Roman Catholics: The Father Takes a Wife

To students at the Jesuit-run University of Detroit, Father Lawrence Cross, 47, has long been something of a campus favorite. A softspoken, scholarly, almost humorless teacher, he was head of the university's sociology department and an active member of several civil rights organizations, including the N.A.A.C.P. and an interracial council that fought blockbusting real estate agents. Last week Father Cross's students and fellow priests were stunned when the Detroit papers front-paged the shocking report that he had gotten married—and more than that, to a former nun, 37-year-old Joan Renaud.

What made the marriage even more of a surprise was that, according to the records of the Wayne County clerk, it had been celebrated by Jesuit Thomas Blackburn, chaplain at the university. Although none of the parties to the unusual wedding would talk about it, the evidence was clear that Father Cross, who had been on leave since January teaching at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University, came back to Detroit last May to marry Miss Renaud, a nurse who had voluntarily left the Sisters of Mercy three years ago. Still refusing to confirm or deny his marriage, Father Cross last week came back again to Detroit, after visiting his brother in Rochester, N.Y., and introduced his new bride to his understandably puzzled family. Then the two slipped out of town.

Neither university officials, the Detroit chancery nor Cross's Jesuit superiors would comment on the case. But under canon law, the penalty for a priest who marries without being dispensed from his vow of chastity—something that is rarely granted by the Holy See—is automatic excommunication, revocable only by Rome. Equally in trouble with the church is Father Black burn, who was previously reprimanded by the archdiocesan chancery for conducting experimental folk-song Masses on the campus. For celebrating the marriage of a priest, he too may be subject to excommunication.