Where are we going.

Joseph P. Fitzpatrick, S.J., died on March 15. From labor priest to pioneer for Spanish-speaking migrants, this scholar and activist expressed "a unity of person and purpose," as his homilist, Joseph O'Hare, S.J., said, that graced the church, the City of New York, and the tens of thousands who encountered him as presider, professor, sociologist, and advocate for the poor.

His death and funeral Mass came as this issue of Commonweal was wending its way to the printer - a providential reminder of the priestly vocation gracefully lived. For the articles and reviews in the following pages - though remembering great churchmen Robert Hovda, Michael Kenny, John Tracy Ellis, John England - clearly reflect the troubles of the priesthood. Priests today report that they often feel demoralized by overwork and scandal, while to the rest of us, the future of the priesthood seems ever more precarious. The media and other segments of the larger society, sometimes including Catholics, have made the priest an incomprehensible figure, and an object of fun or scorn (see, Richard Alleva's review of Priest, page 22). In these difficult circumstances, the life of Father Fitzpatrick reminds us of what a glorious calling he answered, of the great good he did, and of how light the burden seemed in a life filled with such grace and intelligence.

Too often we forget his kind in the midst of a heated and very badly skewed discussion.

What are the problems? Richard Schoenherr looks at the demographics of priests and people (see, page 11). The downward trajectory of ordained ministers continues and so does the upward trajectory of the American Catholic population. By 2005, Schoenherr writes, there will be only about 21,000 active diocesan clergy, 40 percent fewer than the 35,000 in 1966. More dramatic than plain numbers is the ratio, which begins to suggest the workload parish priests will bear: the ratio of people to priest in 2005 will have nearly doubled to 2,200 active Catholics per priest (it was 1,100 to one in 1975).

Schoenherr's essay looks at causes and consequences, at structures and attitudes, at resistance and reform. No predictions about the next decade or the one after are foolproof or free of preferences. Schoenherr's preferences are clear. They are also the preferences of the vast majority of American Catholics: "the time for [male] celibate exclusivity has run out." But except for a few courageous bishops, the episcopacy follows Rome and refuses to address the problem, at least publicly. Interim remedies are adopted; some tasks and reponsibilities are shifted to lay women and men; and prayers are offered for an increase in vocations to the celibate priesthood. As Schoenherr sees it, the whole church faces a complex problem: there is the problem itself; then, the struggle to define the problem; and finally, the denial that a problem exists, followed by efforts to suppress any discussion.

One result is that expectations of change sprout untamed and unpruned: Not only will married men be ordained, but women will as well; former priests, now married, will be welcomed back to ministry; celibacy will become a marginal and purely individual choice within a church where a married clergy becomes the norm; etc. Such "solutions" are "agreed upon" by almost everyone before there has been public acknowledgment by the hierarchy that continuation of the celibate priesthood as we know it has become highly unlikely.

Commonweal has editorialized over the years in favor of a married clergy and does not grasp the barriers the Vatican raises to the ordination of women. Our position has not changed. Along with many American Catholics, we assume that time, local conditions, common sense, and the Holy Spirit will move us along. And yet..., we acknowledge a troubling paradox in settling on the ready and seemingly obvious solutions.

Expectations of change grow exponentially while the possibilities remain so limited. What are they? Look to our common Christian tradition: In the Orthodox church a man is permitted to marry only before ordination, while bishops are drawn from a small pool of celibate men, often monks. This two-tiered clerical status excludes most priests from the episcopacy. Is this a happy alternative to the Roman practice? The Anglican Communion and many Protestant denominations have both married bishops and women priests, but all of them are grappling with declining numbers and a crisis of evangelization. Is this the road the Catholic church should follow? Don't we see here a crisis of leadership far deeper than will be resolved by the marital status or gender of the clergy?

Why do we think that a married clergy or women priests and bishops will resolve the dilemma confronting the church in an age deeply antithetical to both hierarchy and sacramentalism? The contradictions between our individual, everyday experience - which places such a premium on self-determination, self-reliance, and self-"fulfillment" - and the profoundly communal dying to self" to which the church calls us, lie deeper than issues of gender equality and require a more detached evaluation of the witness of celibacy than most of us are able to summon easily.

The Christian churches, including the Catholic one, are plagued today by a diminished sense of the transcendent and an ever-enlarging sense of the immanent: we are full of the human meaning of God and of creation; drawn hither and yon by the effort to be relevant. The priestly state is not the only one that carries a sense of the transcendent. Still, the current decline in the number of Catholic priests in Europe and the United States invites a form of bean-counting that leads to a seemingly obvious solution: allow priests to marry, and ordain women. Aren't these steps that should be called for on their own terms and on their own merits, not simply because we have run out of one kind of priestly candidate and must recruit another? We wonder whether reformers, having latched onto the priest shortage as a prod, do not still need to enter a deeper level of reflection about the priesthood and the future of the church with some of the larger contradictions between theology and culture in mind. After all, Rome's dismaying inaction gives us plenty of time.

Some people have found a tension in the writings of Vatican II between the egalitarian overtones of the "People of God" and the unique role the priesthood plays in the church's hierarchical structure. Lumen gentium speaks of how the People of God "in its inner structure is composed of various ranks .... Each individual part of the church contributes through its special gifts to the good of the other parts and of the whole church" [13]. In this view, the priest is "set apart" - and is seen to be set apart by celibacy and his sacerdotal power - as a sign of holiness for the people as a whole. As Catholics know better than most, ordination is far from a guarantor of personal holiness or pastoral integrity, nor are only male celibates capable of making Christ present to the world.

In contemplating the future of the priesthood, we should be on guard against collapsing these tensions between the immanent and the transcendent, between clergy and laity, which so characteristically shape the Catholic experience. The holy lives that have sprung from honoring this paradox within the Body of Christ are among the many gifts that the life and work of Joseph Fitzpatrick call to mind.