When Priests Leave the Church. How common is Alberto Cutis journey to Protestant ministry?

Earlier this year, Father Alberto Cutié, a popular radio and television personality in Miami, found himself the subject of tabloid headlines when he was photographed relaxing on the beach with a woman who turned out to be his longtime girlfriend. Shortly afterward, he announced that he was leaving the Catholic Church to become an Episcopal priest, and in June he and his girlfriend were married in a civil ceremony. The reasons Cutié gave for his conversion to the Anglican Communion were not theological in nature; his primary motivation seemed to be to free himself from the celibacy requirement that the Catholic Church demands of its Latin Rite priests.

How unique is Cutié’s story? How many other Catholic priests have left the church for another denomination in order to marry? Could Cutié’s conversion signal the beginning of another wave of men leaving the priesthood? Until November 2008, when I completed my dissertation on the transition of celibate Catholic priests into married Protestant ministry, it would have been impossible to address these questions. The data I collected over the course of a year allowed me to conduct the first-ever analysis in this field.

Though many social scientists (including my granduncle, sociologist Joseph Fichter, S.J.,) had studied the phenomenon of priests leaving ministry since the late 1960s, I could not find a single research project that dealt with this specific subset. Not even the most elementary demographic data were available. How many Catholic priests chose to become Protestant ministers? From which branch of the priesthood (diocesan or religious) did they originate? What Protestant churches did they choose to join? All of these questions were unanswered. Fifty or Five Thousand?

In his 1961 book Religion as an Occupation, Fichter noted that some “ex-priests” chose to continue their pastoral work in Protestant ministry, but cited only two examples. In Married Catholic Priests: Their History, Their Journey, Their Reflections (2004), Anthony Kowalski writes of “many” who have married and now serve in mainline churches but mentions only five Episcopalians and two Lutherans by name. Certainly there are more but no one seems to know exactly how many. Are there 50, 500, 5,000?

Thanks to information gathered from the research offices of the five mainline Protestant Churches (Congregational, Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian), I was able to identify 414 such men in the United States. Following the advice of the late Dean Hoge, I did not contact the Baptist Church or any of the hundreds of small Protestant denominations, presuming that very few Catholic priests would be inclined to join them.

Nearly one-third of the 414 former Catholic priests now serving in Protestant ministry agreed to participate in my survey. Of the 131 respondents, 105 (80.2 percent) became Episcopalian, 15 (11.5 percent) Lutheran, eight (6.1 percent) Congregationalist, and three (2.3 percent) Methodist. I found a 40-year age range: the youngest was 42 and the eldest 82. Their mean age was 62.8 while the median was 64.

The “typical” participant in my study, therefore, was born around 1944. If we divide his life into seven 9-year periods, we find him immersed in Catholic devotions and rituals during the first two timeframes. His service as an altar boy and the encouragement he received from the nuns facilitated his entry into the seminary at the age of 18 in 1962. He dedicated the third period of his life, during the heyday of Vatican II, to preparing for ordination at the age of 27 in 1971. He spent the fourth phase in active Catholic ministry and struggled with his commitment to celibacy. At the age of 36 in 1980, at the beginning of the fifth period, he resigned from ministry, got married, worked for a few years in a non-ministerial job, and eventually began his journey to his new denomination. From 1989 to 2007, he served as a married Protestant minister, twice the amount of time he spent as a Catholic priest. ‘An Agonizing Decision’

Many respondents spoke at length about the critical decision-making juncture of their lives. Most described it, as did Alberto Cutié, as a heart-wrenching process. A former diocesan priest, who now serves as a Congregationalist minister, said:

I had such a nervous encounter with my bishop and with my parents. It was a period of constant headaches. It was a very difficult decision. I was so torn between Sally (pseudonym) and celibacy. When I finally resolved the dilemma, the headaches stopped… It truly was an agonizing decision. I still recall how poorly the bishop treated me. I felt that he really didn’t care about me. I remember my mother saying, “But you are one of the good ones!” I told her that I just couldn’t do it anymore. In the end, both of my parents were very supportive; I was blessed with two great parents. It was an agonizing decision especially after spending eight years in the seminary and nine years in ministry.

Once they began to doubt their commitment to celibacy, most participants began weighing the choices before them. One was to “bite the bullet” and remain a celibate Catholic priest. A second option was to seek a dispensation and thereby enter into a Catholic marriage, but in the process forfeit their beloved ministry. The third alternative, the one that Cutié and the survey respondents chose, was to renounce their Roman Catholic affiliation in order to enter ministry in another domination.

When asked why they made the transition, six out of ten respondents cited celibacy. “I joined the Episcopal Church because I wanted to have the option of being married,” one participant wrote. Some conveyed a deep attachment to the Catholic Church: “My only reason was so that I could get married. Otherwise, I would have stayed.” For the majority, becoming Protestant only occurred after they married. In general, the respondents did not resign because they disliked ministry or had failed at it. Had the pope allowed them to marry, many would have stayed. Three of the respondents stated that they would return to the Catholic priesthood today—if they could bring their wives along with them. The Congregationalist minister above spoke about his time in Catholic seminary as “the best eight years of my entire life.” He described the monks in charge of his formation as men of great kindness, role models who provided him with a solid theological education and a positive spiritual foundation. His problems began during his first assignment:

I was doing really well in my ministry, but rectory life was killing me. The pastor, who was great with the parishioners, had this notion that you need to treat the young priests harshly. He was really hard on us. He made all the rules. There was no discussion. I began to lose weight. I asked the bishop for a transfer. My second pastor was an alcoholic. Besides that, he had his ‘boyfriend’ over at the rectory so often that it made me feel uncomfortable. I asked the bishop for another transfer and this time I was assigned to a truly great pastor. He was so kind to me, and he was someone that I deeply admired. I have often thought that had Father Michael (pseudonym) been my first pastor, I might still be a Catholic priest today. . . . My main issue was with celibacy, however. I always thought that it was unjust, especially when the Pastoral Provision (permission that Pope John Paul II granted in 1980 to Episcopalian ministers to serve as married Catholic priests after their conversion) came through. I thought that such a decision was a double standard. I was battling loneliness. . . . I think that I would have stayed as a Roman Catholic priest if celibacy had been optional.

Other respondents spoke about their dislike for specific tenets of Catholic dogma. Many pointed to the publication of Humanae Vitae as a major turning point in their lives. One former diocesan priest, who is now 80 years old, said, “Humanae Vitae pushed me off the edge. I saw that act as the refusal of the Roman Catholic Church to enter the modern world.”

One of the Episcopalians in the study clearly presented what I categorized as the two main motivating factors: the pull of the “heart” issue (falling in love) and the demands of the “head” (doctrinal dissent):

During my first three years of ordained ministry as a priest, I fell in love with a woman who was the youth minister at my parish. Even though I had questioned the discipline of celibacy before, I began to seriously question and struggle with it. I began to feel that God was calling me in a different direction, that celibacy might not be my calling. Coupled with the struggle over celibacy, I seriously questioned the Roman Catholic Church’s treatment of women, laypeople and homosexuals. The establishment in Rome was becoming more rigid and moving the church backwards. The reforms of Vatican II came under fire. It came to the point where I could not imagine being happy in 20 years if I remained in ministry in the Roman Catholic Church. I felt God was calling me to pursue something else. I dreamed of finding a denomination where I could continue to minister with my wife, a gifted youth and family minister. New Church, Familiar Liturgy

When asked why they chose their current denomination, the majority of respondents spoke of the strong similarity between their present church and the Catholic Church in terms of liturgy, ministry and theology. This was especially true for the Episcopalians and seems to explain why so many of the survey respondents gravitated to the Anglican Communion. Most of those who joined the Episcopal Church said that with only minor adjustments they “felt at home” from the beginning and that they found comfort in the fact that they could hold onto their core beliefs in the Resurrection and the Eucharist. Over time they modified their views on other subjects, such as papal infallibility and women’s ordination, but many of them had already begun to question the validity of those doctrines.

Before I began the interviews, I hypothesized that diocesan priests would be overrepresented in my sample because they seem to be at greater risk for loneliness than religious order priests. (Most religious live in community, while diocesan priests often live alone in rectories because of the shortage of priests.) The survey results support this hypothesis. Based on the historical ratio of American diocesan clergy to religious, one would expect to find 61.5 percent diocesan priests in this sample; in fact, 72.3 percent of the respondents had served in diocesan ministry. (Recall that Cutié was a diocesan priest.)

Where Cutié differs from most of the men I surveyed is in the historical timing of his decision. The majority of respondents began their journey to a new church in the period from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. It seems unlikely that Cutié’s example will spark another wave of priestly resignations. According to research conducted by Dean R. Hoge and Jacqueline E. Wenger in Evolving Visions of Priesthood: Changes from Vatican II to the Turn of the New Century (2003), young priests today are more theologically conservative than their immediate predecessors and are more likely therefore to embrace the church’s traditional teaching on celibacy. Questions remain, however, about how many young Catholic men have chosen lay or Protestant ministry over the Catholic priesthood because of the demands of celibacy—a fitting area of inquiry, perhaps, for another curious sociologist.

In Catholic circles, some men [priests] left over the Church not “changing with the times”, which explains a large part of the exodus and going to the Episcopalians, ELCA Lutherans and Methodists provided both a more liberal theology on those moral questions and a liturgical approach to worship.

It would be interesting if the data included evangelical churches, but it only included five mainline Protestant Churches (Congregational, Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian), while most lay converts to Prot. are to evangelical churches*.

And not due to desire for more liberal doctrine, but overall due to spiritual deficiency they found in Rome.

But that RC priests - which the Holy Spirit never titles NT pastors, and which is a result of imposed functional equivalence, and with the defense of that title relying on etymological fallacy - would be more likely to convert to these liberal mainline denoms is to be expected, since these are the most like Rome, and perhaps they can be easily recognized as a "priest" in some.

*68% of those raised Roman Catholic still are Catholic (higher than the retention rates of individual Protestant denoms, but less than Jews at 76%). 15% are now Protestant (9% evangelical); 14% are unaffiliated. Pew forum, Faith in Flux (April 27, 2009) http://pewforum.org/uploadedfiles/Topics/Religious_Affiliation/fullreport.pdf

80% of adults who were raised Protestant are still Protestant, but (analysis shows) 25% no longer self-identify with the Protestant denomination in which they were raised. ^
44 percent of Americans have switched religious affiliations since childhood, mostly mainline Protestants. 7% who were raised Protestant are now unaffiliated; 15% now belong to a different Protestant faith. ^
51% of Protestants from a different Protestant denomination cite a lack of spiritual fulfillment as a reason for leaving their childhood faith. 85% say they joined their current denominational faith because they enjoy the services and style of worship. Only 15% left say they left because they stopped believing in its teachings. ^
Those who have left Catholicism outnumber those who have joined the Catholic Church by nearly a four-to-one margin. 10.1% have left the Catholic Church after having been raised Catholic, while only 2.6% of adults have become Catholic after having been raised in a different faith.^
4% of Americans raised Catholic are now unaffiliated; 5% are now Protestant. ^
Over 75% of those who left Catholicism attended Mass at least once a week as children, versus 86% having done so who remain Catholics today.^
Regarding reasons for leaving Catholicism, less than 30% of former Catholics agreed that the clergy sexual abuse scandal played a role in their departure. ^
71% of converts from Catholicism to Protestant faith said that their spiritual needs were not being met in Catholicism, with 78% of Evangelical Protestants in particular concurring, versus 43% of those now unaffiliated. ^
50% of all Protestants converts from Catholicism said they stopped believing in Catholicism's teachings overall. Only 23% (20% now evangelical) were unhappy about Catholicism's teachings on abortion/homosexuality (versus 46% of those now unaffiliated); 23% also expressed disagreement with teaching on divorce/remarriage; 16% (12% now evangelical) were dissatisfied with teachings on birth control, 70% said they found a religion the liked more in Protestantism.
55% of evangelical converts from Catholicism cited dissatisfaction with Catholic teachings about the Bible was a reason for leaving Catholicism, with 46% saying the Catholic Church did not view the Bible literally enough.
81% of all Protestant converts from Catholicism said they enjoyed the service and worship of Protestant faith as a reason for joining a Protestant denomination, with 62% of all Protestants and 74% Evangelicals also saying that they felt God's call to do so. ^
42% of those now unaffiliated stated they do not believe in God, or most religious teaching. ^
54% of “millennial generation” Catholics (born in 1982 or later) are Hispanics, while 39% are non-Hispanic whites. On the other hand, 76% of “pre-Vatican II generation” Catholics (born 1943 or earlier) are non-Hispanic whites, while 15% are Hispanics. Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University, September, 2010 . http://www.osv.com/tabid/7621/itemid/6850/Openers-More-evidence-of-the-browning-of-US-Cat.aspx
68% of all Latinos in the U.S. identify as Catholics. Changing Faiths: Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion http://pewforum.org/Changing-Faiths-Latinos-and-the-Transformation-of-American-Religion.aspx Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion - American Piety in the 21 Century – 9-2006 http://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/33304.pdf
Among Catholics under the age of 30, 47% are white, and 45% are Latino. In contrast, among Catholics over the age of 65, 82% are white (Pew Forum 2007, reported in http://publicreligion.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Catholics-and-LGBT-Issues-Survey-Report.pdf)
Latinos comprised 32 percent of all U.S. Catholics in 2008, versus to 20 percent in 1990. However, Catholic identification has slipped from 66 percent in 1990 to 60 percent in 2008. There has also been a significant rise in the number of Latinos who do not adhere to a religion. The longer a Latino has lived in the United States, the less likely he or she is to be Catholic. Study of Secularism in Society and Culture at Trinity College, http://theamericano.com/2010/03/18/new-report-on-u-s-latino-religious-identification/
18% of all Latinos say they have either converted from one religion to another or to no religion at all. http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/75.4.pdf
1,000 Mexicans left the Catholic Church every day between 2000 and 2010, a decline that has continued uninterrupted over the past 60 years, from 98.21 of the population to 83.9 percent today. Latin American Herald Tribune, March 10, 2011, based upon census data and study by sociologist and historian Roberto Blancarte of Colegio de Mexico and the National Autonomous University of Mexico
The percentage of of Protestants and Evangelicals rose from 1.28% in 1950 to close to 8% of the total population in 2010, (excluding so-called Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons). 5.2 million say they profess no religion. ^
This decline is seen as extending across the region (Catholics represent between 55% to 73% in Central America, 70% in Brazil, 50% in Cuba and Uruguay).^
Brazil’s National Statistics Institute reported that the number of evangelical Christians in Brazil (the world’s largest Catholic country) has risen from 15% of the population in 2000 to to 22% of the population in 2010, and 4% 40 years ago, while the proportion of Catholic Brazilians fell from 93.% of Brazilians 40 years ago, and 74% of the population in 2000 to to 65% in 2010. http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/29/ratio-of-evangelicals-in-brazil-jumps-44-in-10-years/
Almost 20% of all Latino American Catholics have left the Roman Catholicism, with 23 percent of second-generation Latino Americans doing so. http://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/33304.pdf
54% of Hispanic Catholics describe themselves as charismatic Christians. http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=75
51% of Hispanic Evangelicals are converts, and 43% are former Catholics. ^
82% of Hispanics cite the desire for a more direct, personal experience with God as the main reason for adopting a new faith. Among those who have become evangelicals, 90% say it was a spiritual search for a more direct, personal experience with God was the main reason that drove their conversion. Negative views of Catholicism do not appear to be a major reason for their conversion. ^
Latino evangelicals are more than 20 percentage points more likely than Catholics to say that abortion should be illegal in most or all circumstances. http://www.nhclc.org/news/latino-religion-us-demographic-shifts-and-trend
The first generation of Latino immigrants is 74 percent Catholic, and 15 percent Protestant. The second generation is 72 percent Catholic, and 20 percent Protestant. The third generation is 62 percent Catholic, and 29 percent Protestant. ^
According to the Census Bureau, the Latino population in the United States grew from 22.4 million in 1990 to 41.3 million in 2004, adding a staggering 18.9 million people in 10 years. Broader estimates, which include Puerto Rican islanders (4 million) and undocumented immigrants (5 million), put the U.S. Latino population at over 50 million. ^
When ask to choose, three-fourths of all Protestant pastors surveyed said [2009] they are pro-life, and 13 percent said they were pro-choice. LifeWay Research; http://www.lifeway.com/ArticleView?storeId=10054&catalogId=10001&langId=-1&article=LifeWay-Research-protestant-pastors-share-views-on-gay-marriage-abortion
In a 2010 LifeWay Research survey 77 percent of American Protestant pastors (57% of mainline versus 87% evangelical) strongly disagree with same-sex marriage, with 6% percent somewhat disagreeing, and 5% being somewhat in agreement and 10 percent strongly agreeing. (5% of evangelical).
Only 3% of evangelical pastors (versus 11% mainline) somewhat agree that there is nothing wrong with homosexual marriage.
11% of evangelical pastors (versus 30% mainline) somewhat agree that homosexual civil unions are acceptable, with 67% of the former and 38% of the latter strongly disagreeing with homosexual civil unions. October 2010 LifeWay Research survey of 1,000 randomly selected Protestant pastors. http://www.lifeway.com/ArticleView?storeId=10054&catalogId=10001&langId=-1&article=LifeWay-Research-protestant-pastors-oppose-homosexual-marriage
A 2002 nationwide poll of 1,854 priests in the United States and Puerto Rico reported that 30% of Roman Catholic priests described themselves as Liberal, 28% as Conservative, and 37% as Moderate in their Religious ideology. 53 percent responded that they thought it always was a sin for unmarried people to have sexual relations; 32 percent that is often was, and 9 percent seldom/never. However, nearly four in 10 younger priests in 2002 described themselves as conservative, and were more likely to regard as "always a sin" such acts as premarital sex, abortion, artificial birth control, homosexual relations, etc., and three-fourths said they were more religiously orthodox than their older counterparts. Los Angeles Times (extensive) nationwide survey (2002). http://www.bishop-accountability.org/resources/resource-files/reports/LAT-Priest-Survey.pdf http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_2_39/ai_94129129/pg_2
The survey also found that 80% of Roman Catholic priests referred to themselves as “mostly” heterosexual in orientation, with 67% being exclusively heterosexual, 8% leaning toward heterosexual, 5% completely in the middle, and 6% leaning toward homosexual and 9% saying they are homosexual, for a combined figure of 15% on the homosexual class. Among younger priests (those ordained for 20 years or less) the figure was 23%. ^
One-third of surveyed priests said they “do not waver” from their vow of celibacy, while 47% described celibacy as “an ongoing journey” and 14% said they “do not always succeed in following” it. 2% said celibacy is not relevant to their priesthood and they do not observe it. not celibate. ^
71 percent of priests responded that it always was wrong for a woman to get an abortion, 19 percent that it often was, and 4 percent seldom/never. ^
28 percent judged that is always was sin for married couples to use artificial birth control, 25 percent often, 40 percent never. ^
49 percent affirmed that it was always a sin to engage in homosexual behavior, often, 25 percent; and never, 19 percent. ^

You celebrate a man who made a vow to God to be celibate and who broke that vow....Both stunning examples of protestantism - break your vow to God and become a hero.

A stunning example of Catholicism, which celebrates the theological equivalence of Herod's vow in obedience to Rome over Scripture!

"And the king was sorry: nevertheless for the oath's sake, and them which sat with him at meat, he commanded it to be given her. " (Matthew 14:9)

"But do not thou yield unto them: for there lie in wait for him of them more than forty men, which have bound themselves with an oath, that they will neither eat nor drink till they have killed him: and now are they ready, looking for a promise from thee." (Acts 23:21)

"Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;...Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth." (1 Timothy 4:1-3)

"This is a true saying, If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work. A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife...One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)" (1 Timothy 3:1,2,4,5)

"Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas?" (1 Corinthians 9:5)

For the fact is that the normative state of NT pastors was that of marriage, and fatherhood (as an argument against contraception) is even invoked as a preparatory ability for the pastorate.

And while celibacy certainly has its advantages as Paul describes, and as in 70AD which Paul seems to foresee, the future now will esp. be difficult for families, yet the apostle also states that celibacy is a gift:

"For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that." (1 Corinthians 7:7)

Thus to presume all basically who are called to the pastorate have that gift is both unScriptural and presumptuous, and is asking for trouble.

Yet the true NT church began in disobedience to men who sat in the seat of Moses.

And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith. (Acts 6:7)

"But Peter and John answered and said unto them, Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye." (Acts 4:19)

For indeed, under the Roman model for authority and determining Truth, the NT church itself is invalidated!

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