Once a father, now a father of two

Partly as a joke, partly out of desperation (it was five months before the wedding), the Rutherford couple went online and typed in “rentapriest.com.” It was there they found the solution: Vince Corso, one of many “married priests” who advertise their services on the site. He agreed to marry them wherever they wanted, and let them add their own twist to the liturgy, something not usually done in traditional Catholic weddings.

Corso, 49, is a man of average height, with lively brown eyes that belie his salt-and-pepper hair. He has a wife named Christine and the perpetually tousled look of a father of two young children. He does not have the approval of the Catholic Church, for which he used to be a priest. His marriage severed his church ties, but it did not prevent him from continuing to call himself a priest – or to function as one.

On Corso’s Web site – which is linked to rentapriest.com – there are two photos. One is his wedding picture. The other is of his ordination. In the first shot, Corso is laughing into the camera, standing next to Christine, who is wearing a billowing white dress. In the other, he kneels before a bishop with a red skullcap. With his closed eyes, black beard and long white robe, Corso is portrait of quiet piety.

They Reynoldses visited him at his Cedar Grove home four times before their wedding. Their first meeting was in June, after three straight months of priest-scandal headlines had shocked Catholics around the country.

“We thought, ‘Maybe this is the way to go, maybe this celibacy thing isn’t working,’” Danielle says. “I’ve always (questioned) the church with lots of things – Why not women (priests)? Why not a married priest?”

At their wedding in Morris Plains, Corso talked about his wife during his sermon.

“We had no problem with everyone knowing he was married,” says Danielle. “We could have gone to my parents’ parish, but we didn’t want to. I think the church is a hundred years behind the times.”

Rentapriest.com primarily attracts people like Danielle and Keith who choose not to marry in a traditional church setting. It also draws those who can’t be married in a Catholic church because a previous marriage hasn’t been annulled, or because they are marrying outside the faith.

Louise Haggett of Massachusetts founded CITI (Celibacy Is The Issue), rentapriest.com’s parent organization, in 1992, after she couldn’t find a priest to administer last rites. She started doing research. She learned that the number of priests in the United States was down 30 percent since 1965, and that many were leaving to marry.

Rentapriest.com lists more than 300 married priests, available for baptisms and weddings. It has a clickable U.S. map where site visitors are encouraged to “find your local married priests.” Besides Corso, there are 16 listed in New Jersey alone. They operate outside the realm of dioceses and bishops. Even the most progressive Catholic leaders disapprove of married priests performing church rites.

Some confusion

“I think it’s confusing,” says the Rev. Peter Schroth, a Jesuit professor at St. Peter’s college in Jersey City. “A lot of people are marginally educated in the church, and they are made to believe that this is a valid church wedding.”

But married priests don’t need a bishop’s approval to legally join a couple. Through CITI, they can become ministers certified to perform weddings sanctioned by state governments.

“We believe that custom becomes law,” says Haggett, “and eventually married priests will be accepted into the institution – like altar girls or eating meat on Friday.” The Web site carries encouraging mottoes in boldface type. One is “Once a Catholic Priest, Always a Priest.”

That is what Corso believes, but it’s taken a decade for him to reach that point.

Twelve years ago he was a priest, on his way to becoming a seminary director. The church was the only life he knew. He grew up in Catholic schools – in Trenton and Staten Island, N.Y. – staffed by Franciscan friars. He remembers being 13 years old and desiring the sense of calm and security they seemed to embody. So he took the next step: attending seminary, straight from high school.

In 1980, he was ordained and rose quickly to the role of vocation director of a group of friars. In that role, he visited college campuses seeking to recruit young men to become Franciscans. Often, potential recruits seemed ideal, save for one thing.

“Privately, amongst ourselves, (the priests) would say, ‘This guy is perfect, except that he wants to be married.’” Corso recalls. “I would tell them, ‘Be true to yourself, and if you come out on the other side and feel the same way about ministry, call me.’”

Feeling of fear

In 1982, Corso attended a vocation directors’ conference, during which one speaker looked out across the gathering and predicted, “Some of you will leave the ministry.” Corso remembers a brief, sharp feeling of fear. He comforted himself by thinking, “That won’t ever happen to me.”

But eight years later, it did.

He was in New York working for Covenant House, a haven for homeless children founded by the Rev. Bruce Ritter. In late 1989, two young men accused Ritter of forcing them to have sex with him when they sought help at Covenant House. A huge outcry met the news when it broke.

Ritter soon stepped down, throwing Corso’s feelings about the church into turmoil. Doubts that had gnawed at him for years suddenly loomed large. The betrayal of trust by a church leader made him question the value of religious life. He felt “like an adolescent” because the vow of celibacy was becoming more and more difficult to observe.

Unable to sleep

He would lie in bed at night in the crowded friary, unable to sleep.

“I remember turning off the lights and thinking, ‘I love God, I love work, I love the guys I live with, how can I feel so lonely?’” he says.

Ultimately, his feelings became so strong he knew he had to leave. He camped out in his parents’ house, sleeping in his boyhood room. He was a 36-year-old man who had never had insurance, a credit card or a bank account. All his belongings were packed in a trunk at the end of his bed.

When he went to apply for insurance, the salesman noticed his lack of credit history and asked Corso, “Were you in prison?” Corso told him, “No, I was a priest.”

‘In mourning’

At first, Corso was “in mourning” for the life he had left. His life of daily prayer and self-examination meant that he couldn’t help ruminating. Two new circumstances helped. One was a job as a campus minister in Syracuse, N.Y., where no one knew him. Another was his marriage to Christine, a bright, supportive woman who had played flute in the volunteer choir at Covenant House.

They were married in a small Episcopal church near Christine’s home. He was incredibly nervous, and incredibly excited. The minister told him, “You’re always a priest; don’t let the Roman Catholic Church tell you different.”

Until recently, Corso took that advice, up to a point. He performed Sunday Mass at home for his wife, son and daughter. He got his social work degree and took a job as the bereavement and chaplain supervisor for a New York hospice. Occasionally, he performed last rites if no other priests were around.

Wanting more

Canon law says priests not approved by a local diocese may practice the sacred rites only “in the case of emergency.” But as time went by, Corso wanted more than that.

He went to a local Catholic church and introduced himself as a resigned priest, hoping he might help with the ministry. But after learning he was married, a nun told him there was nothing for him. She said that that he and his wife would be welcome to worship, but recommended that they keep their “problem” to themselves.

“I remember crying when I first considered leaving,” he says. “I thought, ‘Why can’t you have both? Why can’t you celebrate Eucharist and be married?’

“When I heard that they were allowing priests from other denominations to enter the Catholic Church [with their wives and families] as priests in good standing ... that’s the day I decided to come back.”

Corso registered with rentapriest.com, and immediately started getting calls. He heard from couples who had been divorced, from families who hadn’t been to church in years but wanted their children baptized, from an inter-faith couple who wanted a marriage ceremony performed by both a priest and a rabbi. Corso has married 12 couples in the past year.

He and his family continue to search for a faith community where they can feel comfortable worshiping.  “It’s difficult for me, doing weddings and doing ministry and not belonging in a specific faith community,” he acknowledges. “But the message from Rome is, if you don’t choose celibacy, you’re second-class.”

Many questions

One night last week, Corso sat in his living room talking about his problems with the church. He wrung his hands over Bernard Law, the Boston cardinal who stepped down in disgrace after knowingly transferring a priest who abused more than 10 children. He wondered why women cannot be ordained, and expressed anger that Episcopalian ministers who become priests are allowed to take their wives and children with them. “Why them and not me?” he asked.

It was his children’s’ bedtime, and they were trying to avoid it, flitting in and out of the room with questions and pronouncements: “Daddy, do you like the pie I made?” “Daddy, I’m going to the bathroom!”

“This experience, this enriches ministry!” he exclaimed, when his daughter kissed him goodnight.

Meditating a must

The doting father is less so about the church. Yet he can’t go to sleep without meditating at night, as his Franciscan master taught him years ago.

“I can’t walk away from (the Church), because I’d be walking away from myself,” he says.

Despite his personal struggle, Corso wants his children to know what it is to be Catholic. He had his daughter baptized in church, and, this summer, he plans to baptize his son, Peter, in the middle of his living room.

“To me that means that there’s hope.” He says. “Maybe the faith community he’s able to grow into will look different. That’s the prayer I have.”