CITI founded--Chapter Five

In December 1991, nine months after Mom's death, I read an article in Time Magazine (12/31/91) about the Blessed Virgin. There was a paragraph in which her virginity was compared to mandatory celibacy in the priesthood. A quote from a Vatican official read, "The church doesn't have a problem with sex. The world does." Having become newly enlightened about the secret sexual world in the priesthood, I found the Vatican statement somewhat strange specially since I also had just read a 15-page story in Vanity Fair (12/91) about a clergy sexual abuse problem in New Orleans, LA. The abuse had been hidden for two years from the courts because the district attorney (Harry Connick, Sr) was a friend of the priest and he "didn't want to embarrass Mother Church."

I suddenly became curious, went to the library and plugged in the word, "celibacy."

Over the next few weeks in early 1992, I did some cursory research and found the following that I had never known about American priests:

• Jesus' disciples were married men, except for John (too young).
• Mandatory celibacy was a manmade law, passed in 1139.
• In the first twelve hundred years of the church's history, popes, bishops and priests were married.
• 20,000+ priests had left clerical ministry in the United States (110,000 throughout the world) since late 1970s, 90% to marry.
• There was a 90% drop in seminarians.
• Over 2,000 parishes had no resident priest (5,300 parishes in the 2000s)

When I read, however, that since the early 1980s, the Catholic hierarchy had been ordaining into the Roman Catholic priesthood, married Protestant ministers and in some instances, placing them in the same parishes where priests were being defrocked because they married, I saw such an injustice toward cradle Catholic priests that something snapped inside my soul. I couldn't believe that I had never learned any of these things, either in church or parochial school or among the many priests and nuns whom I had befriended over the years as an adult church-going Catholic. (I later discovered that this was a program under the direction and jurisdiction of Bernard Cardinal Law, a key figure in the 2002 clergy sexual abuse revelations.)

Had I been living in a vacuum? Did other mainstream Catholics know this? How could it have been going on so quietly? Is the world of religion different from the "secular" world, I thought? What is going on here?

In January, 1992, I felt that God was calling me to a mission when I heard the following at Sunday Mass:
"See my servant whom I uphold; My Chosen One in whom I delight. I have put my Spirit upon (her); (she) will reveal justice to the nations of the world. (She) will be gentle--(she) will not shout nor quarrel in the streets. (She) will not break the bruised reed, nor quench the dimly burning flame. (She) will encourage the fainthearted, those tempted to despair. (She) will see full justice given to all who have been wronged. (She) won't be satisfied until truth and righteousness prevail throughout the earth, nor until even distant lands beyond the seas have put their trust in (her)." (Isaiah 42:1-4)

I had never felt so singled out by any passage heard in church before and I knew God was calling me to do something very important. I just didn't know what!

In my research on mandatory celibacy, I discovered an independent Catholic publication, the National Catholic Reporter (NCR). I decided to run a small ad in NCR just to see what kind of response it would draw.
The following ad ran on February 6*, 1992:

*It's a little freaky that as I write this today, it is February 6.

Expecting to hear from other mainstream Catholics like myself, imagine my surprise when the letters I received over the next two weeks came from priests and married priests thanking me for "being involved," some including money without even knowing who I was. Some of the responses:

From a priest in New Jersey, "...you've touched many (perhaps more than you realize) individuals and given them healing and hope."
From a priest in New York: "...those of us who are interested in getting involved in this cause are given caution signs or veiled warnings by the hierarchy...for these reasons there are probably more priests interested, but who find themselves unable to say much about the matter...My fervent prayers are that someone in authority listens to the voice of the people...The unfortunate situation is the silence of the American bishops and Rome. The official policy is that, we've seen this all before (in the last 8 centuries) and if we hold out in silence it will all go away..."
From a priest in Pennsylvania: "...Many good men are lost to the priesthood through Celibacy; plus the very high degree of effeminacy indirectly caused by Celibacy."
From a priest in Africa: "...I saw your ad in National Catholic Reporter...Here in Africa, Celibacy is absurd. To me it seems obvious that the first, and essential, step to forming an African Christianity is to eliminate mandatory celibacy."
From a former seminarian in Ohio: "I am a former seminarian who would be a current seminarian if it weren't for this issue."
And from a seminary director (by phone): "...Priests are not human. They are divine."

Having experienced the loss of my parents, especially Mom with whom I was so close, reconnecting with my friend and learning about her priest lover, reading Time and Vanity Fair, feeling called by God to a mission and finally receiving these responses to the ad, I decided that I needed to get involved. Just then, my husband Dick and I received a major sales bonus from our previous year's sales achievements (we had been partners in a sales firm for seventeen years). Dick bought himself a member at the local golf and country club and I put my share in the bank and founded Celibacy Is the Issue (CITI), having no idea what I would do next, only that I didn't want anyone's senior parent like mine to die without seeing a priest.
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