Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, October 8, 1995                   TAG: 9510100033
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: G1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LAURIE GOODSTEIN THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: YONKERS, N. Y.                                 LENGTH: Long

AS IT MOVES INTO ITS THIRD MILLENNIUM, THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH IS WEATHERIN

In these group portraits it is possible to trace the fate of Roman Catholic priesthood: Photographs taken in the 1930s and 1940s show large, beaming groups of as many as 40 or 50 young men ordained into the priesthood each year. By 1986, the class had shrunk to six, and when this year's class lines up for its photograph, there are likely to be only 10 proud men in collars.

The Roman Catholic Church is confronting a severe shortage of diocesan priests as it moves into its third millennium, prompting growing numbers of Catholics to question the church's ban on the ordination of women and married men, and the tradition of mandatory priestly celibacy. Meanwhile, the church is weathering a radical transformation as laymen and laywomen take on responsibilities once shouldered solely by priests. The result, some scholars say, is the most dramatic change in the ministry since the Reformation.

``The demographics are really cataclysmic for the church,'' said Richard A. Schoenner, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin and the author of ``Full Pews and Empty Altars.'' ``The church cannot replenish its celibate male clergy at the rate required to serve a growing Catholic population.''

Pope John Paul II was expected to deliver a major speech about vocations to the priesthood during his visit to the seminary on his trip to the United States this week. Ten percent of American parishes are without resident pastors. By 2005, there is expected to be only one pastor for every 2,200 parishioners, compared with one for every 1,100 in 1975, according to a study by Schoenner. Projections show that while the number of diocesan priests will drop by 40 percent between 1966 and 2005, the number of Catholics will rise by 65 percent.

Although the priest shortage confronts the church worldwide, the pope has held firm against ordaining women and married men. Instead, he has called for increasing priestly vocations through prayer and stronger recruiting efforts.

Yet while the pope has resisted radical calls for change, his church is already in the process of a deep transformation. In parishes where there is no resident pastor - at last count, 2,039 in the United States - laymen and laywomen, along with nuns and deacons, are fulfilling many of the roles previously performed by priests. They are visiting the sick, counseling the troubled, giving sermons and overseeing parish finances.

More than 300 parishes around the country - most of them in rural or inner-city areas - are being wholly run by ``pastoral coordinators.'' Most are nuns, but some are laymen or laywomen with spouses and families of their own. While they cannot say Mass, in many dioceses they are permitted to lead ``word and communion services'' that feature a scripture reading and homily.

The lay involvement ``is a radical transformation of the structure of the church,'' said sociologist Schoenner, ``in theology, in the worship service, in the emphasis of the liturgy. It's a radical change in who has power and authority in the church. Women, married people, non-ordained people - they're running the parishes. That's radical.''

Said Ruth Wallace, a sociologist at George Washington University, ``They're not standing on a pedestal and looking down at the parishioners. They're on the same level as the parishioners.''

The explosion of lay participation is so great that there are now more lay people enrolled in degree-granting Catholic lay ministry programs (3,500) than there are priest candidates enrolled in theological training (3,328). And laywomen in these programs outnumber men 2 to 1, according to Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.

Priests are required, however, to perform the rites that are the spiritual core of Catholicism - celebrating the Eucharist that transforms the bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus, absolving sin, anointing the sick and dying. Many of the pastor-less parishes are served by circuit-riding priests - some who are expected to visit as many as three parishes each Sunday.

While many Catholics say the church has been revitalized with the increasing participation of lay people, there is also a wave of uneasiness. Traditionally the parish priest was leader in every respect - he administered the budget and the sacraments alike, and knew the members of his flock and their needs. He symbolized each parishioner's connection to the bishop, the pope and the entire Catholic Church.

The pastoral coordinators, said the Rev. Philip J. Murnion, director of the National Pastoral Life Center in New York, ``are many of them very wonderful people, very caring and loving and attentive to people's needs. But they don't quite symbolize that this community is connected to the whole larger church, through the bishop, and to the mysterious sacred quality that comes with the sacraments.''

``The hierarchy of control,'' said Schoenner, ``is gradually being handed to the lay people. And that's congregationalism in the good Protestant tradition. ... The Catholic Church is becoming a Protestant church.''

Many of the bedrooms upstairs in the massive stone central building on the St. Joseph's Seminary campus are empty for lack of students. This seminary that once had an enrollment of 300 students - many the sons of New York's immigrant Catholics - now has 70. There is nearly one faculty member for every two students.

Beyond some green lawns and manicured hedges, another seminary building has been turned over to a religious studies program offering master's degrees to lay people; it has an enrollment of 130.

The seminary's director of vocations, the Rev. Robert McKuen, who is in charge of recruiting candidates for the priesthood, said that ``fear of commitment'' is the biggest obstacle to men taking the vows. Today's ordination candidates are on average six years older than those of 30 years ago, and many have careers and independent lifestyles. Many are wary of making a permanent commitment to a life of prayer, service, discipline and celibacy, he said.

Catholic families once took pride in sending a son to the seminary, but McKuen said that his recruiting experience has taught him that those days are gone. Parents may not approve for many reasons, McKuen theorizes - either because of contemporary notions that ``success'' means financial achievement or a career as a surgeon, or because of the taint left by the recent revelations of pedophilia and sexual abuse by priests.

The surest solution to the crisis would be to lift the celibacy requirement, say Catholic scholars such as Dean Hoge, a sociologist at the Catholic University of America in Washington.

``If celibacy were optional you'd have roughly a fourfold increase in seminarians, and the priest shortage would be over,'' said Hoge, who conducted a major study of Catholic undergraduates on the topic. ``How can you explain the fact that Protestant seminaries are full and the Catholic seminaries are empty?''

Even taking into account the large numbers of women enrolled in Protestant seminaries doesn't explain the discrepancy, Hoge said.

In the near future, bishops in this country will continue filling their altars in several cautious but controversial ways. They are importing priests from places such as Africa and the Philippines to serve as temporary assistant pastors. They are allowing married Episcopal priests disillusioned with their own church to lead Catholic parishes. In some dioceses, such as San Francisco, Baltimore and Boston, bishops are simply closing or consolidating parishes, often to the chagrin of parishioners heartsick to see their spiritual homes shuttered.

And, of course, more and more bishops are allowing lay people to step into leadership positions. Seventy-nine of the country's 174 dioceses have appointed nonpriests to head parishes, said Wallace, the George Washington University sociologist.

Some Catholic scholars are predicting that the more that parishioners witness married men and women effectively running their parishes, the more the Vatican will be forced to re-evaluate its insistence on an all-male celibate clergy.

``This papacy is more or less the last hurrah for an outmoded, outdated form of Catholicism,'' said sociologist Schoenner. ``The political processes are so powerful that it would take a very repressive regime to keep this from happening.'' He predicts that the current generation of churchgoers will see married clergy, and within a few generations the church will allow the ordination of women.

``The church has to ask itself,'' said the Rev. Thomas Sweetser, co-director of the Parish Evaluation Project in Des Plaines, Ill. ``What's more important - celibacy, or no Eucharist?''

``The church has to ask itself what's more important - celibacy, or no Eucharist?''