Stephen Joseph Fichter writes in America Magazine asking how common it is for Roman Catholic clergy to do as Fr. Alberto Cutié did in leaving the Roman Catholic Church for ministry in another Christian tradition.
Fichter asks how unique is Cutié’s story? How many other Catholic priests have left the church for another denomination in order to marry? And, could Cutié’s conversion signal the beginning of another wave of men leaving the priesthood?
Earlier this year, Father Alberto Cutié, a popular radio and television personality in Miami, found himself the subject of tabloid headlines when he was photographed relaxing on the beach with a woman who turned out to be his longtime girlfriend. Shortly afterward, he announced that he was leaving the Catholic Church to become an Episcopal priest, and in June he and his girlfriend were married in a civil ceremony. The reasons Cutié gave for his conversion to the Anglican Communion were not theological in nature; his primary motivation seemed to be to free himself from the celibacy requirement that the Catholic Church demands of its Latin Rite priests.
How unique is Cutié’s story? How many other Catholic priests have left the church for another denomination in order to marry? Could Cutié’s conversion signal the beginning of another wave of men leaving the priesthood? Until November 2008, when I completed my dissertation on the transition of celibate Catholic priests into married Protestant ministry, it would have been impossible to address these questions. The data I collected over the course of a year allowed me to conduct the first-ever analysis in this field.