Don't give the priest shortage the silent treatment: fear of Vatican reprisals has contributed to a conspiracy, of silence about the decline in vocations, but we need brave bishops who won't ignore the elephant in our rectory living rooms. At least one priest says, "It's time for us to talk." (sounding board).

I DON'T THINK ANYONE WOULD QUESTION THAT ONE OF the most serious problems the Catholic Church faces in our day is the shortage of priests. It has reached crisis proportions. More than 100,000 priests have left the active ministry during the past 25 years, some 20,000 from the United States alone. And they are not being replaced in sufficient numbers to staff our parishes. Ordinations have dropped by 90 percent.

In addition, our priests who have remained active have grown older and more weary. Their median age has moved from the 40s to the late 50s. In one large city diocese, the number of priests over 71--the retirement age--is five times the number of those who are under 40. And the pressures on our aging priests are growing heavier by the day. It's not uncommon to hear good priests say, "I don't know how much longer I can keep up this pace."

Unfortunately, the morale of priests has also reached a new low. And they are most discouraged by the fact that the hierarchy of the church does not seem to be facing the problem with openness and honesty. Priests wonder, "What could possibly be the reason for this conspiracy of silence?"

Why not openly explore the major reasons for the crisis? The vast majority of priests who have left the active ministry were fine priests, men who did not want to resign. Certainly the hundreds of them with whom I have worked in counseling and group therapy were men who deeply loved the priesthood as well as their work with the people. Their only reason for leaving was that they had fallen in love and wanted to marry. If the Vatican had allowed them to remain as married priests, they would be active priests to this day.

Mandatory celibacy also is the reason why so many of our young men fail to choose the priesthood today. They don't lack generosity. On the contrary, many of them opt for working with the Peace Corps or with other organizations. Others choose teaching, social work, or another form of service. They want to serve, but they also want a life of their own.

THIS CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE, OF COURSE, COMES DIRECTLY from the Vatican, which has put a ban on all discussion of celibacy as the cause of the vocation crisis. And the U.S. bishops, out of loyalty to the pope, have strictly enforced that ban, leaving their priests and their people unbelievably frustrated and wondering how any problem can be solved if one cannot investigate what causes it.

In fairness to the Vatican, I feel sure that there is no lack of sincerity on the part of the pope or his curia. They understand that the desire for marriage and family is such a powerful force in our human nature that they dare not open the door to an honest discussion of celibacy for fear there would be an overwhelming demand for a change in that discipline. But a problem is never solved by pretending it doesn't exist.

Can we imagine how differently the chief executives of General Motors or IBM would act if they faced a similar situation in their companies--if they were losing a large percentage of their junior executives and couldn't attract sufficient replacements? The chief executive and board of directors would immediately call back those who had left and ask them their reasons for leaving. Was their salary insufficient? Did they feel that their chances for advancement were too slim? Did they feel that the executive staff was overly controlling? No reason would be ruled out of discussion. If there were a crisis, they would try to get to the bottom of it.

Yet in the Catholic Church there is no comparable approach. There is no outreach to the thousands of resigned priests, no professional investigation to determine the cause. On the contrary, there is a demand for silence.

What is truly amazing, however, is the mass compliance to the Vatican's directive on the part of the bishops of the world. The bishops, after all, are on the front lines of this crisis. They experience firsthand the struggle of their priests, the deprivation of their people in the thousands of parishes with only one or no resident priest, and the frightful fact that the crisis is growing worse every day.

The vast majority of our bishops--certainly all the bishops whom I know personally--are very good men, sincere, hardworking, priestly men. They are men who would make any sacrifice--including their hope of advancement--in order to serve their priests and people in the best possible way.

Then why do the bishops seem to be powerless? The late Bishop Raymond Lucker of New Ulm, Minnesota answered this question very succinctly. He said, "The bishops are constantly in fear looking over their shoulders."

Fear of what? I believe their real fear is the fear of blame. The moment we sense that blame is coming to us--the moment, for example, that anyone questions our words or actions--our defense mechanisms immediately spring into high gear. Our bishops, being human beings with the same psychological makeup as the rest of us, are just as uncomfortable as we are when they are blamed. And, of course, their fear is even more powerful when the blame will come from the highest authority in the church, from one they sincerely believe is the Vicar of Christ. I believe our bishops have an absolute dread of a reprimand from Rome--a dread so strong that it can drown out even their honest concern for their higher obligation: the needs of their priests and people.

OUR BISHOPS KNOW THAT THE LAW OF CELIBACY IS NOT A divine law. Instead of enhancing the preaching of the gospel for which it was originally intended, when made a priestly requirement at the Second Lateran Council in 1139--celibacy has now become a hindrance to that divinely appointed mission. And so, like all laws that have outlived their usefulness, the bishops realize that it should be changed. But, sadly, most of them do not express that conviction openly. They are afraid.

Our bishops are not bad men. But they fall below the ideal when they fail to acknowledge their fear, because then it is their fear that determines their decisions rather than their courage and their duty to their people. As the great Belgian Cardinal Leo Josef Suenens lamented when the bishops at the Second Vatican Council were intimidated by the Vatican curia: "Caution is everywhere. Courage is nowhere. And soon we shall all die of prudence!"

If our bishops are to overcome their dread of blame, they have to be convinced that their choice to help their priests and people is a much more noble choice than to obey an unfortunate directive from Rome. Then, even under the scalding fire of criticism, they will have the consolation of knowing that they are noble men--men who can stand shoulder to shoulder with Saint Thomas More, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Father John Courtney Murray--brave men who faced the terror of blame rather than betray their principles.

My fervent hope is that some of our bishops will take this giant first step of inviting open and honest discussion about this imminent crisis of the shortage of active priests--including what appears to be its most probable cause, the law of mandatory celibacy.

These courageous bishops will certainly face blame from the Vatican and from some of their fellow bishops. There will be cries of "disloyalty" and "schism." But I hope that these brave men will find consolation in realizing that they can never really be disloyal to the Vatican when they are being loyal to Jesus and to the needs of their people.