Recently I saw a play presented by Kanata Theatre in Ottawa entitled “To Forgive, Divine” by American playwright Jack Neary. It had its first professional production in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1989.

In the brochure advertising the season’s plays it was described as “a gentle comedy that brings a refreshingly light touch to a serious topic – priestly celibacy and the doubts and distractions that beset the vocation to the priesthood.” I went to the play curious to see the refreshingly light touch
brought to this serious topic. 

The play is set in the sacristy of an old Catholic church in a New England neighborhood in the 1980’s. It concerns the struggles of the parish priest Jerry Dolan with his vow of celibacy.  The struggle focuses on his relationship with Katie Cachencko, on whom Father Dolan had a crush before he entered the priesthood. Now a parishioner of Father Dolan and unhappily married to Ralph, Katie comes to her priest for help with her marital problems, and
confesses that she is now attracted to him. 

The play does have some very funny scenes, especially the one in which Ralph confronts Father Dolan after Katie tells him she is leaving him for the priest. It actually becomes slapstick as Ralph chases Father Dolan around the living room of the rectory as the fearful priest proclaims in vain his innocence.

But Katie’s reading of Father Dolan is wrong, and he convinces her to return to Ralph. The action up to this point all takes place on the Friday and Saturday of one weekend.

In the course of the following week both Katie and Father Dolan have second thoughts. Katie decides she will give her marriage with Ralph another chance, and Father Dolan is now ready to leave the priesthood for Katie. He tells this to Katie, but Katie tells him she is going back to Ralph. The play ends with Father Dolan alone on stage putting his Roman collar around his neck for the first time in the play as the lights bear down on his disconsolate face.

Some comedy this. But the play’s co-director Susan Monaghan went even further when she told a writer at Ottawa's X-Press magazine (Nov. 9, 2000) that she “was attracted to the play because it seemed a very charming, funny play which also presented a priest in a good light”. She concluded: “I hope that (the play) will give people a bit of respect for religious institutions”. 

On the contrary, the final scene emphasizes how unjust the Catholic Church is in imposing a law of celibacy on a man like Father Dolan. Whether or not he should have run off with Katie to rescue her from an unhappy marriage, Father Dolan - and many priests like him -emerges clearly in the play as a man for whom celibacy is an imposition and a burden.

The last scene, with the collar fastened around Father Dolan’s neck, turns the play into a black comedy rather than the “charming funny play” that the co-director saw it to be, or the “gentle comedy” with a “refreshingly light touch” that the theatre’s brochure claimed it would be. 

If men like Father Dolan had the option to be married priests, they would be able to help people like Katie without feeling they can help both her and themselves by leaving the priesthood. And the collar around their necks would not be a yoke of servitude,  but a sign of dedication to the God who welcomes both married and celibate priests.

The Church too would realize that the God of Mercy is ready to show Divine Forgiveness to Her when She removes the burden of celibacy imposed on so many priests for whom it was not necessary to make them good priests.