A New Breed of Priest

It’s hard to miss Father Marcos Gonzalez, who wears an ankle-length black cassock every day, a garment most priests tossed out decades ago. But it’s not just his clothes that bespeak an older, more traditional era of his Roman Catholic Church.

When some priests spoke in favor of optional celibacy at a Los Angeles priest assembly last year -- a position supported by most American Catholics today -- Gonzalez booed in dissent. In premarital counseling, he tells couples to remain chaste until marriage, plunging into delicate territory some priests prefer to avoid. Gonzalez also believes artificial birth control and gay sex are always a sin and opposes women’s ordination.

Such stances conform with Vatican teachings, he says, but are at odds with many American priests and lay people.

Yet Gonzalez, an associate pastor at St. Andrew Church in Pasadena, is hardly a relic from a fading past. At 41, he offers one glimpse of the future as a member of a new breed of younger priests ordained during the 25-year papacy of Pope John Paul II and passionately committed to the pope’s orthodox teachings.

As the health of John Paul -- now 84 and the third-longest serving pontiff in history -- continues to falter, men like Gonzalez stand ready to guard and propagate his legacy. They represent a global trend toward Christian orthodoxy, in contrast to a generation of more liberal priests ordained during the 1960s reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

“We are very, very faithful to the Holy Father and not in any way dissenting from the teachings of the church,” Gonzalez says of like-minded colleagues.

The emergence of these young conservatives has set off a flurry of studies, books and debate about what effect they will have on the nation’s 62 million Roman Catholics, its largest religious denomination.

Father Richard John Neuhaus, president of the conservative Institute on Religion and Public Life, says the new breed will reinvigorate the church with youthful enthusiasm, “radical devotion” and a willingness to proclaim church teachings without equivocation.

Others, however, see troublesome times ahead. Dean Hoge, a sociologist at Catholic University of America in Washington, sees a potential clash between younger priests’ emphasis on the pope’s authority and younger laity’s view of themselves as fit to make their own moral choices.

Linda Pieczynski, national spokeswoman for the liberal Catholic reform group Call to Action, said that in parishes across the country, young conservatives have reportedly adopted an old-style “father knows best” attitude and made abrupt changes without adequate consultation with lay members. Women lay ministers in particular say many newly ordained priests have difficulty accepting them as colleagues, showing a lack of respect and excessive concern for power and authority, according to a 2001 study by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Although the young conservatives are still some years away from becoming candidates for bishop, they are beginning to move into the ranks of pastor, where their orthodoxy may drive parish policy changes.

According to Hoge, priests ordained during John Paul’s papacy now make up 32% of the nation’s 43,600 Roman Catholic priests. Not all of them reflect the trend toward orthodoxy.

In general, however, the “John Paul priests” are less supportive than older colleagues of optional celibacy, women priests, the democratic elections of bishops and greater lay leadership, according to numerous surveys.

They show less tolerance for dissent against church teachings. And they are more apt to favor greater use of Latin prayers, special vestments, bells and other traditional touches to restore a sense of sacredness to the liturgy, Hoge says.

Hoge also found higher morale and job satisfaction among the young priests.

Gonzalez, for instance, recently held three classes of St. Andrew students spellbound during a pitch promoting the virtues of religious life. With candor and humor, he chronicled dramatic days of literally dealing with the lives and deaths of parishioners, answered questions about sex with aplomb and proclaimed that his was the best job in the world.

“If I had 10 different lifetimes, I would choose every one to be a priest,” he told the students.

Gonzalez seems to meld modernity and tradition in the same way he wears hip wraparound sunglasses with an old-fashioned cassock. Unlike older priests who often complain about what they saw as the church’s imperious rigidity before Vatican II, he says, priests like himself grew up amid social uncertainty and find beauty and solace in the church’s 2,000-year-old disciplines.

That “search for a solid rock” is cited by Hoge and other researchers as one of the reasons many young priests today are more discernibly conservative. Other reasons cited include John Paul’s influence and more active recruitment by orthodox bishops and seminaries.

Gonzalez, for instance, grew up in a small village outside Havana, in the aftermath of Cuba’s Communist revolution. Other priests also recall social and economic uncertainty as they came of age in America at a time of rising divorce and moral relativism.

The Catholic Church was also undergoing vast changes. Priests and nuns were quitting in droves, liturgies were being dramatically transformed and dissent over church teachings began to intensify.

Into this tempest came two figures of rock-solid traditional views and charismatic, decisive leadership: John Paul as pope in 1978 and Ronald Reagan as U.S. president in 1980.

“These became two pivotal figures for me as a teen: John Paul in my church life and Ronald Reagan in my civil life,” Gonzalez says.

Both men took strong stands against communism, which Gonzalez had suffered from firsthand. His father’s three grocery stores in Cuba were confiscated by the government, and the family eked out a living at sugarcane mills. Gonzalez remembers holes in his shoes and often being hungry.

Under Fidel Castro’s rule, catechism classes were forbidden. Gonzalez never attended Mass as a child and learned whatever he could about the faith from his parents. That, however, changed in 1971 when his family immigrated to Southern California, sponsored by an aunt. A neighbor saw him playing outside his Atwater Village home and invited him to Mass.

Gonzalez says he was captivated by the ritual celebration’s power and sacredness. He began going to Mass every week, received his first communion and became an altar server. In middle school, he began thinking about becoming a priest.

In 1981, he entered St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo right after high school. The experience, he says, was filled with conflict.

His class of about four dozen men, mostly conservative, challenged the more liberal faculty. The young seminarians asked for uniforms, more discipline and more group devotions such as the rosary. The students also asked for more of John Paul’s teachings in class.

“The faculty gave the perception that they were suspicious of this pope and that somehow he was turning back the clock,” Gonzalez says. “We were perceived to be in line with the pope, so we were also viewed with suspicion.”

Weary of the conflict and hoping to help support his parents financially, Gonzalez left the seminary for four years. In 1991, after a stint with a hospital trade association, he returned to the seminary and found the instruction far more balanced. He was ordained in 1994. (Los Angeles archdiocesan spokesman Tod Tamberg said he could not speak directly about seminary changes during that time, but that robust debate is a “healthy, normal dynamic that should be found in any seminary.”)

Gonzalez was 16 when then-Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was elected pope, an electrifying moment he still remembers. He recalls being in awe as he watched the pope’s televised visit to Mexico a year later and his other travels.

In 1987, Gonzalez was one of 30 seminarians to serve Mass for the pope at Dodger Stadium.

Some of Gonzalez’s friends tell similar stories of John Paul’s effect on them. Father Sabato “Sal” Pilato, a San Pedro native and principal of Junipero Serra High School in Gardena, entered St. John’s seminary the same year Wojtyla was named pope. He saw John Paul as a brilliant Renaissance man with a passion for Christ that fired up young people like himself.

For both men, one powerful attraction is John Paul’s refusal to “water down doctrine,” Gonzalez says. “But he presents it in a pastoral way and with love.”

Gonzalez tries to do likewise. When he interviews couples who want to be married at St. Andrew, he ascertains whether they are living together or otherwise sexually active. If they are, he says, he reminds them of church teachings against premarital sex, encourages them to save the pleasures until marriage and asks them, “How do you expect God to bless something that is a sin?”

Other St. Andrew priests are not so direct. Msgr. Tobias English, more than three decades older than Gonzalez and ordained in 1963, says he gives couples church teachings on premarital sex and birth control but does not ask them if they are sexually active. “No way,” he says, “I think that’s an invasion of privacy of the highest level. Their conscience is their guide.”

English and Gonzalez often good-naturedly spar over dinner in the rectory, where they live with Pastor Frank Colborn and Father Francis Mendoza.

“We all get along great. We all disagree,” Gonzalez says.

The 66-year-old Colborn, also ordained in 1963, says many of the younger priests like Gonzalez do not seem to share his passion for ecumenism and social justice causes such as worker rights. But after three decades of witnessing too many unwed pregnancies and broken homes, Colborn says he has come to share the conservative concern over the lack of adherence to church teachings.

“The negative side of toleration and inclusiveness is that things become so fuzzy that you don’t stand for anything anymore,” Colborn says. “We’re not in the business of throwing people out of the church, but we need to find some way to get people to take seriously that the church does stand for something.”

Among parishioners, Gonzalez’s approach has disenchanted some liberals but also won fans. Ann Druffel, a St. Andrew parishioner since 1955, says she was “startled and very gratified” when Gonzalez gave a passionate homily against abortion and artificial birth control several months ago.

“The older priests seem to slip aside and not mention these things in their homilies,” Druffel says. “But Father Gonzalez is not afraid to speak out.” Gaby Neef, 30, a Cal State Los Angeles student working toward her teaching credential, says the priest’s teaching on premarital abstinence inspired her to insist on it for the year before her wedding last December, despite her fiance’s reluctance and their previous eight years of intimate relations. Neef says her fiance ultimately ended up happy about their premarital discipline.

“Everything Father Gonzalez said was right,” she says.

At the moment, however, the Neefs are not following the priest’s counsel against artificial birth control. As required by Gonzalez, they attended classes on a method of natural birth control. But Neef says she is not confident of her ability to apply it infallibly and fears an unplanned pregnancy as she embarks on her teaching career.

But Neef says Gonzalez, with an approachable and humorous manner, has deepened her spiritual life, leading her back to weekly Mass, regular confession and a fruitful prayer life.

For his part, Gonzalez says, “If you tell people they’re sinners who are going to hell, you’ve lost them. You have to show people why the church teaches what it does. I’m a firm believer in accepting people where they’re at and helping them grow.”

Father Pilato has also won respect even from those who don’t entirely agree with his orthodox views. When he took over Junipero Serra in 1996 as its seventh principal in 10 years, it was racked by a budget deficit, low morale and a largely non-Catholic student body. He moved to restore its Catholic identity by adding a chapel, crucifixes in each classroom, religious statues around campus and prayers before class.

Sister Kathy Izer, the school counselor, credits Pilato with improving the school grounds, strengthening discipline and academic standards, and bringing spirituality back. “He’s conservative but not overbearing,” she says. “We disagree about things, but he’ll always listen.”

Pilato has also strengthened recruitment for the priesthood. To solve the current priest shortage, many Catholics want to open the priesthood to married men. But conservatives argue that the major problem is inadequate recruitment. They also want more screening against practicing homosexuals, blaming them for many of the sex abuse scandals.

Both Pilato and Gonzalez make the rounds of their schools a few times a year to talk about the joys of religious life and encourage students to think about it. In addition, their conservative prayer group, the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy, puts on its own recruitment day annually to supplement the Los Angeles archdiocesan efforts.

They aim for nothing less than to reshape the face of the American Catholic priesthood.

“We want to present a vision of the priesthood that is faithful, vibrant and optimistic,” Gonzalez says.

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Generation gap

A 2002 Times Poll found that priests ordained since 1978, when John Paul II became pope, tend to be religiously more conservative than the previous generation, which entered the priesthood after the Second Vatican Council convened in 1962.

Asked of priests:

Q: Your views on religious and moral matters are...? John Paul II generation Liberal: 25% Moderate: 39% Conservative: 33% No answer: 3% Vatican II generation Liberal: 41% Moderate: 38% Conservative: 19% No answer: 2%

Q: Do you favor or oppose ordination of women as priests? John Paul II generation Favor: 41% Oppose: 58% No answer: 1% Vatican II generation: Favor: 59% Oppose: 38% No answer: 3%

Q: Do you consider it a sin for unmarried people to have sex? John Paul II generation Always: 29% Often: 31% Seldom: 7% Never: 1% No answer: 5% Vatican II generation Always: 39% Often: 45% Seldom: 10% Never: 1% No answer: 5%

Q: Do you consider it a sin for married couples to use artificial birth control? John Paul II generation Always: 29% Often: 31% Seldom: 28% Never: 7% No answer: 5% Vatican II generation Always: 15% Often: 22% Seldom: 45% Never: 12% No answer: 6%

Q: Do you consider it a sin to engage in homosexual behavior? John Paul II generation Always: 48% Often: 25% Seldom: 15% Never: 6% No answer: 6% Vatican II generation Always: 34% Often: 32% Seldom: 23% Never: 4% No answer: 7%

How the Poll Was Conducted The Times Poll surveyed 1,854 Roman Catholic priests in 80 dioceses across the U.S. and Puerto Rico by mail from June 27 to Oct. 11, 2002. A complete description of the survey methodology can be found at www.latimes.com/news/custom/timespoll/la-timespoll471ss.acrobat.