A New Breed of Priest

[Fast_ed75]

It’s hard to miss Father Marcos Gonzalez, who wears an ankle-length black cassock every day, a garment most priests tossed out decades ago. But it’s not just his clothes that bespeak an older, more traditional era of his Roman Catholic Church. When some priests spoke in favor of optional celibacy at a Los Angeles priest assembly last year — a position supported by most American Catholics today — Gonzalez booed in dissent. In premarital counseling, he tells couples to remain chaste until marriage, plunging into delicate territory some priests prefer to avoid. Gonzalez also believes artificial birth control and gay sex are always a sin and opposes women’s ordination.

Such stances conform with Vatican teachings, he says, but are at odds with many American priests and lay people.

Yet Gonzalez, an associate pastor at St. Andrew Church in Pasadena, is hardly a relic from a fading past. At 41, he offers one glimpse of the future as a member of a new breed of younger priests ordained during the 25-year papacy of Pope John Paul II and passionately committed to the pope’s orthodox teachings.

As the health of John Paul — now 84 and the third-longest serving pontiff in history — continues to falter, men like Gonzalez stand ready to guard and propagate his legacy. They represent a global trend toward Christian orthodoxy, in contrast to a generation of more liberal priests ordained during the 1960s reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

“We are very, very faithful to the Holy Father and not in any way dissenting from the teachings of the church,” Gonzalez says of like-minded colleagues.

The emergence of these young conservatives has set off a flurry of studies, books and debate about what effect they will have on the nation’s 62 million Roman Catholics, its largest religious denomination.

Father Richard John Neuhaus, president of the conservative Institute on Religion and Public Life, says the new breed will reinvigorate the church with youthful enthusiasm, “radical devotion” and a willingness to proclaim church teachings without equivocation.

Others, however, see troublesome times ahead. Dean Hoge, a sociologist at Catholic University of America in Washington, sees a potential clash between younger priests’ emphasis on the pope’s authority and younger laity’s view of themselves as fit to make their own moral choices.

Linda Pieczynski, national spokeswoman for the liberal Catholic reform group Call to Action, said that in parishes across the country, young conservatives have reportedly adopted an old-style “father knows best” attitude and made abrupt changes without adequate consultation with lay members. Women lay ministers in particular say many newly ordained priests have difficulty accepting them as colleagues, showing a lack of respect and excessive concern for power and authority, according to a 2001 study by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Although the young conservatives are still some years away from becoming candidates for bishop, they are beginning to move into the ranks of pastor, where their orthodoxy may drive parish policy changes.

According to Hoge, priests ordained during John Paul’s papacy now make up 32% of the nation’s 43,600 Roman Catholic priests. Not all of them reflect the trend toward orthodoxy.

In general, however, the “John Paul priests” are less supportive than older colleagues of optional celibacy, women priests, the democratic elections of bishops and greater lay leadership, according to numerous surveys.

They show less tolerance for dissent against church teachings. And they are more apt to favor greater use of Latin prayers, special vestments, bells and other traditional touches to restore a sense of sacredness to the liturgy, Hoge says.

Hoge also found higher morale and job satisfaction among the young priests.

Source: latimes.com/news/local/la-me-priest31jul31,1,3550473.story?coll=la-home-headlines

 

[Fast_ed75]

Gonzalez, for instance, recently held three classes of St. Andrew students spellbound during a pitch promoting the virtues of religious life. With candor and humor, he chronicled dramatic days of literally dealing with the lives and deaths of parishioners, answered questions about sex with aplomb and proclaimed that his was the best job in the world.

“If I had 10 different lifetimes, I would choose every one to be a priest,” he told the students.

Gonzalez seems to meld modernity and tradition in the same way he wears hip wraparound sunglasses with an old-fashioned cassock. Unlike older priests who often complain about what they saw as the church’s imperious rigidity before Vatican II, he says, priests like himself grew up amid social uncertainty and find beauty and solace in the church’s 2,000-year-old disciplines.

That “search for a solid rock” is cited by Hoge and other researchers as one of the reasons many young priests today are more discernibly conservative. Other reasons cited include John Paul’s influence and more active recruitment by orthodox bishops and seminaries.

Gonzalez, for instance, grew up in a small village outside Havana, in the aftermath of Cuba’s Communist revolution. Other priests also recall social and economic uncertainty as they came of age in America at a time of rising divorce and moral relativism.

The Catholic Church was also undergoing vast changes. Priests and nuns were quitting in droves, liturgies were being dramatically transformed and dissent over church teachings began to intensify.

Into this tempest came two figures of rock-solid traditional views and charismatic, decisive leadership: John Paul as pope in 1978 and Ronald Reagan as U.S. president in 1980.

“These became two pivotal figures for me as a teen: John Paul in my church life and Ronald Reagan in my civil life,” Gonzalez says.

Both men took strong stands against communism, which Gonzalez had suffered from firsthand. His father’s three grocery stores in Cuba were confiscated by the government, and the family eked out a living at sugarcane mills. Gonzalez remembers holes in his shoes and often being hungry.

Under Fidel Castro’s rule, catechism classes were forbidden. Gonzalez never attended Mass as a child and learned whatever he could about the faith from his parents. That, however, changed in 1971 when his family immigrated to Southern California, sponsored by an aunt. A neighbor saw him playing outside his Atwater Village home and invited him to Mass.

Gonzalez says he was captivated by the ritual celebration’s power and sacredness. He began going to Mass every week, received his first communion and became an altar server. In middle school, he began thinking about becoming a priest.

In 1981, he entered St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo right after high school. The experience, he says, was filled with conflict.

His class of about four dozen men, mostly conservative, challenged the more liberal faculty. The young seminarians asked for uniforms, more discipline and more group devotions such as the rosary. The students also asked for more of John Paul’s teachings in class.

“The faculty gave the perception that they were suspicious of this pope and that somehow he was turning back the clock,” Gonzalez says. “We were perceived to be in line with the pope, so we were also viewed with suspicion.” Weary of the conflict and hoping to help support his parents financially, Gonzalez left the seminary for four years. In 1991, after a stint with a hospital trade association, he returned to the seminary and found the instruction far more balanced. He was ordained in 1994. (Los Angeles archdiocesan spokesman Tod Tamberg said he could not speak directly about seminary changes during that time, but that robust debate is a “healthy, normal dynamic that should be found in any seminary.”)

 

[stellina]

Thank God for these priests! I heard about this trend on EWTN, and I hope it’s not merely a trend but a return to orthodoxy & tradition. I’m the same age as Father Gonzalez & I can safely say that most Catholics I know that are my age & younger want orthodoxy throughout the Church, not just the priesthood. It’s not that we’re a bunch of malcontent neo-conservatives that want everything to return to the “good old days” before Vatican II, but rather that we expect the laws of the Church (including VII) & its traditions to be upheld (& in some cases restored).

When I started going to Europe on a regular basis several years ago, I was struck by the frequent sight of young priests in cassocks. I have fond memories of the pastor of my childhood church, a tough old Irishman who was even buried in his cassock. However, I doubt if he would have worn baseball caps with it like some of the fellows I saw in Rome!