What do you think?
Rate this book
Shattered Vows: Priests Who Leave
Interviews with former priests, their wives, and their families document the crisis facing the Catholic priesthood and explore how these former priests may still contribute to the ministry of the Church
215 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1990
2 people are currently reading
16 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 7, 2023
While not the typical reader, (I’m not even Catholic) I did find this book to be very well written and informative. The question is really less about compulsory celibacy, and more about who the Church is really serving? Is the Church protecting itself, or protecting those that it is called to serve. Rice outlines arguments that the latter is more likely the real issue and that the treatment of women, compulsory celibacy, and the rejection of priest who have married but are willing to still serve shows that the Church who continues these patterns will continue to see Priest leave the service of the priesthood.
April 25, 2025
AN OVERVIEW BASED ON INTERVIEWS WITH HUNDREDS OF FORMER PRIESTS AND THEIR FAMILIES
Journalist and former Dominican David Rice wrote in the Prologue to this 1990 book, “[Suicide] is the most final way of all to leave the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church… Yet it is but a symptom of one of the most grievous crises to hit the church since the Reformation. Hardly more than two decades after the Vatican Council, Pope John’s dream of a Church renewed has shattered into one hundred thousand pieces, each of those pieces a priest who has left his ministry, which is almost a quarter of all the active priests in the world… Already two fifths of the parishes in the world have no resident priest, and by the turn of the century the number will be half… Left what, anyway? The Church? Very few leave the Church… And what about why they leave? Few in the Church dare to ask why is [there] this immense mutiny. It is the Unmentionable Topic…” (Pg. 10-11)
He reports, “In Brazil, Cardinal Aloisio Lorscheider stated… ‘I would like more concrete information on the priests who left.’ … This book tries to do what Cardinal Lorscheider suggests. In the last several years I have traveled… to meet and interview priests who left, their wives, and their children… I met a total of 442 priests who had resigned from the ministry or married, and talked to 247 of them, alone or in groups. I also spoke with 177 of the wives and women friends of these men, and likewise interviewed 41 of their children… This book, based on over 530 interviews, as well as on a considerable amount of written sources, turns out to be partly a story of anguish---the anguish that today runs from top to bottom in the Church.” (Pg. 12-13)
He notes, “A number of priests’ wives tell me their husbands have almost a physical revulsion for black and cannot be got to wear it. I listened to a group of Italian married priests and their wives discussing the wearing of cassocks in the street, which was compulsory until the mid-1960s … ‘a dreadful custom,’ one of them described it. ‘You know what the people called us?’ said another priest. 'The third sex. They mocked us for wearing skirts. And that’s why the Church made us wear them.’ ‘The role of the cassock,’ one of the priests’ wives told me, ‘was to make the priest feel no longer like a man… The purpose is to put the priest in a caste apart so that he is apart from everything, especially women.’” (Pg. 29)
He recounts, “the pope, asked recently by a group of U.S. bishops to speed up the process of dispensation, replied, ‘I’m in no hurry. They left us: we didn’t leave them.’ The pope is indeed in no hurry. One married priest [was told]… there is no likelihood of dispensation ‘until you are on your deathbed.’” (Pg. 68)
He reports, “One priest, now married [said]… It is possible to get more than one gift from a benevolent God. I have also received the gift of marriage---I am a man of all seven sacraments. Why can’t I use both priesthood and marriage for the glory of God?’ Does that mean he would come running back into Church employment if the celibacy rule changed? It does not. I have met few resigned priests who simply want to return to an unchanged clerical institution. A great many, however, feel a strong urge to serve others…” (Pg. 85) He continues, “Most priests who leave feel themselves lovingly pursued by the Hound of Heaven and could not shake off their priesthood even if they would… But that does not mean going back into the system. Given optional celibacy, some MIGHT perhaps consider reentering, but with their wives and families…. However, invariably such priests say they first would want to see very significant changes in Church structures.” (Pg. 86)
He notes, “The fact is that most men, celibate and noncelibate, will encounter romantic love at some point in their lives. The Jungian analyst Robert Johnson calls it the single most powerful experience most of us will have. And celibate priests are not immune.” (Pg. 113)
He states, “Celibacy is not chastity. Celibacy is merely the permanent state of being unmarried; Chastity, for an unmarried person, means abstaining from genital sexual activity. And the tragedy begins when a priest is celibate but not chaste… Of great concern is what has happened to women, as this is so obviously chastity’s shadow side---the hidden cost of imposing it indiscriminately on every priest. It is the price… exacted, by some priests who choose not to leave, yet do not… observe celibacy’s demands. Some priests? How many?” (Pg. 116)
He explains, “In talking with active serving priests … I have found there are five levels of relationships priests have with women. First, there are priests who have a deep and lasting friendship with women, but without genital sex… such friendships can bring immense consolation and maturing to the individual priest, and benefit to the Church. The second level is like the previous one, but with occasional physical sex… Third, there are priests who have a permanent sexual relationship with one woman---a lover, a mistress, a common-law wife. Sometimes it’s hidden for years. Sometimes the whole world, even the bishop, knows but chooses not to notice. Fourth, there are priests who from time to time have sexual friendships with different women… Lastly, there are priests who use their Roman collars… to charm all the women they can and lure them to bed---and use their collars a second time around, to break the relationship or evade their responsibilities… (…‘I’m a priest, so you’ll have to look after that child on your own’).” (Pg. 123-124)
He observes, “Only a few decades ago the priests who left were the … ‘Disappeared ones’ of the Roman Catholic Church. Their role was of solitary, shuffling pariahs, of whom Christian society asked only that they disappear off the face of the earth. And disappear they did… into an aloneness that engulfed even the women courageous enough to share their lives.” (Pg. 146)
He continues, “A striking example… is the ‘Corpus’ organization in the United States. Corpus explicitly promotes the aim of optional celibacy and a married priesthood in the Catholic Church, including the return to full ministry of those who had to resign to marry. Corpus began back in 1974… two married priests, Frank Bonnike and Frank McGrath, [declared] that a great many such men would dearly love to serve the Church again, even in an active role as priests… Bonnike, McGrath, and two other Chicago married priests founded Corpus---Corps of Reserve Priests United for Service… The organization has grown to be a powerful voice in the U.S. Catholic Church.” (Pg. 147)
He suggests, “True celibacy, freely chosen (or freely accepted) for the Kingdom of God, is a many-splendored thing in man or woman. And it is one of the easiest things to discern: You know it by the love it generates. One would surely see it in Mother Teresa… in Pope John XXIII… Such free celibacy serves a very special purpose in a priest who is so endowed.” (Pg. 158-159)
Later, he adds, “There is an assumption that when the Church establishes a requirement, that requirement is seen to have a beneficial result for people. An excellent example is the requirement for living in a monastery… namely, the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. For those who are suited to such a life… the beneficial results are obvious. All of us have met the Thomas Mertons and the Mother Teresas… In their case, the Church’s requirements can be clearly seen as beneficial. Can we say the same about the blanket celibacy requirement that is demanded of all secular priests living among us?... does it promote growth and maturity, responsibility and spiritual development, in all or most of those priests? And is it beneficial in the community? It does none of those things…. We, the Church, the people of God, must come to a decision on compulsory celibacy, or lose the Eucharist that Jesus gave us.” (Pg. 174-175)
He concludes, “the prognosis for resigned and married priests [is] a future of struggle. It is, however, a struggle not against the Church, but hand in hand with all its priests and people..."
This book will be of great interest to those studying clerical celibacy, and related topics.
Journalist and former Dominican David Rice wrote in the Prologue to this 1990 book, “[Suicide] is the most final way of all to leave the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church… Yet it is but a symptom of one of the most grievous crises to hit the church since the Reformation. Hardly more than two decades after the Vatican Council, Pope John’s dream of a Church renewed has shattered into one hundred thousand pieces, each of those pieces a priest who has left his ministry, which is almost a quarter of all the active priests in the world… Already two fifths of the parishes in the world have no resident priest, and by the turn of the century the number will be half… Left what, anyway? The Church? Very few leave the Church… And what about why they leave? Few in the Church dare to ask why is [there] this immense mutiny. It is the Unmentionable Topic…” (Pg. 10-11)
He reports, “In Brazil, Cardinal Aloisio Lorscheider stated… ‘I would like more concrete information on the priests who left.’ … This book tries to do what Cardinal Lorscheider suggests. In the last several years I have traveled… to meet and interview priests who left, their wives, and their children… I met a total of 442 priests who had resigned from the ministry or married, and talked to 247 of them, alone or in groups. I also spoke with 177 of the wives and women friends of these men, and likewise interviewed 41 of their children… This book, based on over 530 interviews, as well as on a considerable amount of written sources, turns out to be partly a story of anguish---the anguish that today runs from top to bottom in the Church.” (Pg. 12-13)
He notes, “A number of priests’ wives tell me their husbands have almost a physical revulsion for black and cannot be got to wear it. I listened to a group of Italian married priests and their wives discussing the wearing of cassocks in the street, which was compulsory until the mid-1960s … ‘a dreadful custom,’ one of them described it. ‘You know what the people called us?’ said another priest. 'The third sex. They mocked us for wearing skirts. And that’s why the Church made us wear them.’ ‘The role of the cassock,’ one of the priests’ wives told me, ‘was to make the priest feel no longer like a man… The purpose is to put the priest in a caste apart so that he is apart from everything, especially women.’” (Pg. 29)
He recounts, “the pope, asked recently by a group of U.S. bishops to speed up the process of dispensation, replied, ‘I’m in no hurry. They left us: we didn’t leave them.’ The pope is indeed in no hurry. One married priest [was told]… there is no likelihood of dispensation ‘until you are on your deathbed.’” (Pg. 68)
He reports, “One priest, now married [said]… It is possible to get more than one gift from a benevolent God. I have also received the gift of marriage---I am a man of all seven sacraments. Why can’t I use both priesthood and marriage for the glory of God?’ Does that mean he would come running back into Church employment if the celibacy rule changed? It does not. I have met few resigned priests who simply want to return to an unchanged clerical institution. A great many, however, feel a strong urge to serve others…” (Pg. 85) He continues, “Most priests who leave feel themselves lovingly pursued by the Hound of Heaven and could not shake off their priesthood even if they would… But that does not mean going back into the system. Given optional celibacy, some MIGHT perhaps consider reentering, but with their wives and families…. However, invariably such priests say they first would want to see very significant changes in Church structures.” (Pg. 86)
He notes, “The fact is that most men, celibate and noncelibate, will encounter romantic love at some point in their lives. The Jungian analyst Robert Johnson calls it the single most powerful experience most of us will have. And celibate priests are not immune.” (Pg. 113)
He states, “Celibacy is not chastity. Celibacy is merely the permanent state of being unmarried; Chastity, for an unmarried person, means abstaining from genital sexual activity. And the tragedy begins when a priest is celibate but not chaste… Of great concern is what has happened to women, as this is so obviously chastity’s shadow side---the hidden cost of imposing it indiscriminately on every priest. It is the price… exacted, by some priests who choose not to leave, yet do not… observe celibacy’s demands. Some priests? How many?” (Pg. 116)
He explains, “In talking with active serving priests … I have found there are five levels of relationships priests have with women. First, there are priests who have a deep and lasting friendship with women, but without genital sex… such friendships can bring immense consolation and maturing to the individual priest, and benefit to the Church. The second level is like the previous one, but with occasional physical sex… Third, there are priests who have a permanent sexual relationship with one woman---a lover, a mistress, a common-law wife. Sometimes it’s hidden for years. Sometimes the whole world, even the bishop, knows but chooses not to notice. Fourth, there are priests who from time to time have sexual friendships with different women… Lastly, there are priests who use their Roman collars… to charm all the women they can and lure them to bed---and use their collars a second time around, to break the relationship or evade their responsibilities… (…‘I’m a priest, so you’ll have to look after that child on your own’).” (Pg. 123-124)
He observes, “Only a few decades ago the priests who left were the … ‘Disappeared ones’ of the Roman Catholic Church. Their role was of solitary, shuffling pariahs, of whom Christian society asked only that they disappear off the face of the earth. And disappear they did… into an aloneness that engulfed even the women courageous enough to share their lives.” (Pg. 146)
He continues, “A striking example… is the ‘Corpus’ organization in the United States. Corpus explicitly promotes the aim of optional celibacy and a married priesthood in the Catholic Church, including the return to full ministry of those who had to resign to marry. Corpus began back in 1974… two married priests, Frank Bonnike and Frank McGrath, [declared] that a great many such men would dearly love to serve the Church again, even in an active role as priests… Bonnike, McGrath, and two other Chicago married priests founded Corpus---Corps of Reserve Priests United for Service… The organization has grown to be a powerful voice in the U.S. Catholic Church.” (Pg. 147)
He suggests, “True celibacy, freely chosen (or freely accepted) for the Kingdom of God, is a many-splendored thing in man or woman. And it is one of the easiest things to discern: You know it by the love it generates. One would surely see it in Mother Teresa… in Pope John XXIII… Such free celibacy serves a very special purpose in a priest who is so endowed.” (Pg. 158-159)
Later, he adds, “There is an assumption that when the Church establishes a requirement, that requirement is seen to have a beneficial result for people. An excellent example is the requirement for living in a monastery… namely, the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. For those who are suited to such a life… the beneficial results are obvious. All of us have met the Thomas Mertons and the Mother Teresas… In their case, the Church’s requirements can be clearly seen as beneficial. Can we say the same about the blanket celibacy requirement that is demanded of all secular priests living among us?... does it promote growth and maturity, responsibility and spiritual development, in all or most of those priests? And is it beneficial in the community? It does none of those things…. We, the Church, the people of God, must come to a decision on compulsory celibacy, or lose the Eucharist that Jesus gave us.” (Pg. 174-175)
He concludes, “the prognosis for resigned and married priests [is] a future of struggle. It is, however, a struggle not against the Church, but hand in hand with all its priests and people..."
This book will be of great interest to those studying clerical celibacy, and related topics.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews