relate to people’s lives, she says — even on issues like “what
do you do if you have a 2-year-old at home who can’t sleep.”

An
ex-nun in Rochester tells a story much like Jack Neary’s.

            The woman,
who asked that her name and identifying particulars be withheld, says she lived
in a convent for a decade. She left, got married, had children, and continued
working in human services — but in a secular setting.

            These goals
weren’t all that inspired her choosing to leave. In part, she says, she needed
to “extract myself from the stereotypes.” She describes her discomfort with
people’s reactions to nuns in general. “Some people are stuck in an old
religion,” she says. A few may even expect a contemporary nun to dress in a
habit, she says. Then there’s the pedestal syndrome. “I’ve had people
apologize,” she says, “for swearing in from of me when they found out I used to
be a nun.”

            “The
decision to leave,” she says, “was more a result of a change in thinking about
theology” post-Vatican II. The reformist council, she says, imparted “an
understanding that isolation flew in
the face of being engaged in the world.”
Here she adds a footnote on another gender difference within the Church. Nuns,
she says, make “a commitment to living a life together in community, very
different from the priestly experience” — that is, the semi-solitary life of
the rectory.

            “I learned
and grew incredibly in those 10 years,” the ex-nun says. “I don’t regret those
years, but I don’t regret my decisions.”

            The
individual decisions have affected the Diocese of Rochester, of course.

            An official
diocesan history gives the numbers.

            At its high
point in 1966, the diocese, which had by then grown to its present size of 12
counties, had 362,000 Catholics, 371 active priests, and 1,549 nuns. In 1978,
there were 359,000 Catholics in the diocese, but only 311 priests and 1,095
nuns. (The number of Catholic schools had declined significantly.) In 1992,
there were 361,000 Catholics, 208 active priests, and 842 nuns.

            The number
of priests has really hit a downward slope. Today, says diocesan communications
director Michael Tedesco, the diocese has 139 active priests but still around
350,000 Catholics. “Twenty to 25 years from now,” says Tedesco, “we’ll be down
to 60 to 65 active priests.”

            What is the
role of married ex-priests in this decline? Or put another way: Would the
decline be reversed if priests were allowed to marry?

            “I don’t
know if that would be a long-term answer,” says Tedesco. Other Christian
denominations, he says, are also experiencing declines in clergy. But what if
women were allowed to be priests, as well? Tedesco says he doesn’t know what
effect that might have.

In
the last two years, says Tedesco, no priests in the
Rochester diocese have left to marry or “enter into a relationship” —
heterosexual or homosexual.

            The
question of gay or lesbian priests and nuns is understandably hush-hush, given
the context of Roman Catholic condemnation of same-sex acts. We made inquiries
to some local ex-nuns who’d left their order for same-sex relationships; they
declined to share their stories. (Representatives of Dignity/Integrity, a gay
support group, and the local Gay Alliance didn’t return calls.) But these
stories are closely related to those of married straight priests, and thus
significant for the future of the Church.

            We put
another question to Jack Neary: What if gays and lesbians were allowed to be
priests? What difference would that make, numerically and philosophically?

            Neary
answers with a family story. “We have a son who’s gay,” he says. “He was
created that way; he’s a good person.” As an out gay man, Neary’s son is
unlikely to imitate his father’s coming-of-age — or his uncle’s. Yes, Jack
Neary has a brother who was ordained a Basilian but left the priesthood.

This article appears in Jul 10-16, 2002.