Fr Sean McKenna’s dramatic announcement during mass at Holy Family church in Ballymagroarty, Co Derry that he was leaving the priesthood because of his relationship with a woman sent shockwaves through the Catholic Church. And yet the reaction of his parishioners shows that times are not only a-changing but they have definitively a-changed.
When Fr McKenna spoke candidly of his decision to quit after embarking on a “loving” and “beautiful” relationship with a local woman, the congregation rose as one to give a standing ovation to their priest for a quarter of a century.
Letters to papers and internet noise suggest an overwhelming understanding of his position.
Such reaction speaks well of the regard with which Fr McKenna is held by the local community, but it also shows that, perhaps in some ways, lay Catholics are light years ahead of their clergy when it comes to living in the real world.
Of course, many would point out that we’re suckers for a love story and that, as a society, we are falling apart precisely because we place our own (instant?) gratifications above duty and self-sacrifice.
Traditionalists, with some justification, will argue that beneath the lovey-doviness of it all, Fr McKenna not only broke his freely-chosen vows of celibacy taken before his God, but also that his statement from the pulpit implied that he was in an active sexual relationship outside marriage and, to boot, with a woman who was not even divorced, only separated.
From the perspective of orthodox Catholicism his actions challenge more than the Church’s position on priestly celibacy. It’s messier than the more starry-eyed innocents are prepared to admit.
But isn’t that just the point: life is incredibly messy. People do find themselves in positions they would never have thought possible. For example, Catholic pals tell me of relatives who are divorced through no fault of their own.
Despite going into marriage determined that it really is until ‘death do us part’, they’ve been let down by a tom-catting husband or a drunken wife or a partner who did a midnight flit to ‘find themselves’.
Why should the innocent be forced to live lives of semi-estrangement from a religion they have no desire to leave? Why should they live lives of celibacy enforced — cruelly, if unintentionally — by a combination of the hierarchy and their guilty (ex)spouses?
Of course, most end up simply doing the best they can, remaining Catholic in their hearts while, in terms of their sexual morality, not being quite orthodox. Half-in and half-out, as it were.
While not directly related, Fr McKenna’s admissions should also be viewed against the backdrop of the scandal of paedophile priests. Theologians can use clever arguments that priestly celibacy is somehow a support for the sanctity of marriage but those outside the Catholic Church — and a growing number inside — view it as merely helping to provide conditions for a ‘perfect storm’ of scandal.
In our Freudian age, most believe instinctively that this hothousing of sex leads directly to aberrant behaviour. If not paedophilia, then certainly an aura of darkness, suspicion and just ‘oddness’.
Grossly simplistic and unfair to the vast majority of priests that may be, but there you have it.
Removing celibacy would allow healing winds to blow around the Church.
The parishioners of Ballymagroarty are not theologians, bishops, archbishops or cardinals. They may not even be consistent.
They are just people living 21st century lives as best they can.
But the applause that rippled through the pews of Holy Family church shows that the people are ready — even eager — for change.
Their church leaders would do well not just to listen but to follow them.
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