In 1976, after being a Catholic priest for ten years – including being a regional chaplain for the Knights of Columbus, a six-year teacher of religion in three diocesan Catholic High Schools, a three-year member of the Green Bay Diocesan Board of Education, a two-year chaplain to the Menominee, Michigan and Marinette, Wisconsin Catholic Women’s Junior League, a speaker on the history of the Sacraments at Men’s Cursillo Retreats, a giver at High School Retreats, and a member of the Diocesan Priest Senate – I requested laicization from the priesthood (an honorable discharge rather than simply walking away from the priesthood as so many other priests did).
I had fallen in love with a divorced woman who had a small child. I was disheartened by the Roman Catholic Church: which myopically and patriarchally continued to demand celibacy for all its priests (no marriage either before or after ordination); who continued to withhold any equality or leadership rights for women, no matter their education and devotion to the church; who stubbornly refused any welcome to LGBTQ people; and who put divorced Catholics through a nightmare of paperwork showing why their previous marriage should be given a Decree of Nullity before allowing them remarriage in the Catholic Church.
The Diocese generously gave me a severance check of $450 for ten years of dedicated service. I had never been accused of any wrongdoing, but received many honors and thanks for the work, sermons, and religious work I performed. When my laicization (honorable discharge) finally came through, I was given a two-page list of things I would no longer be allowed to do for the church or its organizations. They listed things I was forbidden to do in the future as a laicized priest: I could not perform any functions whatsoever of Holy Orders (with the exception of Administering Penance or Anointing someone in case of immediate dying or death); not to conduct any liturgical or religious services whatsoever in the presence of people, in places where my condition was known; in no circumstances to preach; not to carry out pastoral duties associated with Sacred Orders; not to hold positions of administration, spiritual direction, or teaching in any school, Catholic or non-catholic; not to reside and seek employment inside the area in which I am known as a priest, unless the local Ordinary granted a dispensation from this stipulation (The Green Bay Bishop did dispense me from this condition when I was hired at Aurora BayCare Medical Center as the Head Chaplain); and I was to observe the directives of the local Ordinary concerning the secrecy or divulging my leaving the priesthood, dispensation (laicization) and my getting married. They were afraid I would give scandal somehow, as though the grace/love of God I had so generously shared with others would now turn to acid rain.