Priests for the New Millennium

Read about Fr. Marcos Gonzalez and Fr. Sabato "Sal" Pilato. They are from, of all places . . . the Diocese of Los Angeles. These priests are super cool, completely orthodox, and vibrant as all get out! Here are some tidbits:

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.

. . . 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

. . . "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.

. . . 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.

Comments

[jay]

Yes, I read that article, along with all the other garbage the L.A. Slimes regularly prints. However, don't be too optimistic. One of the "wins" of the priests was of a married woman who stopped having sex with her fiance for some time before marriage. Now, she attends confession weekly. Unfortunately, her confessions are invalid, as she regularly uses contraceptives.

[Joe]

What's a "conservative" Catholic, I would like to know? Is not a Catholic either obedient or disobedient? Why are we applying conservative terms to our religion?

[Sheila]

I have not visited this site before, and prudence would suggest I might look it over a bit before posting, but was a bit inspired to respond to the cynical post by Jay. What kind of compassion judges someone elses journey so harshly? The couple you referred to are making huge strides, returning to the mass and the confessional and recommitting to abstinence til marriage. Few of us are able to bring each and every corner of our lives into holiness all at once, but must chip away at it, sin by sin, and sometimes the same sin over and over again. I instead am inspired by this couples growth, and response to the invitations of their priest to a holy life, and confident that will include a chaste marraige as they continue to grow----in God's good time! Take good news where you find it!!!!
Sheila