Soon-To-Be Priests Taking Ideals Into A Tough Environment

In this PG-13 age of Madonna, Guess? jeans ads, 2 Live Crew and Andrew Dice Clay, something unusual is taking place tomorrow morning.

I happened to read a religion-page notice about the Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle.

"Two will be ordained to priesthood," it said. What caught my attention were the ages of the individuals.

It all seemed out of a different era, the life that Rob Evenson, 31, and Woody McCallister, 30, had undertaken. They seemed like anachronisms.

This is not an age of personal sacrifice. It's an age of getting mine first, second and third.

With condoms being passed out to high schoolers, it's certainly not an age of celibacy.

"Everybody asks that question," Evenson said. He was wearing a blazer, gray slacks, nice tie. He could have been that young guy in customer service.

And, in reality, he once used to work customer relations for United Parcel Service. He also once worked at a sub sandwich shop and a soil testing company, and majored in biology.

What everybody asks about is celibacy. Some of the guys at UPS tried to talk Evenson out of the priesthood.

You find yourself kind of mumbling when talking to a priest about you-know-what. But Evenson wasn't embarrassed.

"I think they were projecting their own needs," he said about the UPS guys, "like, `I want to get married. How come you don't want to get married?' "

Fewer and fewer men are choosing priesthood because they've asked themselves that question.

In the 1960s, there was one priest for every 780 parishioners; now it's one for every 1,100; in the next decade, it could be one for every 2,200.

For most of us, committing to a life without sex is too high a price for priesthood. And that's why the question gets asked.

"It's not everybody who looks for that," Evenson said. "Priests are not the only ones who are celibate. There are many people in our culture today who are celibate, whether they are divorced or single.

"It doesn't mean we're not sexual. Celibacy is a sexuality of a non-genital expression. It can be wonderfully fulfilling and life-giving, and it goes hand in hand with priesthood, and I'm willing to accept it. I've received life from that choice."

Maybe that's not enough of an explanation, but it's the explanation that Evenson gave.

I asked them what it was like to have gone to high school in the 1970s and then become priests. What would they tell a young couple about contraception, a couple of their same generation?

Woody McCallister said, "I'd tell them the church opposes artificial methods of contraception because of this and because of that. Then I'd ask, `What do you think?'

"Ultimately, I'm not gonna tell them what to do. I'm going to present the teaching and say, `It's your life. You make the decision,' " he said.

He was wearing black jeans, a denim shirt and a leather tie. It's been said the church changes at glacial speed. Still, I remember Spencer Tracy in the movie "Boy's Town." I don't recall him wearing black jeans.

McCallister went to Stanford University and studied engineering. But, like Evenson, he had been interested in the church since childhood.

If how he'd talk to a young couple about contraception doesn't sound very authoritarian, it isn't. McCallister remembered the pastor at his parish when he was a kid.

"He was autocratic, intolerant. I saw a very active parish wither under his leadership. He was arrogant and had a bureaucrat's mentality. It was, `It says on page 43 of our policy manual that this is what we do, period, no discussion,' " McCallister remembered.

"If you're gonna have a role model, I'd rather choose Christ than this particular pastor."

Evenson started defining "pastoral": "Caring, listening . . ."

Ah, yes, idealism. You remember it, don't you?

McCallister talked about how he saw his job.

"I'll be at the teller line at the bank, I'll be at the grocery store, I'll be leading the kind of life folks lead," he said.

Evenson said, "We're called to be the same, not different."

McCallister said, "We'll be leading the same kind of life, except there is a difference. . . . The difference is . . ."

Evenson said, "That we're persons whose task it is to make God's presence in the midst of all the ordinariness of life."

Yes, that was it, they both agreed.

Rob Evenson will be assigned to a parish in Bellevue. Woody McCallister is going to rural parishes in the Sumner-Orting area.

I realize somebody above will be watching over them. Still, I wish them best of luck in this PG-13 age. These are not easy times to be an idealist.