Results of Controversial Survey by Former Jesuit : 24% of Bishops Would Let Priests Wed, Poll Finds

A survey of U.S. bishops by a resigned Los Angeles Jesuit priest shows that nearly one-fourth of those who responded would allow Roman Catholic priests to marry, but less than 8% would approve of ordaining women priests.

Father Terrance A. Sweeney, who resigned from the Jesuit order on Friday rather than comply with Vatican pressure to destroy his research into attitudes of the hierarchy on the sensitive subjects, mailed a copy of his results to The Times. He had mailed his research to Pope John Paul II just before he signed dismissal papers--upon orders from his superiors--at Loyola Marymount University.

Sweeney’s poll, based on 145 replies from the nation’s 312 Catholic bishops, also found that nearly 20% of those who answered would approve of asking married and resigned priests to return to active ministry and nearly 30% would approve of ordaining women as deacons. Longstanding church policies forbid married priests, as well as women priests and female deacons.

Male deacons in the Catholic Church may perform many semi-clerical tasks, such as preaching; officiating at funerals, marriages and baptisms, and conducting Communion services, but they cannot say Mass, the central act of Catholic worship, or hear confessions.

Social scientists who conduct polls on religious topics expressed caution Tuesday about the reliability of Sweeney’s results but generally said they could be considered a reasonably accurate reading of the bishops’ attitudes.

Strong Reaction

Reaction, meanwhile, to the Vatican ultimatum that led to Sweeney’s forced resignation ranged from outrage to concurrence with his superiors’ demand to either abandon the survey or leave the Society of Jesus.

“It’s a return to the Inquisition. . . . It’s the last gasp of a dying order,” said Father Andrew Greeley, the iconoclastic Chicago priest and novelist who is widely known for his opinion polls. “I deplore the destruction of evidence. It’s like burning books.”

But Bishop William Levada, an auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles who will be installed as archbishop of Portland, Ore., next month, said he was sorry that Sweeney “has not complied with the orders of his superiors, which I think are sensible and which he is bound to by vows of obedience.”

The Very Rev. John W. Clark, the Jesuit provincial for California, who gave Sweeney the ultimatum to quit his research or be expelled, and Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony both refused comment on the dismissal and the survey.

Greeley, whose recent polls of lay Catholics found that about half favored optional celibacy for priests and more than half favored women priests, said he was surprised that Sweeney received such a high response--46%--to his survey mailed to all of the nation’s Catholic bishops last November. He called the degree of dissent indicated by the poll “substantial.”

“These are issues on which the bishops are very sensitive,” Greeley said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “There would be a strong impulse to throw the survey in the wastebasket. . . . Bishops are very carefully screened before they are appointed.”

Greeley and Dean R. Hoge, a professor of sociology at Catholic University in Washington, and John Petrocik, associate director of the Institute for Social Science Research at UCLA, agreed that Sweeney’s poll could be skewed in favor of a liberal response because those opposed to change may not have replied to it.

“It may be on the liberal side,” Hoge, a Presbyterian, said of the results. “The reality may be a little less acceptance than the survey showed. These are . . . emotionally charged and politically laden topics because of Vatican views opposing changes in priestly ministries.”

Petrocik, a UCLA professor of political science, said a 46% response rate on a mail sample “is reasonably good . . . but the motivation of those who didn’t respond is hard to know.”

George Gallup Jr., president of the Gallup Poll, said that although he was impressed by the size of response, some “subjective elements” had undoubtedly influenced the poll’s results.

Point Made

Gallup pointed out, however, that even if every bishop who did not respond to the survey were considered to be against optional celibacy for priests, that would still mean that nearly one of eight of the nation’s prelates would approve of permitting priests to marry.

In Sweeney’s survey, 35 bishops--24.3%--said they would approve of optional celibacy, while 109 said they would not approve. One did not respond to the question.

On the matter of women priests, 11 (7.6%), would favor ordaining them, while 133 would not.

Sweeney also sent his questionnaire to the world’s 122 cardinals. Only 10 replied, however, and he did not include their answers in his findings.

Sweeney, an Emmy-Award-winning priest known for his work in producing, writing and directing religious films and television programs, has written several books and holds a doctoral degree in theology and the arts. But he is not a sociologist nor a theologian and has not held a university faculty post.

He said he consulted three sociologists--one from UCLA and two from Loyola Marymount University--about how to analyze the survey results. He did not consult experts before he constructed his one-page questionnaire.

‘Human Right’

Sweeney said Tuesday that he was making his survey results public because “the entire Catholic community has both the right and the responsibility to be informed about issues vitally important to their spiritual well-being” and because “freedom of inquiry and freedom of expression are an inalienable human right.”

He added that for eight months he had tried unsuccessfully to discuss with church authorities the issues raised by the survey.

A Jesuit for nearly 24 years, Sweeney, 41, said his superiors initially had encouraged him to pursue his survey last fall but that he ran into problems after Mahony told him that Archbishop Pio Laghi, the Pope’s apostolic delegate in Washington, had inquired about the work.

Later, Sweeney heard from the Jesuit provincial in Los Gatos, who told him to “cease and desist all work on the survey (and) destroy the material you have gathered thus far.” Sweeney refused, prompting the ultimatum to leave the Jesuit order, which Sweeney complied with Friday by signing release papers after his appeal of the command was denied.

Liberal Views

Sweeney’s conflict with church leaders came on the heels of other efforts by the Vatican to squelch dissent and was followed Monday by the Vatican decision to strip Catholic scholar Charles Curran, a prominent professor at Catholic University with liberal views on sexual ethics, of his rank as an official church theologian.

The long-threatened punishment for disagreeing with official church teaching was taken by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican’s Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and approved by the Pope.

Levada, the former auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles who has lectured and written on the subject of dissent and Catholic education, said that while Sweeney had apparently not publicly dissented from official Catholic views, his poll lacked “a serious purpose and authorization” assuring its being “objective and impartial.” Sweeney’s research could hurt the church and “have some public relations disadvantage,” Levada acknowledged.

Major Denomination

Hoge, the Catholic University sociologist, said, “There is less sponsorship of research and less tolerance of the results” in the Catholic Church than there is in any other major denomination.

“Very likely there is a trend” to current crackdowns on U.S. Catholic theologians, nuns and others considered to be out of step with official church teaching or discipline, he said.

“No other religious group would be so harsh,” Hoge said.

But to Levada, who said he threw Sweeney’s questionnaire in the wastebasket, the issue is clear:

“It’s a problem between him and his (Jesuit) superiors. I feel sorry he’d stage such a dramatic resignation over such a thing.”