Smells, bells & tension at Easter

In the Anglo-Catholic tradition, the last rites of Holy Week offer a procession of images both glorious and sobering – a drama painted in sacrament, scripture, incense, chants and candlelight, fading into the darkness of a tomb.

It is a time for soul searching. That will certainly be the case this year for Father David L. Moyer of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Rosemont, a sanctuary for Anglican traditionalists on the Philadelphia mainline. He chose to go on retreat at a convent, rather than enduring the pain of watching these services from a pew.

"I am a liturgical nut and I am not the kind of person who can just watch," he said. "I just couldn't take that emotionally, right now. I'd be thinking, 'Now we need to do this' and 'Now it's time to do that.' It would be agonizing, not being at the altar."

Moyer cannot serve at the altar for a simple reason – Pennsylvania Bishop Charles E. Bennison, Jr., has forbidden him to do so. The bishop has "inhibited" Moyer from his sacred duties, and is proceeding toward deposing him as a priest, because the rector of Good Shepherd has repeatedly denied Bennison the right to preach and celebrate the Eucharist in the parish.

Why would a priest risk his career by locking out his bishop?

"Charles Bennison has removed himself from the church," said Moyer. "He has stepped outside the borders of the ancient Christian faith and of the Anglican tradition. ... I would say that he is in fact a heretic, a false teacher."

Both sides agree there is more to this standoff than power, $2 million in endowment money and the keys to a beautiful Gothic edifice. The bishop and his acolytes believe Moyer wants to split the diocese and the U.S. Episcopal Church. They note that Moyer leads the North American branch of Forward in Faith, a global network of Anglican conservatives.

Also, Moyer is a candidate to become an at-large bishop for traditionalists nationwide, following an upcoming election and consecration that would be held without the blessing of the American hierarchy. Moyer has strong ties to Third World archbishops and is scheduled to meet with several only days before a tense April 10-18 gathering of the Anglican primates in Canterbury.

Doctrine is at stake, too. Moyer responded to Bennison's March 1 "inhibition of ministry" letter with a letter urging the bishop to defuse the crisis by publicly affirming four ancient Christian doctrines. These were the uniqueness of Jesus as "the only way to obtaining eternal salvation," his "bodily Resurrection," the "supremacy of the Holy Scriptures as the inspired Word of God" and that "sexual intimacy and genital relations are only properly expressed in a monogamous, heterosexual marital union."

Bennison has not responded even though he is an outspoken, articulate advocate of changing church teachings on sex and salvation. During a 1997 forum, which was taped, the bishop was asked why he could embrace such sweeping doctrinal revisions. The church wrote the Bible, he responded. "Because we wrote the Bible, we can rewrite it."

Meanwhile, the diocesan standing committee has stated the obvious: no bishop wants to have the rector of a powerful parish publicly calling him a heretic.

"A diocese cannot function without mutual love and respect for duly instituted authority," stated the committee, in its report calling for disciplinary action against Moyer. "Since a Bishop's authority is sacramental, a parish must receive its Bishop to preside at the Holy Eucharist for it to be in communion with the Bishop. The parish must be in communion with the Bishop to be in communion with the diocese. The parish must be in communion with its diocese in order to be in communion with the Episcopal Church and, through it, the Anglican Communion at large."

But for Moyer, modern laws and ecclesiastical structures are not as important as the Bible and centuries of church tradition. Without a common core of doctrine, there can be no communion, he said. That is why he will fight on, even if that means sitting in a pew this Easter.

"I believe that souls are at risk. I really do believe that," he said. "We cannot stand by and watch people being led into hell."

Next year in Jerusalem?

Germany has the world's fastest-growing Jewish population.

One of Judaism's hottest schools of spiritual renewal has its roots in Argentina.

Jews in Atlanta set out to raise $25 million and ended up with $50 million, including nearly $5 million poured into the project by Coca-Cola – a corporate pillar of the old Protestant South.

These are snapshots of modern Judaism. Get used to it.

"Obviously, when people think of Judaism they think of Israel and that's as it should be," said journalist Larry Tye, author of a provocative travelogue entitled "Home Lands: Portraits of the New Jewish Diaspora."

"But right now, anyone who wants to see what is happening in Judaism needs to look outside of Israel. If you just focus on Israel, you can't see the big picture."

When Tye talks about the diaspora, he is referring to Jewish communities that exist and often thrive outside of Israel. While Israel remains the unique homeland, the Boston Globe veteran is convinced most Jews increasingly feel at home in a wide variety of lands. In fact, the diaspora Jewish communities have "more in common with each other than with the Jewish state as they search for spiritual and religious meaning in a largely non-Jewish world."

Nevertheless, the Passover Seders that start next week – the season begins Wednesday at sundown – will end with Jewish believers reciting this vow: "Next year in Jerusalem!"

"The words will stay the same, but the meaning is changing," said Tye. "Most Jews don't want to move to Jerusalem. They are doing just fine where they are."

If Tye sounds upbeat about modern Judaism, that's because he is. While researching his book, he traveled from Germany to Ukraine, from Argentina to Ireland, and from France to the United States – the Bible-Belt South as well as the urban Northeast.

But he knows many do not share his optimism. Debates about the health of Judaism have been driven by two statistics – soaring intermarriage rates and the falling numbers of Jews in pews. There are 20 percent fewer Jews today than when the Holocaust began. Then again, notes Tye, there are three times as many Jews right now than there were a century before the Holocaust.

"Everything I heard said that these numbers were going way down and that they would keep going down," he said, during a South Florida pilgrimage. "Yet I kept visiting Jewish communities around the world and what I was seeing with my own eyes was not jibing with what I was hearing. ... I know that the bad news stories are real. But there is good news out there, too."

Yes, an infamous 1990 survey of American Jews found that the rate of Jews marrying non-Jews had topped 50 percent. Then again, researchers found that the intermarriage rate had actually fallen 10 percent among those who openly claimed and practiced their Jewish faith.

Here's another Tye snapshot. Half of Atlanta's Jews have no ties that bind them to any Jewish institution. That's bad. But the other half of the Jewish community is so active in worship and educational activities that it seems everyone is building a new synagogue. That's good.

"Where does that leave us? The overall number of Jews probably will continue to decline, while many of those at the periphery will continue drifting away to atheism, Buddhism or nothing at all," according to Tye. Yet wherever he traveled, Jewish leaders rejoiced at the growth of their cultural and, yes, even their religious programs. When asked about the future, Jewish leaders around the world recited variations on this mantra: "Fewer Jews, but better Jews."

Tye is convinced this surge in diaspora energy and innovation will eventually lead to changes in Israel. After all, there are four times as many Israelis living in America as there are American Jews living in Israel. New ideas flow both ways, now.

"Again we see the role of the diaspora in Judaism today," he said. "Israel is increasingly looking to the diaspora to learn how to have a healthy, pluralistic Jewish community. ... For many modern Jews, Israel has come to represent hierarchy and law. Meanwhile, life in the diaspora has come to represent the freedom of the individual and a kind of creative chaos."

Fathers, mothers & Catholic sons, Part II

Few Catholic boys grow up to be men of the cloth without drawing inspiration from their parish priests and receiving the blessing of their mothers.

Both halves of that equation have to work or the church suffers.

"When you talk about how young men enter the priesthood, you are talking about the future of the church," said Father Donald B. Cozzens, former vicar for clergy in the Diocese of Cleveland and then rector of a graduate seminary in Ohio. "At some point, it becomes terribly important what Catholic parents – especially mothers – think of their priests."

Find a young priest and you will almost always find a find a mother who wanted him to be a priest, like the priests she has known and trusted.

That's how it's supposed to work. Several decades worth of sex scandals involving clergy and children – usually teen-aged boys – have not helped. But there are other tensions, as well. In his influential 2000 book, "The Changing Face of the Priesthood," Cozzens pleads for frank talk about other painful issues, as well as the sexual abuse of young males.

Priests face skyrocketing demands on their time as church membership rises and the number of priests declines. Priests live and work under the microscope, yet they also report feeling isolated from their flocks and from each other. Lately, Cozzens has been hearing about priests who – lashed by scandal and suspicion – have stopped wearing clerical clothing while not "at work." The stares and whispers are too painful.

And there is another sexual secret that is making these issues harder to discuss, he said. In his book's most quoted chapter, Cozzens cites reports claiming 50 percent of U.S. Catholic priests are gay, with the numbers higher among those under 40 years of age. This "gay subculture" grew in the past three decades, as 20,000 or more priests left their altars to get married.

Cozzens is not opposed to celibate gays being ordained and he thinks most priests – gay and straight – are serving the church faithfully and keeping their vows. Nevertheless, he is convinced this gay subculture is affecting who is becoming a priest and who is not. Why is this?

In previous generations it was homosexuals who often felt alone and out of place in Catholic seminaries, living in a shadow culture. Today, discreet networks of gay priests thrive in seminaries and dioceses from coast to coast, said Cozzens. It's common for heterosexuals to feel confused, misunderstood and left out. Many question their calling and flee.

Meanwhile, he said, it's "likely that gay priests will be encouraging, consciously or unconsciously, more homosexually oriented men than straight men to consider a vocation to the priesthood. Conversely, homosexually oriented men considering a priestly vocation will be especially drawn to a parish priest who happens to be gay."

Cozzens said the "likelihood exists that like will be drawn to like." Once again, he said he does not believe gay priests are more likely to break celibacy vows than are straight priests.

It's also past time, he said, for Catholic leaders to start talking about how the changing face of the priesthood is affecting relationships between priests and parents. It would help to stop and consider a mother's point of view.

"Perceptive mothers may sense that something is different about the pastor ... who happens to be gay," Cozzens noted. "They may indeed like and respect the priest, but find they are not comfortable in encouraging their son to consider the priesthood."

This attitude shift is especially significant when combined with a major statistical change in Catholic life. In the past, when large families were the norm, it was a matter of pride to have a son enter religious life. But what if most Catholic families contain only one son?

"When it has become normal to have two children or less, you are not going to find many parents who are encouraging a son – especially an only son – to become a priest," said Cozzens. "They want him to get married, to have grandchildren and carry on the family name. ...

"So there are fewer sons and there are more mothers who are asking hard questions."

Fathers, mothers & Catholic sons, Part I

The Chicago news was full of sex, children and Roman collars.

This wasn't part of the first national "Sins of the Fathers" furor in the mid-1980s. This was the early 1990s and the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago eventually opened its files on all 2,252 priests who had served in the previous four decades. The powers that be hunted for pedophiles and they found one.

The key word is "one." One priest had been accused of assaulting a prepubescent child. The other allegations involved priests and sexually mature, but under-age, adolescents – mostly boys.

"Those Chicago numbers are not unusual. This is, in fact, part of a pattern we see in diocese after diocese," said Father Donald B. Cozzens, former vicar for clergy in Cleveland and then rector of a graduate seminary in Ohio.

"Of course, any abuse of children is horrifying and it is just as wrong – morally and legally – when sexual abuse occurs with teen-agers. But it isn't helping matters, right now, for people to keep blurring the lines between these two conditions. This isn't just about pedophilia."

Debates about sexuality and the priesthood will only heat up, if that is possible, now that a crucial Vatican voice has spoken. A close aide to Pope John Paul II told the New York Times that it's time to slow or even stop the flow of gays into the priesthood. "People with these inclinations just cannot be ordained," said psychiatrist Joaquin Navarro-Valls.

Cozzens stressed that he agrees with researchers who believe sexual orientation is irrelevant in discussions of pedophilia. But what if pedophilia is not the issue?

By definition, pedophiles are sexually attracted to boys and girls who have not reached puberty. But Cozzens said reports he has studied, and his own experience as a counselor, indicate the more common problem among Catholic clergy is "ephebophilia." This is recurrent, intense sexual interest in post-pubescent young people – teen-agers.

The term "ephebophilia" is rarely used in church debates and the press. Yet, Cozzens said that whenever clergy vicars held conferences 90 percent of the sex-abuse cases they discussed fell into this category. Church authorities are reluctant to investigate this reality.

Why this conspicuous silence?

"Perhaps it is feared that it will call attention to the disproportionate number of gay priests," wrote Cozzens, in his influential "The Changing Face of the Priesthood," published in 2000. "While homosexually oriented people are no more likely to be drawn to misconduct with minors than straight people, our own experiences was clear and, I believe, significant. Most priest offenders, we vicars agreed, acted out against teenage boys."

In his most controversial chapter, Cozzens quotes reports claiming about 50 percent of U.S. Catholic priests are gay, with the numbers higher among priests younger than 40. Talk of a "gay subculture" grew in recent decades as 20,000 men left the priesthood to get married.

The seminary climate changed - radically. Cozzens cited a survey in which 60 percent of one seminary's students identified themselves as gay, 20 percent were "confused about their sexual identity" and 20 percent said they were heterosexual.

Cozzens concluded: "Should our seminaries become significantly gay, and many seasoned observers find them to be precisely that, the priesthood of the 21st century will likely be perceived as a predominantly gay profession."

This is the proverbial elephant in the sanctuary that few bishops want to discuss.

Cozzens said that, along with many other researchers, he does not see a direct link between homosexual orientation and sexual abuse. Yet the cloud of secrecy and denial that swirls around the gay subculture makes it hard to discuss urgent issues – such as ephebophilia.

"Pedophilia is a totally different kind of sickness and it can't really be treated," he said. "You simply have to do what you can to help the abuser and then make sure all future contact with children is cut off. There is no other way. ...

"But there are many bishops out there who, for a variety of reasons, have been convinced that priests can be successfully treated and reassigned to other parishes if the sexual contact was with teen-agers. Now, that belief is being shaken."