Father Donald Cozzens

DATE March 12, 2002 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Father Donald Cozzens discusses issues facing the
priesthood, including sexual abuse and homosexuality
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

The Catholic Church is being rocked by sexual abuse scandals, mostly cases
involving the molestation of boys. In the past few weeks, such scandals have
made news around the country, including in Boston, Long Island, Maine, Los
Angeles, New Hampshire and Philadelphia. The New York Times reports that over
the last two decades, diocese have settled more than 1,000 cases out of court
involving sexual abuse, according to plaintiffs' lawyers. My guest, Father
Donald Cozzens, is the author of "The Changing Face of the Priesthood," which
he describes as one priest's reflection on the state of the priesthood.
Father Cozzens is the former president and rector of St. Mary's Seminary and
Graduate School of Theology in Cleveland. For about six years, he was vicar
in one of the larger US diocese, and he's counseled other priests. Father
Cozzens is currently a resident scholar at the Ecumenical Institute at St.
John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota. He says that the sexual abuse
problem is connected to systemic issues within the church.

Father DONALD COZZENS (Author, "The Changing Face of the Priesthood"): So far
we've been looking at this scandal, or scandals, as human weakness. A few
priests, very few bishops, who have had difficulty refraining from sexual
contact with mostly teen-age boys. And if we keep the focus on the abuse of a
relatively small number of clergy, we miss, I think, an important factor:
What is there about clerical culture, what is there about life in the
priesthood that seems to draw priests to have sexual contact with minors?
Even though the percentage is relatively small, it is, by a number of
standards, maybe twice as high as it should be. And so I'm suggesting we have
a systemic problem, or a structural problem, as well as the personal moral
weakness of a number of priests and a few bishops.

GROSS: Well, what do you think the larger systemic problem might be?

Fr. COZZENS: Well, I think it's connected with our clerical culture. We live
the last of the medieval lifestyles, and I think we need to take a look at how
we educate priests. We also have to, I think, address structural issues such
as where priests live, how they live, mandatory celibacy. The lifestyle of
the priest today is, I think, a very lonely lifestyle. Most priests live by
themselves. It's a difficult life. So I think we need to address the
pedophile situation misconduct with teen-age boys. We need to address our
policies and how we respond as church, not corporation, to the young people
that have been abused. We have to do all of that and we have to do it much
better.

GROSS: You've counseled priests. Can you talk with us a little bit what your
role was as a counselor to priests?

Fr. COZZENS: Well, it'd be pretty much similar to the role of a counselor who
wasn't a clergyperson. Priests from time to time would approach me so that
they might talk about their spiritual journey or personal struggles that they
were having in one vein or another, and I tried to offer them counsel and
direction as a brother priest.

GROSS: Did you, through that work, get any insights into the type of impulses
that priests often have to wrestle with?

Fr. COZZENS: Rather than talk about the type of impulses they had, I think my
experience and the experience of other vicars with which I have consulted--and
I think it's good that we talk about it more or less from coast to coast
rather than from one specific area--what struck many of us, and continues to
strike many of us, is the relative emotional immaturity and almost sexual
immaturity of a fair number of clergy, and some of these men are very mature
in other areas of their lives. Marvelous pastors, effective preachers,
administrators of large parishes or of important diocesan offices. But in the
area of their emotional life, many of them tend to be arrested at almost the
level of an adolescent. A number of people have made this connection these
days, especially Dr. Eugene Kennedy, that from one perspective, the behavior
with teen-agers and children might reflect a psychological appropriateness in
terms of psychological age. That's not to defend the behavior in any way at
all. But I would say that's a common occurrence.

GROSS: Well, if you feel that the sexuality of many people entering the
priesthood is psychologically stunted, what do you think accounts for that?

Fr. COZZENS: I think sometimes entering the seminary right after grade school
or right after high school deprives the candidate normal, healthy
developmental experiences that foster a mature approach to emotional
relationships and personal relationships. I think, also, sometimes perceiving
the Catholic Church's teaching that the experience of human sexuality outside
of marriage that is open to children is always a significant, serious, moral
problem. So our approach to human sexuality is quite interesting. On the one
hand, in marriage, human sexuality is a sacrament, an opportunity for husband
and wife to encounter God in their most intimate relationships and in their
everyday lifestyle. So we have this ideal of human sexuality. I think we're
one of the few religions to identify human sexuality as sacramental.

And then on the other hand, we make being a sexual person very challenging and
very difficult, so there's a certain ecclesial schizophrenia in our
understanding of human sexuality. I think that can contribute to the
emotional immaturity of a candidate for the priesthood or a priest.

GROSS: Now that ecclesiastical schizophrenia, I think, also comes into play,
judging from what I read of your book, when some priests decide to leave the
church or to leave the priesthood anyways. You've done some of those exit
interviews with priests, and some of them have told you that they kind of felt
called both to the sacrament of marriage and to the sacrament of the
priesthood.

Fr. COZZENS: Correct.

GROSS: But, of course, they have to choose.

Fr. COZZENS: They do. And worldwide, we've lost one-third of our priests,
many of them leaving so that they might experience the sacrament of marriage.
And if you look at that statistic from the standpoint of active priests, you
could make a case that almost half of the active priests have either resigned
or taken leaves of absence since about the 1960s, and that's an extraordinary
drain.

GROSS: Can you talk about some of the other reasons priests offered for
leaving?

Fr. COZZENS: I think a number of priests have stepped away from the
priesthood so that they might enter into a marriage. A number of them have
stepped away from the priesthood because they've had significant authority
problems in dealing with their bishop or other authority figures in their life
as a priest. Some people might step away from the priesthood because they
feel they'd like to have an active sexual life outside of marriage, either
because they're homosexual in orientation or simply because they would like to
have some kind of experience in that area. And their own sense of integrity
prompts them to say, `I can't be a sexually active person and present myself
as a celibate priest.' So I would say that marriage is a factor, authority is
another factor, integrity is still a third.

GROSS: How do you think celibacy figures into the sexual abuse scandals that
we're seeing now?

Fr. COZZENS: Well, first of all, a number of commentators have made the point
that there is no direct correlation between celibacy and the abuse of young
people. Most pedophiles and most people who abuse youngsters tend to be
married men, which is not surprising in light of the population at large.
However, I think there is a higher incident rate among clergy. Estimates vary
from 5 percent to 10 percent. It might even be higher in light of the fact
that there are many incidents of abuse that do not come to the attention of a
local church, a diocesan bishop. So celibacy, I think, can be a factor
because to lead a healthy celibate life, one needs to have, I think,
exceptional emotional maturity, and we're finding that priests do not have
that level of emotional maturity. And to be honest with you, our bishops have
known that from the early 1970s when studies were done on the psychology of
the priest and the sociology of clerical life.

GROSS: What does it take to live a healthy celibate life?

Fr. COZZENS: Well, I think, first of all, the individual has to be a person
of faith and who believes that a relationship with God is primary to his or
her life as a celibate. In addition to the spiritual dimension of a healthy
prayer and faith life, the paradox is that to lead a healthy celibate life,
the individual needs to have healthy celibate, intimate, honest relationships
with people who are his peers. One of the factors that, I think, vicars have
discovered who work with priests who have gotten into trouble because of abuse
of minors, is that very often they have friends who are teen-agers or friends
that are much older than they, but they don't seem to have honest, adult
friendships with people their own age.

GROSS: Why not?

Fr. COZZENS: I think it's because of their emotional immaturity. They find a
kind of self-revelation, the kind of vulnerability that are integral to an
adult relationship, they find that very threatening. They don't like who they
are sexually. I think they're uncomfortable with their sexual impulses.
There is not a culture that encourages them to speak openly with personal
friends, of course, about being a sexual person.

GROSS: What discourages that kind of conversation in the culture?

Fr. COZZENS: Well, again, it's our clerical culture. We people who are
celibate, we clergy in religious, we're expected, I think, to lead lives that
are somewhat angelic. We're just not sexual people. Now on the one hand
we'll say of course we are, and our seminaries and adult education programs
for clergy, there are all kinds of programs on boundary issues and being
sexual. But we have a very conflicted culture that fosters secrecy and
denial, and where those realities are present, you're not going to live in a
healthy environment.

GROSS: Are you suggesting that you think seminaries should be more open about
sexuality, that there should be some kind of discussion of it within the
seminary itself?

Fr. COZZENS: Well, absolutely, and many seminaries today are trying mightily
to have appropriate structures, either classes or formation programs or
conferences that various faculty give to the students, dealing with issues
relating to human sexuality, to the need for intimacy for a celibate, about
boundary issues. But my feeling is even those programs, as good as they are,
are counterbalanced by a climate that works against that kind of healthy, open
exchange of human experience.

GROSS: Can you talk firsthand at all about what it's like in that climate,
the difficulty of dealing with your own sexual impulses and sexual confusion
and the kind of sexual transcendence that you have to reach in order to remain
a celibate priest, the difficulty of dealing with that in a seminary or in the
priesthood?

Fr. COZZENS: Well, you move into almost a monastic environment when you enter
a seminary, whether you're studying to be a diocesan priest or not. In that
quasi-monastic environment, you're expected to lead a celibate life from day
one, and to acknowledge either to a faculty person or to your spiritual
director or your formation director that you're finding celibacy challenging
and difficult. In a way, it's to put yourself in a vulnerable position.
`Perhaps my seminary professors will think I'm not capable of leading a
celibate life.' And then to talk about any kind of sexual activity or sexual
attraction, that in itself is perceived as wrong and sinful by a number of
people in church formation today. So the seminarian is put in a very awkward
position, and given a double message: Really, don't talk about your sexual
impulses or your sexual confusion or your concerns about celibacy, except in
very secret, controlled environments. And so that breeds an atmosphere of
unreality.

GROSS: My guest is Father Donald Cozzens. He's the author of "The Changing
Face of the Priesthood." We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Father Donald Cozzens. He's
the author of "The Changing Face of the Priesthood: A Reflection on the
Priest's Crisis of Soul." He's in the process of writing a new book. He's
currently a resident scholar at the Ecumenical Institute at St. John's
University in Collegeville, Minnesota.

Last week the pope's spokesperson said that homosexuals should not be ordained
as priests. He said the ordination of anyone with homosexual inclinations is
invalid, whether he practices celibacy or not. Interpret that statement for
us. Is this a new position for the church or is this a restatement of
something that the church has always said?

Fr. COZZENS: Well, actually there are two statements there. One was stated,
oh, a year or two ago by Archbishop Bertone, who is the number-two man in the
Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Over a year ago he
implied or stated that a candidate for the priesthood, somebody who applies to
a seminary, who is homosexually oriented should not be accepted. I don't
think that's a prudent policy. I think it's one way of saying--of
acknowledging that about 80 to 90 percent of the misconduct cases with minors
involve a priest and young boys. So I think there the Vatican approach might
be, `Let's not admit anyone to the seminary who acknowledges a homosexual
orientation.' I think that's, first of all, a very difficult policy to
operate, and I think it's unfair to many fine, young candidates and older
candidates for the priesthood.

The second issue is whether or not a gay man can be validly ordained a priest.
From my understanding of theology, I want to say that's ridiculous. I just
can't understand that at all, and until that comes from kind of a high-ranking
Vatican source, I simply deny that.

GROSS: The pope's spokesperson isn't high-ranking enough?

Fr. COZZENS: Actually, that's what he is. He's kind of head of the Vatican
press corps. No, I think that by a high-ranking Vatican official, I'm
referring to someone like Archbishop Bertone, the number-two man at the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, or Cardinal Ratziger or that level
of church leadership.

GROSS: Let me bring up what seems to be a problem for the very reflective,
perhaps intellectual priest, which is, you know, you're supposed to be
spending some of your time reading and thinking and reflecting, and it seems
to me the more you're given to reflection, the more you're given to question
things. The more you read, the more different points of view you're exposed
to, the more your orientation becomes to question things and to think them
through and then to arrive at a conclusion, which might often or at least
sometimes lead you to challenge the church hierarchy on its conclusions. So
reflection might actually be kind of troublesome to a priest.

Fr. COZZENS: Well, it might, and to be honest with you, there are priests
that have reduced their world to the boundaries of their parish. They don't
do serious reading, and they simply want to make it through the day and work
as hard as they can to meet the pastoral needs of the parish and, in a sense,
turn off their intellect. However, I really hope that's not the majority of
our priests today. Priests today do need to read and study. They need an
honest cultural life. Novels and theater and good film, all of that expands
the imagination, and that's critical for our primary ministry of preaching.
However, once we do read and once we do reflect on our pastoral experience, I
think then we're in a position to enter into a significant dialogue with
theologians and with bishops and with church leaders. This is the way the
church is meant to work. Catholics in the United States are highly educated
and they're a thinking people, and sometimes we priests and bishops don't take
them seriously enough. At times we talk down to them as if we do have all of
the answers and they have none of the answers.

GROSS: As part of the crisis in the priesthood that you write about, this
fact that sometimes reflection can lead to--challenging can lead to
questioning the church hierarchy, and that's not encouraged.

Fr. COZZENS: As a matter of fact, it is encouraged by the church, especially
from the documents of the Second Vatican Council. We do invite priests and
laity who have reflected on issues and who have the competence to speak about
them to address their bishops and their pastors. But it seems like the church
is not that eager always to listen, even though they have invited people to
speak up and to speak from their experience. That's the way the church has
operated more or less effectively for the last 2,000 years, although we are
now in a period of almost suppression of honest dialogue, and that's
unfortunate.

GROSS: Father Donald Cozzens is the author of "The Changing Face of the
Priesthood." He'll be back in the second half of the show. I'm Terry Gross,
and this is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: Coming up, homosexuality within the priesthood and the graying of the
priesthood. We continue our conversation with Father Donald Cozzens, author
of "The Changing Face of the Priesthood."

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with Father Donald Cozzens,
author of "The Changing Face of the Priesthood." He was ordained in 1965. He
has counseled priests. He has been a vicar and the rector of a seminary.
He's now a resident scholar at St. John's University in Collegeville,
Minnesota. In his book, he reflects on such issues as sexual abuse, celibacy,
sexual orientation and the graying of the priesthood.

I want to get back to the question of homosexuality. One of the ways that the
church is reacting to the current sexual abuse scandals is to say that gay men
shouldn't be priests. What action do you think the church is going to take
that they haven't taken before to try to prevent gay men from becoming priests
or to try to weed out gay men who are priests?

Fr. COZZENS: Any action, I think, will prove not to be successful. We only
know of an individual's orientation by self-disclosure. So I think if we try
to implement a directive from the Vatican that says gay men should not be
admitted into our seminaries, I think we'll find ourselves faced with a good
deal of deception and a lack of candor. That's not a good way to begin your
studies for the priesthood, because the priesthood means that you're a bearer
of the Word of God, a bearer of the truth. In that kind of a climate, you
have a climate of secrecy. I just don't think it can be enforced. And if
people try to enforce it, I think we'll have a significant decline in our
seminary membership today. And we're already almost dramatically reduced in
numbers compared to, say, 1965.

GROSS: Is there an estimate about what percentage of the priesthood is gay?

Fr. COZZENS: Well, there are various estimates, and I reported on these
estimates in "The Changing Face of the Priesthood." I think it's important to
simply know that the percentage is higher in our seminaries and
priesthood--the percentage of gay men. How much higher is it than in the
general population? That's very difficult to know. Estimates range from 10
percent to 50 percent.

GROSS: Why do you think that there is a larger percentage of gay people
represented within the priesthood than there is in the general population?

Fr. COZZENS: Well, a number of scholars, Mark Jordan in particular, who
teaches at Emory University and he's the author of "The Silence of
Sodom"--Jordan puts it this way: A young man discovers that he's homosexually
oriented; the church tells him that he can never act out his sexuality. By
the very fact that he is homosexually oriented, the church says, `You're
called to lead a celibate, chaste life for the rest of your life.' Well, if
you have to lead a celibate life anyway, if you're a fairly bright person, why
not then enter the seminary and become a priest and at least, in a sense, be
rewarded for the celibacy that the church says is necessary for you, whether
you're a priest or not? That's one explanation that I think has a certain
merit to it.

GROSS: Others?

Fr. COZZENS: Others might be, `I don't have to explain to people why I'm not
married if I happen to be a gay candidate for the priesthood.' `I'm going to
be able to live in fairly close proximity with other men, who share some of my
same interests and same orientation.' It can be a meaningful, rewarding and
comfortable life for a number of gay priests and seminarians.

GROSS: From your perspective as a priest, what impact do you think it has on
the culture of the church, on the culture of the priesthood, to have many gay
priests?

Fr. COZZENS: Well, I think we've had many gay priests for thousands of
years. If you think about it, priests can put on robes, wear lace surplices.
There's a certain almost homoerotic dimension to church culture in society. I
certainly don't want to say that there's anything wrong with wearing cassocks
and vestments, but I think we're going to see in the years ahead more
awareness of the kind of sexual ambiguity that is present in the priesthood
today.

GROSS: You mean in terms of the vestments and the theater of surrounding, the
rituals.

Fr. COZZENS: Well, yeah, the whole lifestyle. You know, there is a certain,
let me say, non-masculine dimension to priesthood today--and I think there are
many strong, masculine men in the priesthood and in our seminaries today, but
there is even culturally, a certain ambiguity that has to do with vestments in
particular and clerical dress.

GROSS: You think that would be a healthy thing to acknowledge?

Fr. COZZENS: I do. And, in fact, I am trying to do that.

GROSS: Trying to do that right now, right.

Fr. COZZENS: Trying to do that right now and in the writing I'm doing,
Terry. Yeah.

GROSS: Yeah, right. And what reaction do you get when you bring this up with
other priests?

Fr. COZZENS: Good question, because it's either, `Thank you for trying to
raise these issues. We need to address them and talk about them.' That's
one. And the other is, `How could you do that? You know, you're attacking
the priesthood, and the priesthood is under attack already. Let's not talk
about these issues, even though they might be real issues. Let's try to deal
with them very quietly for the good of the church.' So it's either `It's
about time we address these issues,' on the one hand, to `You're not helping
the situation at all.' So...

GROSS: Now I should say you express a concern in your book that if the number
of gay priests--the percentage of gay priests becomes too high, it might
become really uncomfortable for straight priests. What's your concern?

Fr. COZZENS: My concern is that some men considering studying for the
priesthood have decided against entering the seminary because they have this
intuition. Their read is that there are high percentages of gay men in
seminaries and in the priesthood. And they're not sure they will feel
comfortable in environments that have a significant number of homosexually
oriented men. Is that fair? Is that reasonable? I'm going to leave that to
others, but I think that there are, indeed, straight seminarians or straight
candidates for the priesthood that are not even considering applying for
admission because of that.

At the same time, as I've raised this issue, gay priests have told me, you
know, that indeed might be the case, but do you realize how destabilizing it
is for a gay priest to be active in a church that has such a strong teaching
about the disordered character of being homosexually oriented? So there's a
fair amount of unease or destabilization, as I refer to it in "The Changing
Face of the Priesthood," among both straight and gay seminarians and priests.

GROSS: Since we're talking about homosexuality and the priesthood, and since
the church is saying that it thinks that gay men should not become priests, I
want to ask you about Father Mychal Judge. He was a fire department chaplain.
He was the first official death at the site of the World Trade Center. I
mean, he has just become a hero, I think, around the world--a person who was
absolutely selfless. He was there to minister to the men of the fire
department, and he was killed in the process, and everyone seemed to love him.
A lot of people seemed to know he was gay. Whether or not he was officially
out or not, I think it wasn't the best-kept secret in the world. I'm
wondering what the discussion about that is within the church?

Fr. COZZENS: I believe Mychal Judge is, without doubt, a hero. And I think
it's important that people come to see a committed, effective, gay priest
proved to be a hero. And there are Mychal Judges throughout the priesthood
today, and we can be so unfair to our gay brother priests and to gay
seminarians in light of what's going on in Boston and other parts of the
United States today. And Father Mychal Judge revealed that priests still play
a very significant important role in the lives of Catholics today. Catholics
live and breathe because of their commitment to a sacramental way of life, and
priests play such a significant role in the worship lives of Catholics and in
their sacramental lives. So there is Mychal Judge, a true priest, ministering
to people, bringing them the sacrament of the sick in very extraordinary
circumstances and giving his life for his people. I mean, that's what
priesthood is about. So he is a hero, but there are so many other heroes--gay
priest heroes and straight priest heroes--and I have the utmost respect for
these men who are leading very difficult lives today.

GROSS: My guest is Father Donald Cozzens. He's the author of "The Changing
Face of the Priesthood." We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Father Donald Cozzens. He's
the author of the book "The Changing Face of the Priesthood: A Reflection On
the Priests' Crisis of Soul." He's currently at work on a new book. He's now
a resident scholar at the Ecumenical Institute at St. John's University in
Collegeville, Minnesota.

I want to get to another crisis that you raise in your book, and that's the
graying of the priesthood. I guess the majority of priests are over 40. Give
us a sense of what the statistics are agewise.

Fr. COZZENS: Indeed, we are over 40. The average age of priests today is
very close to 60, and seminarians today are, for the most part, in their 30s.
Probably 60 percent of our seminarians are over 30. And in many seminaries
today, the age range would go from, say, 22 or three, to 52 or 53. So the
graying of the priesthood is clearly a factor that needs to be addressed, and
I certainly don't know what to say about that, other than older priests can
have a great deal of life experience, and many prove to be wonderful priests
and pastors. But the years of service they give to the church will probably
be cut in half in terms of the number of years a man who was ordained to the
priesthood at age 25, 26 can give to the church.

GROSS: Well, you say in your book that you think one reason perhaps for the
graying of the priesthood is that the reasons for entering the priesthood or
not entering the priesthood are kind of different now than they were decades
ago. For instance, like it was much more appealing perhaps for the sons of
European immigrants to enter the priesthood than it is now. Would you talk
about that a little?

Fr. COZZENS: Yes. I think that a generation ago and, in fact, two to three
generations ago, for a young Catholic man, it's harder to imagine a more
significant way of life than to be a Catholic priest. So when the Catholic
Church was both an immigrant church and primarily an ethnic church, vocations
to the priesthood were plentiful. Now Catholics are one of the best educated
groups of people in the United States. A factor here in the vocation crisis,
if I can use that expression, is the success of our Catholic schools. You'll
find Catholics today in leadership positions in all of the major walks of
life. So now we've been assimilated into the mainstream of US life, and I
think our different cultural position or social position, as well as the
success Catholics have had in terms of education and entrance into the
professions gives a young Catholic boy today many more options than what he
had 50 years ago.

GROSS: And you wonder, too, if a lot of mothers are more reluctant now to
have their sons become priests.

Fr. COZZENS: Absolutely. The research indicates that the role of parents,
especially the mother, and priests who do recruiting--you know, a parish
priest will say to a young man or, today, to an older man, you know, `Have you
ever thought of the priesthood? I think you have the qualities to make a very
fine parish priest.' Some would argue that priests today are less reluctant
to explicitly recruit because they're finding their lives so challenging and
difficult. And there is evidence that mothers today do not want a son of
theirs to be priests, not because they don't have a high regard and respect
for the priesthood in general, but because they understand how difficult the
life is and how challenging it can be.

The other factor is the number of children Catholic families have today. A
Catholic family in the United States probably has 1.8 children. I'm told
that's the average number of children families have in the United States in
general. If you're having two children or less, chances are, you're going to
have but one son. And many mothers and fathers want grandchildren and
great-grandchildren, and I think these are all factors that play into the
vocation crisis.

GROSS: We were talking a little earlier about celibacy in the church. Do you
think that there will come a time when priests don't have to be celibate, when
that rule will be changed?

Fr. COZZENS: Many people today feel that it will be changed. I do need to
say that we do have optional celibacy in the church today in the Eastern rites
of the church in Europe. So we do have a married clergy today. They
represent a small minority of the church, but mandatory celibacy is required
for Latin rite priests. I think in the United States also, we have probably
around a hundred married Latin rite Catholic priests. All of these men are
converts to the church, are mostly from the Episcopal, Lutheran and some from
the Methodist traditions as I understand it. Will that come to pass? I think
it will. I think most people know that we've had a married clergy even in the
Latin rite for the first 1,000 years of the church's history.

Obligatory celibacy or a mandatory celibacy for the Latin rite was instituted
in the 11th century. So it might come to pass. This is a very, very
neuralgic issue for many. They don't want people like myself talking about
either misconduct with minors or the sexual orientation issue. They see it
simply as a veiled attempt to bring about optional celibacy for Latin rite
priests.

GROSS: What called you to the priesthood? How did you know that you wanted
to become a priest?

Fr. COZZENS: Terry, I've wanted to be a priest since I can remember, from
the first day of the first grade. It was simply a realization that when I
grow up, I'd like to be a priest. From the first day of the first grade, I
had a crush on one of my classmates all the way through to the 12th grade, but
I always felt that Joanne Mahoney(ph) notwithstanding, I would be a priest.
And so I lived in a wonderful Catholic family. I think my brothers and my
sister and the parish in which I grew up made me appreciate the wonderful work
that priests do. So there was never a point, say, in high school or in
college when I decided to be a priest; it was simply allowing this profound
attraction to priesthood to come to be.

GROSS: Now the priesthood has changed a lot since you were a boy. Were you
as comfortable with the priesthood when you actually became a priest as you
thought you'd be when you were a boy looking at the priests of that time?

Fr. COZZENS: Something happened as soon as I was ordained. My classmates
and I were ordained in 1965 as the Second Vatican Council came to an end. The
seminary that prepared us for priesthood was a pre-conciliar seminary. So in
a sense, the Catholic world and the world of the priest changed significantly
just as I was being ordained. I have the strong conviction that the church
today overall is much healthier than it was before the Second Vatican Council.
The priesthood today is significantly different. We're called to live in the
midst of our sisters and our brothers. We're called to preach and to teach
and to heal and to counsel, but not from some kind of a pedestal. Priests
need to be among their people and they have to understand that they are, first
of all, part of God's people. They're, first of all, baptized disciples of
Jesus Christ and, by the grace of God, called to fulfill this marvelous
ministry as priest and preacher and teacher.

GROSS: My guest is Father Donald Cozzens. He's the author of "The Changing
Face of the Priesthood." We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Father Donald Cozzens. He's
the author of the book "The Changing Face of the Priesthood: A Reflection On
the Priests' Crisis of Soul." He's currently a resident scholar at the
Ecumenical Institute at St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota.

Do you feel that in the light of the sexual scandals, that people look at you
differently as a priest; that suddenly, every priest is being questioned in a
way that perhaps they weren't before; that there's this sense of doubt and
suspicion that is, you know, tainting everybody in the priesthood?

Fr. COZZENS: Oh, there's no doubt about it. In talking to other priests, and
my own experience, we knew great, great trust. We stood on the shoulders of
priests who went before us who earned trust and confidence from Catholic
people. In the last 20 years, that has been sadly diminished. And priests
today are generally very self-conscious about, you know, just even incidental
contact with young people today after Sunday Mass or after a meeting of the
youth group at their parish. Many of us are angry at the way the church has
handled cases of abuse that have so significantly transformed the way people
perceive the Catholic priest today. There are still many Mychal Judges,
unseen heroes who haven't given their life in the same way that Father Judge
did, but they're giving their lives for their people, and it's too bad that
this added burden weighs so heavy on their shoulders.

GROSS: In your book, you say that there have been times when you've had to
tell a congregation that their priest had been abusing one of the young people
within the church. How did you find the words to say that?

Fr. COZZENS: I'll never forget those few occasions when I did have to tell a
parish congregation--I might speak after the Masses on a given weekend--that
their pastor has been put on a leave of absence until an allegation can be
investigated. I began often by telling them I had something very, very
difficult to say about someone who is very important to them. You simply tell
them as kindly as you can, withholding personal judgment of the man. And in
many of these cases, even in cases of priests who have abused young people,
they were not demons. They did wonderful work in many cases. So that was
always difficult and painful, and to see the look of sadness and shock in the
eyes of the parishioners seated in front of me is a memory I'll always have
with me.

GROSS: Did parishioners ask you, `How can I continue to come to church? How
can I continue to put my trust in a priest after this?'

Fr. COZZENS: There's no doubt that for many Catholics, knowledge of the
abuse of, say, their pastor or a priest friend has shaken their faith,
challenged it, and some people sadly have walked away from the faith of the
church, feeling that it would be hypocritical for them to stay in the church
as a member. The majority of Catholics, though, I don't believe see it that
way.

GROSS: How do you see it? What would you tell somebody who was thinking of
leaving because of that?

Fr. COZZENS: I would say if you know your church history, you're going to
have reasons to leave that it would take you a whole day to recite. So our
history is a history of a wounded church. If you're looking for a reason to
leave the church, let me count the ways, but we sense, in spite of our human
condition, something of God's grace and our belief that God is present in the
community and in the sacraments we celebrate. Most Catholics say, you know,
`This is my church. I'm not going to leave it because of the either sickness
or criminality or sinfulness of some of the members of the church, even though
some of those members might be church leaders.'

GROSS: Father Cozzens, thank you very much for talking with us.

Fr. COZZENS: Oh, you're welcome, Terry.

GROSS: Father Donald Cozzens is the author of "The Changing Face of the
Priesthood." He's currently a resident scholar at St. John's University in
Collegeville, Minnesota.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross. We'll close with music by Shirley Scott. She died
Sunday at the age of 67 of heart disease. She lived in Philadelphia most of
her life in and around the area. Scott became known as an organ player, but
since the '80s, she performed mostly on piano. This recording was made at
Birdland in 1991.

(Soundbite of music)
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