End of a Battle

In a day when many other Roman Catholic priests choose to marry first and ask questions later, the Rev. Daniel C. Maguire, 40, has been something of an anomaly--and a considerable problem for his ecclesiastical superiors. Maguire wanted to marry, but was determined to win papal permission-beforehand. He also happened to be a respected moral theologian teaching at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He meant to retain that position after marrying.

A few other former priests in the U.S. have done so on Catholic campuses, and about 30 more have readily found jobs by leaving one Catholic college post for a different one. But unlike most other U.S. Catholic colleges, C.U. is a "pontifical" university, for which the American bishops are directly responsible to the Vatican. The 15 bishops on the university's board of trustees had already been embarrassed by a 1968 statement drafted by Maguire and several fellow C.U. theologians opposing the papal birth control encyclical Humanae Vitae. When Maguire applied for laicization and permission to marry in late 1969--with the clear intent of staying on--his request met a cold shoulder even before it was forwarded to Rome.

Standing Joke. The theologian pressed his case for 21 months, far longer than most U.S. priests now have to wait for laicization. Catholic University got itself into an unseemly tangle. Maguire had a contract that ran until 1972, which if served out would automatically have assured him tenure next year. C.U. President Clarence C. Walton, however, terminated Maguire's contract last May. The Academic Senate refused to endorse Walton's action, and a committee was appointed to resolve the impasse. Embarrassed by it all, the school's Graduate Student Association charged that the university was becoming a "standing joke" and offered Maguire $500 toward legal fees should he want to take the matter to court.

The dismissal by Walton, Maguire thought, would at least speed up his laicization request, and he went ahead with plans to marry his fiancee, a pretty C.U. doctoral candidate, Marjorie Reiley, 29. Invitations went out for an early summer wedding. At the last minute, still without word from Rome, the couple canceled the rite itself and replaced it with a Mass and a reception.

Last week the Maguire Affair came at last to a conclusion. "We chose peace," Maguire told friends. He had agreed to give up his battle to stay at the school in return for "a just settlement" for the remaining year of his contract and a decree of laicization that would permit him to "continue working in the Catholic context." Early this month, from the Papal Secretary of State, came the news that the decree had been granted. Then, in a private, traditional ceremony in a Maryland church, Maguire's brother Joseph, a U.S. Navy chaplain, married the couple. Writing to friends who had attended their "non-marriage," the newlyweds noted that "we had a wedding without a marriage July 3, and a marriage without a wedding August 10. There can be little doubt that we are finally, definitely married."

In September, Maguire starts teaching political and international ethics at Milwaukee's Marquette University, which already has four former priests on its faculty. But so far Daniel Maguire's long battle is ended only in the ecclesiastical and academic areas. His witty and strong-willed mother, Cassie, 80, matriarch of the Philadelphia Irish family, is willing to admit that the Pope may bow to pressure now and again and let a priest have his way. But she just may take her own good time before granting her dispensation.

If a new Vatican study is accurate --and the Vatican would hardly want to exaggerate--more and more priests will be leaving the active ministry in the next few years. A 300-page white book prepared for the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in fact projects that through 1975 some 20,000 more priests will ask for and get dispensation from their duties.

The projection is based on a detailed study of men leaving the priesthood from 1939 to March 1969, with an emphasis on the growing number of dispensations in the sixties. After 1964, the study noted, the number of priests leaving each year grew by an annual average of 336. The researchers concluded that from 1939 through 1970 more than 13,000 men--nearly 3% of the world's priests--officially left the ministry. Those who left unofficially, not included in the study, might as much as double the number. In the decade 1960-70, when more than 95% of the departures occurred, the Church itself grew by more than 100 million members.

As for the areas most affected, Chile led the Western Hemisphere, losing 6.1% of its priests. Brazil (4.5%) and Argentina (3.2%) outpaced both Canada (2.6%) and the U.S. (2%). In Europe, Holland had the highest percentage (5.9%), Spain a surprising 2.3%, Italy 1.5% and even Ireland 1.3%. The Vatican study analyzed the formal reasons the priests gave for their departure: the breakdown revealed that a growing number of priests are now leaving because of identity crises and for ideological reasons. The percentage who leave simply to marry is decreasing.

*This requires a dispensation from the obligation of celibacy as part of a "rescript of laicization." The decree makes the priest, for all practical purposes, a layman, relieving him both of his obligations and priestly functions. Technically, he is a "priest forever" according to the ordination rite, and laicization deprives him only of the licit use of his powers, not the powers themselves. In emergencies, laicized priests are permitted to use their priestly faculties, for instance to give absolution to a person in danger of death.

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