Why the Clergy Are Quitting

EVERY month now hundreds of priests and ministers are quitting. The exodus of the clergy has grown into a mighty torrent, shaking the churches to their foundations.

The National Catholic Reporter estimated that in the United States at least 2,700 Catholic priests left in just 1968. And Time magazine reports: “As many as 3,000 Protestant clergymen are leaving U.S. pulpits every year.”

Other countries are experiencing a similar exodus.

THE MEN WHO ARE QUITTING

Who are the men that are quitting? Are they men lacking qualifications and ability?

Jesuit Sociologist Eugene Schallert, after completing a study of hundreds of departing Catholic priests, observed: “Those who are leaving are some of the best men in the church​—some of the most intelligent, most enterprising. . . . They are occupationally top men, capable of holding down really good jobs.”

An example is Charles Davis. Before his departure he was Britain’s leading and best-known Catholic theologian. Last November Bernard J. Cooke also quit. He was one of the foremost Catholic theologians in the United States. Others who have recently quit include prominent Catholic bishops, James P. Shannon of the United States and Mario Renato Cornejo Ravadero of Peru. Also, the papal household was shocked when one of its elite members, Monsignor Giovanni Musante, quit last year.

Is it significant that many of the “best men” are leading the exodus? Yes, it is. For as former Catholic priest Alex MacRae explains: “Most priests aren’t equipped to do anything outside, and this is what is keeping many of them in.”

Now, however, a number of agencies have been set up to help former priests and ministers get adjusted and obtain secular employment. Thus, the exodus is gaining momentum. Why, just one of these agencies now handles about 165 new priest-clients a month​—2,000 a year! John Wesley Downing, director of another such agency, predicts that more than half of the 450,000 Protestant ministers and Catholic priests in the United States will quit by 1975.

REASONS FOR QUITTING

But why are so many quitting? The celibacy law that forbids priests to marry is most frequently cited as the reason.

However, it would be wrong to conclude that the celibacy requirement is the only or fundamental reason for priests quitting. As Monsignor Myles Bourke of New York city observes: “Most of them get out because they’re frustrated in their work. Many of the young people are treated like adolescents and feel restricted.”

It is as young Charles W. Long, who quit the priesthood in 1966, writes: “I grew restless, not because of celibacy, but because I was becoming convinced that the service I could render men was being hampered rather than aided.” He noted the “farce in a parish devoted to organizing Bingo games and conducting novenas.” Do you feel the same way about such activities?

When Charles Wood left the priesthood in British Honduras last summer he observed: “We seem to have become bogged down in the ruts of rituals and tradition . . . even if I were given permission to marry tomorrow and remain as part of the set-up, I would still be resigning.”

Departing priests often note that there is something basically wrong with the Catholic church. Former priest Herbert Hooven of Brooklyn, New York, writes: “There are so many fundamentals involved . . . I can make a very clear distinction between a truly Christian religious community and the typical Catholic parish.”

When telling why he was quitting, Catholic theologian Charles Davis noted the basic problem. “The more I have studied the Bible,” he said, “the less likely the Roman claims have become. . . . there is simply no firm enough biblical basis on which to erect so massive a structure as the Roman Catholic claim requires. . . . I find no attention to truth for its own sake. Reasons of expediency, above all, the preservation of authority, seem always to dominate.”

He added: “The Church as an institution is turned in upon itself and more concerned with its own authority and prestige than with the Gospel message.”

M. R. C. Ravadero, who became the youngest Catholic bishop in the world in 1961 and then quit last year, said: “In this atmosphere I felt suffocated. . . . I couldn’t continue being a head of a Church I didn’t comprehend.” Have you considered quitting the church for similar reasons?

Protestant ministers also are quitting en masse, even though there are no restrictions on their marrying. To try to determine why, the United Church of Christ conducted a survey of 231 of its former ministers. The findings revealed that disillusionment and frustration with the church were the key reasons why the ministers quit.

One former minister explained: “When the church I was serving refused to declare church membership open to all (race issue), I resigned.” Another stated bluntly: “As I search through the corridors of the institutional church, I find only an emotional and spiritual void.”

In Canada, the former United Church minister George Doney explained what finally prompted him to quit: “I grew convinced that by staying I was perpetuating the false distinction between the clergy and the laymen.” He said that in his graduating class of twenty-three ministers in 1961, five have already left the organized church and five more are ready to leave.

Thus, the spiritual void in their churches is causing religious leaders by the thousands either to step down or to leave the church entirely. Paul-Emile Cardinal Leger, Archbishop of Montreal for seventeen years, explained when he resigned his position in 1967: “Some may ask, and with reason, why I am leaving the ship at the moment when the storm is breaking. Yet in the final analysis, it is just this religious crisis which has led me to give up the position of command.”

It causes one to ask: Why attend Christendom’s churches when even the clergy are quitting en masse? Is there anywhere else one can go to be fed spiritually?

CLERGYMEN FIND BIBLE TRUTH

Some clergymen have begun a serious study of God’s Word the Bible. In the eastern United States a Baptist minister obtained a copy of the Bible-study aid The Truth That Leads to Eternal Life in October 1968. He read it in two nights and recognized the ring of truth. His congregation agreed to consider the rich spiritual food contained in this Bible-study aid. They were delighted with what they learned. So, in time, the church building was sold and all families but one began studying with Jehovah’s witnesses and now are attending meetings.

In December 1968, after a period of Bible study, a sixty-nine-year-old clergyman of the Nazareth Baptist Church in South Africa gave a farewell sermon, explaining that he was leaving the church because he had found the way leading to eternal life. He now shares in spreading the good news of God’s kingdom with Jehovah’s witnesses.

A Pentecostal minister in Uruguay showed interest in what the Bible said about the end of this system of things. After talking with one of Jehovah’s witnesses, he attended their meetings. He was convinced he had found the truth, and was soon witnessing to others.

Examples like these are becoming more frequent. Many sincere clergymen and churchgoers recognize the spiritual void in the churches and are looking elsewhere for God’s truth. If you really love God and his Word, is that not what you, too, should be doing?