The young men who are now old enough to
consider entering the seminary grew up in an era of crisis in the
Catholic church.
Clergy sex abuse cases cast a shadow over the
priesthood.
Yet the church is adding priests.
Jessica Robinson has this
story about the next generation of priests who will inherit that legacy.
Dale Tuckerman really has a great tan -– a combination of living in
Rome for the last year, and rockclimbing in eastern Washington during
his summer break.
Tuckerman is a seminarian at the Spokane Diocese. And he doesn't fit the profile of generations past.
"I'm actually 30," Tuckerman says. "And I'm actually a convert."
There's a good story behind that too.
"Oh you're going to laugh, because this is awesome," he says.
So, Tuckerman met this girl. And she was Catholic. And then he was Catholic. And then she dumped him.
And amid his wallowing, Tuckerman started thinking about what he
really wanted out of life.
At some point in there he went to confession
and his priest mentioned the seminary.
Tuckerman says, "I knew that everyone I know would be like, 'Yeah he
broke up with his girlfriend, or she broke up with him, and now he's
joining the seminary. You know it's like a rebound relationship. Only
with God. He's going extreme.'"
"I didn't want to do that, and so I checked it out little by little."
Tuckerman says to his own amazement, something seemed to click.
"All these pieces came together to form this arrow."
An arrow in the direction of the priesthood. Now, as it happens, this
was at a critical time for the Spokane Diocese. It had recently paid
out millions of dollars to sex abuse victims in a bankruptcy deal.
"And the bankruptcy settlement was requiring that the Diocesan
newspaper have explicit stories by the victims of sexual abuse, I mean
they were horrendously graphic," Tuckerman says.
"I read every single one."
Tuckerman says signs of the crisis were everywhere –- down to his own application process.
"For instance, you have to go get an intense psychological evaluation
that takes like five to six hours," he explains. "You have to do two of
those. And I think I might have to do another one before I get
ordained."
But Tuckerman was undeterred. And he isn't alone. While the numbers
are smaller compared with previous generations, seminaries across the
country report a steady flow of candidates.
And these candidates are different. They skew older –- more are in
their 30s like Tuckerman. They've already lived a "past life" — as one
newly ordained priest put it — and they're looking for meaning.
Even the way they contact the church has changed.
"It's almost all email, says Father Jack Bentz, the vocation director
for the Portland-based Northwest order of Jesuits. He's the guy who
screens candidates for the seminary.
And Bentz says most don't seem affected by the abuse crisis.
"They see it as someone else's, some other generation's problem," he
says. "Which is not quite accurate in the sense of we are an institution
and we are trying to make that better."
Bentz says the crisis has been a reality check for priests: it shows that they're flawed.
"Because it's very hard and very tricky to not be put up on a
pedestal by Catholics. And you lose the reality of no we're just here to
be servants," Bentz says. "That's all we are. And being discredited or
having a credibility problem? Kind of helps that."
The Northwest order of Jesuits is going through its own settlement
right now with more than 500 victims of abuse from as far away as
Alaska.
Bentz says even before the lawsuit, the Jesuits had implemented
tougher measures –- everything from scrutinizing why men are entering
the priesthood, to preparing them for a life of celibacy.
But there's more to stopping clergy sex abuse than who you pick and how you train them. That's
according to Michael Dick.
Dick's history gives him an unusual perspective. For one thing, he
studied to be a priest.
Dick spent four years in Rome before changing
his mind shortly before he was ordained.
He's also a victim of clergy abuse.
As a child he was raped by a priest at his Catholic high school in Montana.
Dick is now one of the claimants in the case against the Northwest
Jesuits.
He thinks action in the Catholic Church needs to come from the
top.
"There are people that have spent almost their entire lives working
in Rome. They have no perspectives of the way people live. And this
breeds an elitism," Dick says.
"'Just have trust, we will handle it in
our own time, in our own way.' And I see that attitude as exacerbating
this whole nightmare."
Dick now teaches ancient languages at Siena College, a Catholic
school in upstate New York. He doesn't come across as bitter.
He
describes Sunday mass as one of the most relaxing parts of his week.
But Dick is critical of the Church and its ability to change.
Back in Spokane, Dale Tuckerman, the convert turned seminarian,
spends his afternoon hours in the rectory at the Cathedral of Our Lady
of Lourdes. He believes the Church has changed.
Furthermore, he thinks the scope of clergy abuse -– though egregious -– has been overstated.
"And the more I researched it, the more I saw, maybe these were exceptions to the rule," he says.