Class Of '68: Half No Longer Priests -- Seattle Group Reflects On A Tumultuous 25 Years

The morning sun washed over Immaculate Conception Church in Mount Vernon, backlighting the stained glass windows that depicted the life of Jesus and showering in an airy glow those who had come to celebrate Mass.

As parishioners crowded into the 84-year-old church, a smiling, bespectacled figure greeted them with a warm "Hi, how are you?" and a quick snatch of conversation.

At 51 years of age - 25 years after his ordination as a Roman Catholic priest - the Rev. Paul Magnano had every reason to beam.

He is building a model ministry in the Skagit Valley, one that actively involves parishioners in the life of the church.

He heads a pastoral team of four priests and a deacon that fans out through the valley, serving six parishes that stretch from the the Cascade foothills to the Swinomish Reservation on Puget Sound.

Taking a visitor on a three-hour tour of each of the parishes, past fields of tulips, corn and cabbage, Magnano broke into a grin. "I think I have a pretty nice job up here as a priest, don't you think?"

But to get there, Magnano weathered a quarter-century of turmoil and change in the Catholic Church and in American society.

He was a member of the largest class of priests ever ordained in the Archdiocese of Seattle, the 16-member Class of 1968.

The class included Michael Woody, who left after a little more than a year in the priesthood, disillusioned with his treatment by senior priests, and William Crisman, who began burning out while working to keep St. Thomas Seminary here open in the 1970s.

But the class also included the Rev. James Dalton, who, despite his own bout with burnout, said the priesthood allowed him to share uniquely in people's lives, from baptisms to marriages to anniversaries.

Most in the class began their journey in the 1950s, a time when priests were placed on pedestals and youngsters were able to enter the seminary in their early teens.

One member of the Class of '68 recalled being drawn to the seminary by the late Archbishop Thomas Connolly who, resplendent in his bishop's robes, pointed his finger at youngsters gathered for the annual "altar boys picnic" at St. Edwards Seminary - between Kenmore and Kirkland - and declared, "I need you. The Lord wants you."

But when they came out of the seminary some 12 years later, they found themselves thrust "into a firestorm of change and renewal and questioning," recalls the Rev. Jan Larson, now a pastor of a parish that stretches the length of the Snoqualmie Valley and includes two year-round missions.

"No one had prepared us for that," said Larson, one of the Class of '68. "We were expecting a kind of church we were used to, a church of certitude."

PURSUING OTHER CAREERS

In the 25 years since their ordination, almost half the class members have left the priesthood and pursued other careers. One, the Rev. Jon Frankovic, died of cancer. All but one of the seven who left married.

The eight who remained expressed deep satisfaction with their work, though they freely aired their differences with the Vatican: All eight, for example, said they favored or could see the ordination of women priests, optional celibacy or a limited-term priesthood.

Magnano was one who stayed.

At Immaculate Conception in Mount Vernon, he reminds parishioners they are all ministers, then exhorts them "to go out and live God's word in the world."

"I feel real good about the parishes in the (Skagit) Valley," Magnano said. "The church is very alive."

Not to say that he is complacent. "There is still a lot to do," Magnano said.

But Pat Callahan, another member of the Class of '68 who left the priesthood to marry, is wary.

He warns that despite the "adroit use of lay personnel, there is a genuine shortage" of priests when it comes to the Eucharist, baptism, marriage and other sacraments that only an ordained priest can celebrate. Callahan is a Seattle real-estate appraiser and board member of CORPUS, the national organization promoting a married priesthood.

As class members reflected on their lives, it was clear that while their views of the priesthood may now differ, they shared a common purpose when they entered the seminary.

They were drawn to the priesthood out of altruism, a desire to help others and to serve God.

"I just looked at the world in which I lived and even back in the '50s it seemed to be an unhappy and dangerous world. The Russian missile threat and all that. . . . I just saw the Christian faith as offering an alternative that talked about peace and joy," said the Rev. Gordon Douglas, pastor of St. Matthew Church in North Seattle and chaplain at Blanchet High School near Green Lake.

Seminary was another matter.

Douglas and his classmates remember their seminaries as cloistered, monastic places.

At St. Edwards Minor Seminary, on grounds overlooking Lake Washington, they took four years of high school and the first two years of college.

At the nearby St. Thomas Major Seminary, they finished college and took four years of theology.

"The idea was to completely focus on the kind of life you were being called to, to develop a person who was self-disciplined," Douglas recalled.

But class members said they were not prepared for the world taking shape on the outside. Nor did they feel they were able to make realistic decisions about such matters as celibacy in their teens or even mid-20s.

Now, in hindsight, they have a clearer idea today of the world they were stepping into, and how it shaped their lives.

THE TURBULENT YEARS

For the Rev. Marlin Connole, pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Bellevue, the priesthood in those early years couldn't have been more closely tied to the turbulence of the 1960s. His first assistant pastorship was at St. Patrick Church on North Capitol Hill near the University of Washington.

Connole soon was counseling and writing letters of support for young men who were struggling over whether to become conscientious objectors during the Vietnam War.

He joined civil-rights demonstrations.

He protested the lack of contracts for minorities.

He took part in Cesar Chavez's grape boycott.

The era "challenged me to relate my faith to the events going on around me. . . . It helped me understand that justice is a dimension of the Gospel and those issues have to be addressed," he said.

While society's consciousness was being raised, the changes of Vatican II were taking root, too.

Larson, the Snoqualmie priest, noted that Pope John XXIII, who charged the Second Vatican Council in 1961 with updating the church and working for Christian unity, talked about opening windows to let in fresh air.

The role of the priest became one of helping people understand the spirit of change, rather than fear it, Larson said.

"It wasn't easy for all priests. The emergence of lay ministry was one of the results. Parish councils came on the scene. Suddenly the priest wasn't dictator, but had to share his responsibility," he said.

While some in the class adjusted and flourished, others did not. In late 1969, the class lost its first priest, Michael Woody.

Woody, who entered St. Edwards after attending Kent-Meridian High School, said his life was miserable.

"(The senior parish priests) treated you like you were a little kid, like an adolescent. You did errands for them. You were a gofer. I got soured pretty quickly on the whole situation," said Woody, a telecommunications specialist for the U.S. General Services Administration in Auburn.

He also left because he realized the priesthood was not his calling.

"One always goes through seminary with questions and doubts as to their vocation. It was only after I got out and experienced the true lifestyle that I realized I hadn't made the right choice."

Woody, who married in 1970 and has two sons, said he would have regretted not having a family.

Richard Eberle, a family mediator in Bellevue, was the next class member to leave the priesthood, after seven years.

He recalled sitting by the bedside of a young boy in one of his parishes who had overdosed by sniffing glue. He recollected helping couples prepare for marriage. He talked of walking the streets of Seattle at night with Operation Nightwatch, helping the homeless.

"I loved being a priest. I touched a lot of people's lives. I'd probably still be a priest if the celibacy thing had changed," he said.

Eberle, who has been married 18 years, thought church law on celibacy might be changed within five years of his ordination, but "with the new pope (John Paul II) I realized that wasn't going to happen. . . ."

For William Crisman, the priesthood ended from burnout, a struggle with alcoholism and the realization he wanted to switch to counseling full-time.

In seminary, Crisman had thrived on the liberal arts. He was studying for his doctorate in theology at the Institute of Christian Thought in Toronto when he was called to St. Thomas Seminary to work with a handpicked staff to try to keep the institution open in the face of declining enrollment.

When St. Thomas closed in 1977, Crisman said he was at the point of burnout. He didn't want to go to another seminary, only to have to fight to keep it open. So he returned to parish work.

But while serving at St. Catherine Church in North Seattle, Crisman realized he had a growing problem with alcohol.

"I had a life that worked for everyone else but not necessarily for me," he said.

After a leave and treatment for alcoholism, he served churches in Puyallup and Tacoma. But in 1985, when it was time to transfer to another parish, Crisman demurred.

"I was tired of moving."

And he had a growing drug and alcohol counseling practice in the Tacoma area.

Two in the class, John Sinkula and Fred Mueller, became stockbrokers. Both are married and remain active in the Catholic Church. Sinkula is a former parish council president at Sacred Heart, where former classmate Connole is pastor.

Several of the priests from the Class of '68 said they had had doubts about remaining in the priesthood. But as the Rev. James Dalton, pastor of Holy Family Church in Kirkland, concluded, being a priest allowed him to serve others at "the highest and lowest moments in their lives in a way I don't think anyone else can."

And the Rev. John Renggli, pastor of St. Thomas More Church in Lynnwood, said he's been enriched by parish life, even with all the time demands, from hospital calls and funerals to weddings, picnics and parties.

"It is a wonderful thing to see people rejoice over loving and being loved," he said.

The Rev. Dennis Wood, pastor of St. Philomena Church in Des Moines, echoed that sentiment, saying his greatest enjoyment came from working with people and celebrating important moments in their lives.

The Rev. Michael J. Ryan, pastor of St. Michael Church in Olympia, noted 820 parishioners recently were honored for their volunteer work. He said seeing people live out their faith seriously was a high mark for him.

In the Snoqualmie Valley, Larson, the pastor of mission churches in Duvall and Carnation and the parish church in Snoqualmie, said he has been happy and secure as a priest these past 25 years.

But if he has ever worried about burnout, it is now.

On Sundays, he celebrates Mass at Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Snoqualmie at 8 a.m. He hops in his Isuzu 4x4 and drives to Carnation for 9:30 a.m. Mass at St. Anthony Church.

Then he returns to Snoqualmie for 11 a.m. Mass.

On Saturdays, he says Mass at 5 p.m. at Our Lady of Sorrows.

"Right now, I'm doing fine," said Larson. "I would fear getting to the point where I would dread celebrating the Mass. Like anything, too much of something can ruin it," he said.

His concern about burnout extends to other priests as well, he said.

Larson, who is the former director of the office of worship for the Seattle archdiocese, said he thinks the priest shortage "probably will be good in the long run" if it results in more priests using lay people in ministry and it forces the church to look at such alternatives as the ordination of women, a married clergy, or a limited-term priesthood.

In Western Washington, the Archdiocese of Seattle reported there are 131 active diocesan priests and 143 religious-order priests today compared to 188 and 260, respectively, in 1968.

The Catholic population now stands at 343,000 compared to 311,000 in 1968.

Seattle Archbishop Thomas Murphy said the rate of commitment to the priesthood appears to be stabilizing compared to the late 1960s, which he called a unique moment in time. "One person said it was a church in transition in a world in turmoil," Murphy said.

Murphy noted in the 15 years he's been a bishop, here and in Montana, only one of the 20 priests he's ordained has left the active priesthood.

There is "a lot more interest" in the priesthood from the generation coming up, he added.

He is continuing efforts to address the priest shortage, such as the Skagit Valley pastoral team that began under retired Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen.

"I have often said I could not ordain a priest if he was not supportive of lay ministry," Murphy said.

By the same token, he said, "I could not support lay ministers if they were not supportive of encouraging vocations of priesthood."

Meanwhile, debate continues over what the future holds for the priesthood.

Kirby Brown, a former priest who with Magnano was one of the two members of the Class of 1968 who studied his final four years of theology in Rome, said he definitely would consider returning to the priesthood if the church allowed a married clergy. Brown didn't think it would happen in his lifetime, however.

He expressed sadness that church restrictions on the priesthood were "depriving Catholic people of the ministry they need and have a right to."

Magnano, like Brown, said he supported the ordination of women and married priests, though he also saw the value of celibacy.

He suspects it's inevitable the celibacy rule will be changed.

In the meantime, he takes heart in lay people taking responsibility for the church, with the priests overseeing the ministry.

For him, he said, "That is the bottom line anyway."