Organizing priests: a report from the trenches.

They meet over coffee and cookies in a church basement hall on a quiet weekday afternoon. They are a dozen priests, split about evenly between those active in ministry and former colleagues who left to get married years ago.

They are from the Rockville Centre, New York, diocese, not known as a hotbed of ecclesial discord. Comprising Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island, the diocese has enjoyed a quiet yet busy reputation, with giant parishes ministering to what was a growing postwar Catholic population boom in the suburbs. But these are very different times. Long Island has been hit particularly hard by the priest sexual-abuse scandal.

The dozen this afternoon belong to an organization viewed with suspicion in some church circles and hailed as revolutionary in others. It is the official gathering for Voice of the Ordained (VOTO), a group that has established itself in media accounts as the shock troops in the struggle to overturn mandatory celibacy in the Catholic priesthood. A petition initiated by a VOTO group in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee generated interest around the country.

There is, however, less of a scent of revolution and more than a hint of melancholy in this group. They range in age from about fifty to near the retirement age of seventy-five. One participant notes with irony that, among some diocesan officials and their younger colleagues, they are a generation viewed "as a failed experiment of Vatican II."

That doesn't dissuade them. They are still working for change in an atmosphere in which their bosses are determined to hold the line. Fr. Andrew P. Connolly, a former missionary in the Dominican Republic, has been active in national leadership opposing mandatory celibacy. One such newly hatched group, the Priest Forum for the Eucharist, grew out of the Milwaukee petition.

Connolly reports on a national VOTO meeting recently held in the Bronx that brought together priests from dioceses throughout the Midwest and the Northeast. He wants the anti-mandatory-celibacy campaign to focus on the justice of allowing adult men to establish marital relationships. But the campaign is now framed on the rights of the laity to receive the Eucharist during an era of priest shortages, an approach seen as a means to win support from Catholics in the pews who see the impact of the priest shortage on their parishes.

It is a few days before the church universal will hear the Sunday Scripture devoted to how Paul, in the Acts of the Apostles, worked to free gentile converts from the onerous regulations on circumcision and diet promulgated by the Jewish leadership of the early church. The men point to parallels in today's church.

One priest complains about "Opus Dei" bishops determined to enforce regulations about receiving the Eucharist that strike against Jesus' injunction repeated at Mass exhorting "take all of you and eat it." "These guys are using the very expression of unity to cut people off," says one man, who in popular terms would be known as a married former priest. The very presence of married inactive priests here is controversial. When this VOTO chapter was formed, there was serious debate over whether they should be allowed to join.

As the one in the group who has never been ordained, I come to the conclusion that the two categories involve men with very disparate agendas. The active priests are on the front lines; their married former colleagues can seem to offer only good wishes and advice.

Pastors in the group have the most immediate concerns. Bishop William F. Murphy, the local ordinary, is widely unpopular and has been the subject of much negative press ever since he came from the Boston archdiocese three years ago. He has refused to allow Voice of the Faithful, the lay reform group, to meet on church property. His expensively renovated house has been a contentious issue, and he has been tarred by his association with the now disgraced Cardinal Bernard Law. As a result, contributions to the diocesan appeal are harder to come by, and parish budgets are unlikely to see the help of large rebates delivered to churches that exceed their goals. One priest sees retrenchment on the horizon.

Another sees a bigger picture. He notes that the bishops in general seem blind to the growth of Evangelical churches that attract large numbers of former Catholics. The suggestion is that a renewed and married clergy might be able to provide the kinds of leadership needed, particularly in immigrant communities. Connolly notes that in 1950, the ratio of priests to Catholics in the United States was 1 to 652; now it is 1 to 1,276. Where he ministers to Spanish-speaking immigrants in the diocese, the ratio now is one priest for eighteen thousand Catholics. As a result, he says, many traditionally Catholic Hispanics are finding spiritual support in small Evangelical churches.

There is a pervading sense among the group that their calls for change are left unheeded by their younger colleagues. The much-commented-upon generation gap among Catholic priests--Fr. Andrew Greeley refers disparagingly to conservative "young fogeys"--is starkly evident in the conversation. In its short history, VOTO has attracted few younger priests. "Guys our age want to be monsignors," says one priest just on the junior side of fifty. "They want the plum parishes. They don't want to be associated with rebel groups." Others indicate that the generation gap between young conservatives and older priests shaped by Vatican II is about more than careerist caution. One participant reports that members of VOTO are casually referred to as "fucking faggot liberals" among some seminarians these days.

Of course, any serious discussion among priests today about their vocation has to deal with the sexual-abuse scandal. Fr. Thomas Gallagher, a pastor, notes that there is a huge chasm between a verbalized theology in which priests are regularly claimed to be brothers to one another and the bishop, and the post-Dallas policies enforced when priests come under fire. When accused, falsely or not, priests move from the category of brother to a distant independent operative.

Gallagher cites his own case. He was falsely accused of abuse, he says, suspended for ten days, and advised to find a civil and a canon lawyer. He had no idea where to find either, and no clue about the costs involved. The diocesan review board studied the charges and recommended his reinstatement, but the cloud of accusation lingers. His fellow priests note that, when such an accusation gets into the public realm, fully recovering a reputation is impossible. They express fear that, in the current church climate, false accusations will be made. They expect little support from their bosses.

Catholic clergy remain one of the most studied groups of all. This discussion reflects some of those findings. Greeley notes in his most recent book on the priesthood that American clergy generally love what they do and are generally happy with their lives. If one listens carefully, there is a hint of an activist sense of optimism amid the complaints uttered here. Dean Hoge, a sociologist at The Catholic University of America, says that the growing conservatism of younger priests--who are relatively few in number--clashes not only with their older colleagues but also with their parishioners, who have grown accustomed to a church where laypeople have a say. One priest at the VOTO meeting notes how far younger priests are from the attitudes of their cohorts in the wider culture, who have very different views about the role of women, among other issues.

The Long Island VOTO group, of course, remains an unrepresentative sampling, strongly tilted to the liberal--and perhaps, complaining--side. Still, the melancholy its members express, even if tempered by a belief that change is possible, is what many American priests feel about their vocation these days. The best one can hope for is that out of this crisis will come some unforeseen opportunities. Yet even that seems a long shot to one outsider listening to a dozen priests this spring afternoon.

Peter Feuerherd edits the independent paper, American Catholic, and is a freelance writer in New York.