US Catholic Priests Describe Turmoil Amid Sex Abuse Crisis

By David Crary
Associated Press
December 9, 2019

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-catholic-priests-beset-overwork-101424223.html

In this Saturday, Nov. 9, 2019 photo, Rev. Mark Stelzer, administrator of St. Jerome's Parish, in Holyoke, Mass., opens doors to the Catholic church before offering Mass. Stelzer, also a professor and chaplain at College of Our Lady of the Elms, in Chicopee, Mass., lives alone in the rectory at St. Jerome's while serving as spiritual leader to the 500 families in the Catholic parish. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

More than a century ago, waves of Catholic immigrants from Ireland, Poland and Quebec settled in Chicopee and other western Massachusetts mill towns, helping build churches, rectories and schools to accommodate their faith. Today the priests leading those churches are under siege due to stresses, challenges and sex abuse scandals complicating their lives and those of their fellow priests across the United States.

The Rev. Mark Stelzer is among those trying to persevere. He's a professor at a Roman Catholic college in Chicopee, and its chaplain. He travels frequently to out-of-state events organized by a Catholic addiction-treatment provider, recounting his own recovery from alcoholism.

Last year, his busy schedule got busier. Amid a worsening shortage of priests, the Diocese of Springfield named him administrator of a parish in Holyoke, Chicopee’s northern neighbor, where he lives alone in a mansion-sized rectory while serving as spiritual leader to the 500 families of St. Jerome’s Church.

“I’m at an age where I thought I’d be doing less rather than doing more,” said Stelzer, 62.

This is the ripple effect the church's long-running sexual abuse crisis has had on many honorable priests: heavier workloads, increased isolation as multi-priest parishes grow scarce and an erosion of public support. It has led some to question the leadership of their bishops.

Many priests see trauma firsthand. Some minister in parishes wracked by gun violence; others preside frequently over funerals of drug-overdose victims.

Stelzer loves being a priest, yet he's frank about the ever-evolving stresses of his vocation that leave him nostalgic for the priesthood he entered in 1983.

“It was a lot simpler then,” he said. “There’s a real longing, a mourning for the church that was — when there was a greater fraternity among priests, and the church was not facing these scandals that are now emerging every day.”

Stelzer’s concerns echoed those of other priests, and some of their psychological caregivers, who were interviewed by The Associated Press.

Burnout has been a perennial problem for clergy of many faiths. But Thomas Plante, a psychology professor at California's Santa Clara University who has screened or treated hundreds of Catholic clerics, sees new forms of it as the sex abuse crisis persists and many parishioners lose trust in Catholic leadership.