Thursday, July 11, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/10/us/catholic-priests-conservative-politics.html?unlocked_article_code=1.6U0.AzU5.3YwzYAqbx5_y&smid=url-share

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Newly ordained priests bow toward Archbishop Jerome Listecki near the end of their ordination service held at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee.

America’s New Catholic Priests: Young, Confident and Conservative

In an era of deep divisions in the church, newly ordained priests overwhelmingly lean right in their theology, practices and politics.

By Ruth Graham

Photographs by Nick Hagen

Ruth Graham, who covers religion, reported from the Milwaukee area.

July 10, 2024

On a sunny afternoon in May, Zachary Galante was sitting in a conference room in St. Francis de Sales Seminary with several other young men, talking about what it meant for them to choose the Catholic priesthood in the year 2024. The next morning, they would make lifelong promises of celibacy and obedience, and they were palpably elated by the prospect.

“It’s a beautiful life,” Deacon Galante, soon to become Father Galante, said.

There was a time where the church “maybe apologized for being Catholic,” he said later in the conversation. He and the other new priests agreed they were called to something different: advancing the Catholic faith, even the parts that could seem out of place in an increasingly hostile world. “The church is Catholic, and so we should announce that joyfully,” he said.

In an era of deep divisions in the American Catholic Church, and ongoing pain over the continuing revelations of sexual abuse by priests over decades, there is increasing unity among the men joining the priesthood: They are overwhelmingly conservative in their theology, their liturgical tastes and their politics.

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