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Inside
NCR Web
site and stuff on leaving, praying
Find a really large piece of paper
for the interminable Web site
(http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~rbarzan/welcome.htm/leavingmain.htm) of Robert
Barzan, a former Jesuit who left the priesthood in 1987. Priests are still
leaving in significant numbers, Barzan says in a news release. He received so
many requests for advice that he organized the Web site to help ease their
transition to secular life by offering hope and opportunity.
He writes: Worries about future job opportunities, housing,
health care, relationships, emotional support or even opportunities for
ministry can make for a fearful situation. All of these issues are addressed at
this Web site, and there are helpful links to other sites with more
information.
The Web site material is based on Barzans earlier book,
Leaving the Priesthood: Practical Advice for Roman Catholic Priests and
Religious Men.
John P. Egan also left the ordained
priesthood, in 1985. He had long been a peace and justice activist and spent
nearly 20 years in an inner-city parish in Jersey City. His writings have on
many occasions appeared in NCR.
Now Egan has written a book, A Priest Forever and No More
(Fragile Twilight Press, 15 West Eighth St., Barnegat Light N.J. 08006;
phone and fax: (609) 361-0962; 90 pages, no price given) on his struggle to
leave the priesthood. Or as he writes in the introduction, one
humans struggle to become whole. Publisher Barbara Truncellito
points out that Egan was asked to leave the priesthood just after a
letter by him was published in NCR. We are confident that this
comment gives us too much credit.
The introduction also has a gracious word for those who stayed:
It needs to be said here that, while I could no longer live authentically
without disassociating from the hierarchical priesthood, there are some
ordained priests who can and do. ... Many of them are trying to be priests, in
the best sense of that word. And in an extremely difficult context they are
trying to be human, loving, caring and compassionate.
Benedictine Sr. Joan Chittister, by
contrast, has not yet left the priesthood. Chittister, who is so popular with
audiences at home and abroad that she could run for president, has yet another
publication to her credit: Living in the Breath of the Spirit: Reflections
on Prayer (Benetvision, 355 E. Ninth St., Erie, PA 16503-1107. Phone: (814)
459-5994. E-mail: msbpr@juno.com. Price: $5).
A small booklet by Chittister standards, Living is a series
of nuggets about the interior life. Prayer erupts in the heart at the
sight of either the impossibly beautiful or the unbearably difficult. It is, in
both cases, a signal of the breakthrough of the divine into the
mundane.
Her gist is, dont just kneel there, do something. She
writes: Pray to God but continue to row to the shore, the
Russian proverb teaches. Dependence on God is not a substitute for our doing
Gods will to the utmost. We can pray for peace, for instance, but unless
we ourselves do something to bring it, it is an empty prayer, a kind of
spiritual blasphemy.
Word around the San Bernardino,
Calif., diocese is that Holy Cross Fr. Ned Reidy, featured in our April 30
issue, is being replaced as chaplain at Christ of the Desert Newman Center.
Reidy told NCR that he and Bishop Gerald Barnes are in
dialogue. Downplaying the situation, the Pathfinder retreat-giving Reidy
says the dialogue isnt surprising, given that hes been at Christ of
the Desert for 19 years and the dioceses term for a pastor is a maximum
of 12.
Reidy told our Arthur Jones that, whatever the outcome, hed
like to remain in the desert giving the Pathfinder retreats.
Civil disobedience and resistance
are still very much a part of the Catholic Worker way of life, reports Tom
Roberts, who accompanied the latest delegation of Voices in the Wilderness to
Iraq to focus attention on the sanctions imposed by the United Nations. The
group, mostly Catholic Workers, included Leslie Schultz, Clare Grady and Neil
Golder of Ithaca, N.Y.; Jim Clune of Binghamton, N.Y.; John Doughty of Lacuna,
N.Y.; Chris Allen-Doucot of Hartford, Conn.; Br. Louis Rodemann and Susan Lee
of Kansas City, Mo.; and Mary K. Meyer of Kansas City, Kan. Others with the
delegation, led by Kathy Kelly of Chicago, were Jeff Guntzel, who works with
Voices; Ahmed El-Sherif of Leawood, Kan.; and journalists Cheryl Wittenauer of
Kansas City, Mo., and Pedro Brieger of Argentina.
-- Michael Farrell
National Catholic Reporter, May 21,
1999
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