PRISON MINISTRY : Are Catholics being locked out?

A sign reading "Assembly" marks the room where inmates worship at Boston's Suffolk County House of Corrections. George Williams, S.J., the prison chaplain and a religious brother, is trying to get the prison administration to change it to "Chapel." But he worries more about losing the room altogether.

Williams's problems provide a metaphor for the questions facing Catholic prison ministry today. As the number of Catholic priests dwindles and prison ministry becomes the province of professional lay ministers, will the ministry lose its Catholic character? In the last fifteen years, the number of priests in the United States has declined by more than ten thousand; and the number of religious men and women has dropped by some thirty-two thousand. During the same period, the prison population has grown by more than a million. Today, we have 1.86 million people in prison. If the present rate of growth continues, there will be 2 million by the end of 2001.

These numbers suggest two things: prison ministry is ever more needed, and there are fewer priests to meet the need. In 1980, all but two members of the American Catholic Correctional Chaplains Association (ACCCA) were ordained priests. Today, of its 183 members, 39 percent are ordained priests, 20 percent laypeople, 19 percent permanent deacons, 19 percent religious sisters, and 3 percent religious brothers. Out of the priest shortage is emerging the new institutional chaplain, with attendant changes in prison ministry. Increasingly, whether priests or not, chaplains are hired and supervised as state or federal government employees. A priest who is hired as a chaplain is responsible both to the government and to his bishop, but a lay prison chaplain is subject only to secular authority.

As the laity increasingly take up this work, the term "chaplain" has required clarification. A 1997 Vatican document (Some Questions Regarding Collaboration of Nonordained Faithful in Priests' Sacred Ministry) restricted the term to clergy, but the United States bishops have concluded that, given the title's unique history here, common usage does not create a confusion between an ordained priest and the lay minister. Even so, some dioceses require that prison chaplains be ordained.

In certain respects, lay ministers and ordained deacons have an advantage over priests in counseling prisoners. Married chaplains with children can offer seasoned advice to prisoners trying to hold their families together. Massachusetts chaplain Deacon "Buzz" Taylor and his wife Mary observe that inmates view them in a parental role--probably the first such positive contact many have had. In addition to counseling, chaplains also provide religious education and services, do administrative work like recruiting and training volunteers, visit sick inmates, assist correctional staff, and promote community relations.

What lay chaplains cannot do is say Mass, anoint the sick, and absolve sin after confession. Instead of Mass, lay Catholic chaplains lead Communion services. But the sacrament of reconciliation, conceivably the most relevant comfort the church can provide prisoners, is not available where priests are absent. And, although prison communities are rife with mental illness, drug addiction, HIV, and AIDS, the opportunity to receive the sacrament of the sick is all too rare. This lack of access to the sacraments reduces a specifically Catholic presence in a setting that inherently strips away denominational considerations as chaplains try to respond to the naked claims of the human person.

The increase in lay chaplains poses real challenges to the local church. Unless there is strategic thinking about how lay chaplains and diocesan officials communicate, the church is in danger of losing touch with the reality of prison life. The priest's attachment to a diocese encourages the flow of information; that communication is vital to the church's ability to comment upon and change prison conditions. Currently, each diocese manages its own demands for prison chaplains. Individual bishops display varying degrees of interest, measured in commitment of personnel, episcopal visits, and diocesan support for prison outreach. A visit by a member of the hierarchy can have a galvanizing effect on prison officials. "They are all afraid of the man in the red dress," one chaplain says. Can the bishop's interest--and the prison's attention--be sustained without priestly prodding?

During a period that has seen the burgeoning of the prison populations, diocesan response has been especially important, given that the United States Catholic Conference (USCC) is focused on ending capital punishment. Mandatory sentencing, coupled with cuts in rehabilitative services and a new societal determination that emphasizes punishment rather than rehabilitation all deserve greater scrutiny and comment from the USCC. The conference is expected to issue a statement on criminal justice this November--its first since the late '70s.

The USCC has an important role to play in developing a national strategy to deal with these issues. The shortage of priests has resulted in a lack of prison ministry in some areas; for other institutions, a collection of pinch-hitting priests are brought from their regular pastoral duties solely to say Mass. The Federal Bureau of Prisons, for example, which manages one hundred institutions, employs only sixty full-time chaplains. Forty-two "contractor" priests serve the remaining institutions. State institutions are similarly affected.

In Oregon, Father Jim Jacobson is the only priest employed by the Oregon Department of Corrections as a chaplain; he serves with a lay Catholic chaplain. But Oregon is fortunate in that each prison has at least one staff chaplain (of varying Protestant denominations). A Religious Services Division gives chaplains needed clout within correctional facilities. At the other extreme, Colorado, with no state-paid chaplains, has one administrator (Protestant) who recruits an uneven group of interdenominational volunteers and contract workers. Despite the contribution that volunteers make, many are untrained, sometimes unreliable or naive, and are not trusted by Corrections employees. Furthermore, they are typically barred from areas where ministry is most needed: maximum security prisons, solitary confinement blocks, and twenty-three-hour lockdowns. In too many states, says Jacobson, who also serves as president of the ACCCA, "we don't even have people to do Communion services."

"Prison ministry represents the only refuge that prisoners have," says Timothy Wilson, a former Massachusetts inmate. He means not only emotionally and spiritually but also physically. Church services are the one place that an inmate is safe from bodily assault. Prison ministers offer inmates hope and a path to redemption in a grim and hopeless place. And then there is life after prison. More than 95 percent of inmates are eventually set free--585,000 state and federal prisoners this year alone. The Justice Department estimates that 62 percent of these former inmates will be charged with new crimes and 239,000 returned to jail within three years. That so many return to jail suggests how desperately an expanded church witness is needed.

Our understaffed parishes have many claims on sacramental and pastoral resources. Faithful Catholics stand in line for attention as they baptize their children, marry, struggle with divorce, fall sick, and die. The poor, the homeless, refugees, victims of violence--all need the church's aid and succor. Will prisoners, the least among us, continue to receive the counsel and sacraments they so desperately need? Will the church support prison ministry? Will it continue to engage society on the issues inherent in prison ministry?

Kathleen Reagan is a writer and a former assistant district attorney for Plymouth County in Massachusetts.