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The priest, his flock and his wife

The Rev. Michael Scheip is a rarity: a Roman Catholic priest with a wife and children. His Sarasota parishioners praise Scheip, who is one of the church's occasional exceptions to the vow of celibacy, but his family keeps a low profile.

By JAMES THORNER
Published June 27, 2005

	[Times photo: John Pendygraft]
	The Rev. Michael Scheip, a former Lutheran, was allowed to marry after he converted to Catholicism. He says he gives daily thanks for being able to be a priest and have a family.

SARASOTA - From behind the altar at St. Patrick Catholic Church, the Rev. Michael Scheip lifts his hands in a farewell blessing, urging parishioners to go in peace to serve the Lord and one another.

It's the cue for the dark-haired woman and her children to slip from the pews. Emerging into the morning sun outside church, the woman avoids the outstretched palm of Scheip, who's greeting a stream of parishioners, and vanishes in her car.

Later on Sunday, Scheip and the woman will enjoy a swim at the beach and a barbecue dinner. He won't be mocking his priestly commitment. She's Mary, his wife of 24 years and mother of his five boys, ages 9 to 21.

Scheip represents something rare in the Roman Catholic Church since Pope Gregory VII, in a burst of clerical reform in the late 11th century, demanded priestly celibacy.

He's wed to the church - and wed to the former Mary Mercurio. But in the overwhelmingly celibate Roman Catholic priesthood, Scheip, a 50-year-old Lutheran convert to Catholicism, treads carefully over his marital status.

That means no "Rev. and Mrs. Scheip" Christmas cards. It means no two-for-the-price-of-one ministries. It means no spousal hand-holding in front of parishioners.

And, for the purposes of interviews with the news media, it means pulling a veil over the devout Italian-American woman he married in a New Jersey beach town in 1981.

"We try to be obscure and not ask for any favors. You don't want to go out of your way to distinguish yourself," Michael Scheip says.

A papal loophole brought Scheip to the priesthood: Married men are eligible for Catholic ordination provided they grew up in another Christian tradition without the celibacy rule.

His admission to the Catholic clergy was blessed in 1992 by none other than Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, better known since April 19 as Pope Benedict XVI.

He's one of fewer than 100 married men out of 44,000 Roman Catholic priests in the United States. (The Diocese of St. Petersburg, which includes Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco, Hernando and Citrus counties, has no married priests, though one ordained last month is a widower with grown children.)

Ratzinger's elevation to the papacy has stirred issues that slumbered through much of John Paul II's reign. At the top of the list in the United States: the shortage of priests and morale-crushing sex scandals.

The church insists admitting Protestant converts isn't a first step toward abolishing mandatory celibacy but a special exception for men drawn to the universal church.

Most have been Episcopalians who support Catholicism's opposition to the ordination of women, homosexual marriage and abortion.

But the loosening of 1,000-year church practice isn't lost upon Scheip's parishioners in Sarasota. Some say their priest is good for what ails the church.

Typical is Dan Torrance, a Catholic father of four so traditional he still pines for the old Latin Mass: "For the Catholic religion to prosper it needs to go the way of Father Mike."

Today, the way of Father Mike is strewn with blown off fireworks. They're those little cardboard tanks that shoot sparks through their turrets.

After shutting the door on his Toyota Matrix (in "Holy Spirit red"), he strides up the walkway to his house and steps around the remnants of the early Fourth of July. The boys have been boys again.

It's late afternoon and many of his celibate brethren are kicking off their black shoes in quiet bachelor's quarters. But Scheip's day is only half done.

He unhooks his priestly collar as he enters the house. Sophie the boxer erupts in barks, and Scheip's three boys, those still living at home, gather around.

"How's vacation?" Scheip says as he's enveloped by the noise of the family room TV.

"Boring but better than school," says Andrew, the 15-year-old.

The smell of baking pizza fills the two-story Sarasota house. The kids couldn't wait for dinner, so they rustled up a snack.

The downstairs den Scheip has converted into a chapel, complete with sacramental wine, incense brazier and cushioned kneeler. A bust of John Paul II stands at the altar.

Joyful music is made upstairs: Andrew's bedroom is sheeted in soundproofing bolted to the walls and door. When you notice the electric bass guitar and drum set, you know why.

It's where the family holds its rock 'n roll jam sessions. Scheip plays a Washburn electric guitar. Tom, 12, plays the bass. Andrew raises a ruckus on the drum set. The Beatles' Day Tripper - easy on beginners' fingers - is a favorite.

"The neighbors have never complained," Scheip jokes.

Missing from the scene is the smiling bride from the wedding photo on the downstairs wall. Mary Scheip has yet to arrive from work. It will be another hour before she pulls into the driveway.

Visiting journalists will never see her, which is how she wants it. When 60 Minutes' Morley Safer did a piece on celibacy in 2002, Mary Scheip wouldn't give CBS interviewers the time of day.

What you learn about her is sketchy. She works full time in human resources and runs a private consulting business. A recent photo is unavailable. And, no, you may not take a photo of the family together.

Scheip is aware his priesthood is experimental. He's uncomfortable playing the role of clerical reformer - and so is his wife.

"My wife always says, "I support this but I don't want to be out front,' " Scheip says. "There's not a whole lot of precedent for it and we want to respect that."

Michael Scheip grew up a pious Lutheran in Satterton, Pa., and gravitated to the ministry. In 1981, at age 25, he was ordained and assigned to an inner-city church in north Philadelphia.

In October of that year, Mary Lucia Mercurio walked into his church and into his life. She was a single Catholic on a bus tour of Protestant churches as part of an ecumenical movement called Taize.

Scheip got Mary's phone number and invited her to a Bob Dylan concert at the Philadelphia Spectrum. For the second date she invited him to see the rock group the Moody Blues.

By Christmas they were engaged. They discovered they were soul mates of sorts, both having been baptized on Oct. 2, 1955. The wedding was held at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church in Beach Haven, N.J.

As part of their sectarian balancing act, Scheip attended Saturday Mass with his wife; his wife sat in the pews as he officiated as a Lutheran on Sunday.

By the mid 1980s Scheip was falling into the Catholic orbit, not through any disillusionment with Lutheranism but from an admiration for the richness of the 1,900-year-old church.

"I was Catholic before I knew I was Catholic," Scheip says.

He converted in 1987, capped two years later by an audience in Rome with John Paul II, a thrill documented in a photo on his church office wall.

Studying to be a priest took several years. The archbishop of Newark, N.J., sponsored him and the Vatican confirmed his ordination, family baggage and all.

Scheip's mother, who remained a Lutheran, posed the question that would reverberate throughout his career as a Catholic:

"Does being married mean you're half a priest? Or three quarters of a priest?"

John Nevin is the first and only bishop of the Diocese of Venice. The diocese, created in 1984, begins south of Tampa and St. Petersburg in Manatee County.

Nevin welcomes married priests. Scheip arrived in 1996, though he wasn't the first. That honor belonged to the Rev. John Ellis, a converted, married Episcopalian.

Bishops need not employ priests with wives. It's typical for bishops to poll their parish priests to gauge their acceptance levels.

The original documents allowing the ordination of married former Protestants suggests the church keep them out of parishes. Tuck them away as hospital chaplains. Give them a class to teach. But discourage them from saying Mass with the masses.

"But the need is growing so Rome has evolved with that," says Scheip, who wears a gold wedding band on his finger as he officiates before packed houses on Sunday.

But he can't run his own church. At St. Patrick, that role belongs to Father George Brennan, who says he has no problem with married priests.

"As a matter of fact, I like his kids better than him. I take his kids' side," the gray-haired elder priest says with a laugh.

More critical are former priests who complain the church cast them out when they married but embraced conjugal rights for former Protestants.

Charles Obie hates to be called a "former priest." The church "pulled my license" when he married in 1974, but he still unofficially officiates at weddings and Masses within Scheip's diocese.

The church is two-faced for dipping into the Protestant labor pool while enforcing celibacy for lifelong Catholics, Obie says.

"I'm willing to serve but I'm going to come back with my wife at my side," Obie says.

Priests such as Obie seek easier lives when they leave to get married, argues Father William Stetson, a church official who handles applications for Episcopalian clergy seeking ordination. Protestant converts arguably sacrifice more since the Catholic church isn't geared to accommodate wives and kids.

"A Catholic priest very consciously, through six years of seminary, was making a commitment to celibacy before his ordination, which the Protestant had not made," Stetson says.

Another obvious challenge for the married priest: Any misbehavior on his children's part could reflect poorly on him.

Andrew Scheip has served detention at his parochial high school, Cardinal Mooney in Sarasota, for chewing gum in class. Complicating matters is Scheip's chaplaincy at the same high school. On Scheip's desk in his church office is an overdue notice from the library. Anthony, 9, forgot to return a book.

"Teenagers can be your best friend at one moment and then you turn around and, holy smoke," Scheip says. "We don't put ourselves up to be any more pious, some super Catholic family."

Scheip wears secular clothes when he goes out to eat with his wife, but Sarasota's a small enough city that he's fooling no one. He's a Catholic priest out on the town with the missus.

The church hierarchy, up to the highest levels of the Vatican, is watching the Scheips of the world.

Two years ago, the church surveyed the bishops who oversee most of the nation's married priests. Though the study is confidential, Stetson said the findings were upbeat.

The cardinal who commissioned the study: Joseph Ratzinger, now leader of the world's 1-billion Catholics.

It's unknown how much the results will color the new pope's attitude toward enlarging the role of marriage within the priesthood. Church liberals expect no changes out of Benedict XVI. But who knows?

A large print on Scheip's office wall is of an obscure 19th century priest named Franz Xavier Seelos. Seelos' raised hand blesses the office.

He is Scheip's role model, a devout, prayerful man with a cheerful human touch. Seelos died young in a yellow fever epidemic that raged across his New Orleans parish. Scheip expects the Lord to grant him greater longevity to fulfill his role as father in both senses of the word.

"It's a great gift being a priest and having a family. I don't take it for granted," he says. "There isn't a day that goes by that I don't give thanks to God."

- James Thorner can be reached at 813 909-4613 or thorner@sptimes.com

[Last modified June 24, 2005, 09:40:04]