COMMENTARY: Cleveland Rector Has the Right Enemies

c. 2000 Religion News Service (Eugene Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author most recently of “My Brother Joseph,” published by St. Martin’s Press.) (UNDATED) The Rev. Donald Cozzens, rector of Cleveland’s St. Mary Seminary, displays rare courage in his book, […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Eugene Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author most recently of “My Brother Joseph,” published by St. Martin’s Press.)

(UNDATED) The Rev. Donald Cozzens, rector of Cleveland’s St. Mary Seminary, displays rare courage in his book, “The Changing Face of the Priesthood,” in which he says aloud what had been whispered for years.


What, he wonders, are the implications of the increasing number of homosexuals in the American priesthood and seminary system? He is not a Paul Revere calling us to arms against an encroaching enemy, but a thoughtful priest concerned about the impact such a shift in gender identification among the clergy would have on American Catholic life.

At last, a topic that has been bruited about in darkness has been brought into the light.

Cozzens’ book, with its true concerns for both homosexual and heterosexual candidates, has been warmly received by most priests and people who are not afraid of examining such issues in the sunlight and fresh air with which the author bathes them.

The “sunlight and fresh air” test is critical for any subject. It is far more sensitive and discerning than political “litmus tests” that usually refer to a candidate’s position on a single issue, such as capital punishment or abortion.

The test of “sunlight and fresh air” applies to everything. It tells us infallibly whether an action, a statement or a practice is healthy or not. Everything healthy passes the test because anything healthy thrives under the sun and in the open air.

Unhealthy things dread the sunlight and despise the fresh air. Dracula does not avoid dawn by accident, just as some things prefer to squirm in blind delight on the underside of rocks.

We are never comfortable with people who “keep us in the dark” about themselves and their motives. Do you think the Devil likes fresh air?


Healthy people meet us face to face but unhealthy people prefer to sneak up on us from behind. The next to the last thing they want is to look us in the eye. The last thing they want is a fair fight. They keep their intentions out of sun and air because they don’t want us to see them and can’t bear to look at them either. That is why Jesus spoke of some people preferring the darkness to the light.

Cozzens has survived numerous attacks from critics gathered in the shadows behind his back. The most recent, by the Rev. Richard Antal, is so vicious that it must be subjected to the “sunlight and fresh air” test. In an article out of character with the usually balanced Our Sunday Visitor on Aug. 13, he spends six paragraphs comparing Cozzens to Nazi leaders Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels. Antal cites the latter pair’s onslaught against Catholicism in the 1930s, claiming that their assertions of sexual depravity among Catholic priests were a pretext “to discredit the Church.”

Antal judges Cozzens’ reflections as the immoral equivalent of the Nazi persecutors because he identifies the emergence of a discernible gay subculture in the American priesthood.

The long-term implications of this development are unclear. That is why Cozzens wrote his book.

Cozzens’ concerns are for the priesthood and the ongoing sacramental service of the people. He knows that many heterosexual seminarians are uncomfortable in the increasing homosexual milieu of many houses of training and that admittedly homosexual candidates may face a difficult adjustment to the predominantly heterosexual environment of parish work.

Antal, whose signature is self-reference (“I accept that,” “I think he’s wrong,” “The seminarians I know,” “Most priests I know think”), concludes, “That’s why I don’t hesitate to compare Father Cozzens’ views with the damage intended by Himmler and GoebbelsâÂ?¦”


Typically, he accuses Cozzens of having a “hidden agenda” of optional celibacy and finds “Father Cozzens’ remarks about celibacy being a safe berth for those who do not want to answer inconvenient questions about `why he isn’t dating or married’ …ad hominem and despicable.”

The latter is one category in which Antal’s expertise cannot be denied. Antal’s clerical pique suggests the kind of supercilious and furtive manner that has been identified among certain cliques of contemporary seminarians.

Sister Katarina Schut identifies this chic coterie in her “Seminaries, Theologates and the Future of Church Ministry” (The Liturgical Press, 1999): “The greatest challenge for faculty” is found in “those who have a rigid understanding of their faith. … They create a climate of distrust and defensiveness, publicly questioning the orthodoxy of professors and fellow students.”

Antal’s slipping a swastika onto the arm of a good man is instructive. It explains why healthy people drive unhealthy people crazy. Health so annoys the unhealthy that they come rushing out of the cobwebbed darkness, only to lose their power in the purifying light.

For drawing so much unhealthy fire, Cozzens deserves the gratitude of everybody interested in healthy Catholicism.

KRE END KENNEDY

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!