As wing tips and clerical collars replace sandals and golf shirts, parishes react to a new style of priest.

When the alarm clock rings, Father James Moore, 33, pops out of bed. He brews coffee, makes his bed, and launches into prayer.

Down the hall, Father Bart Hutcherson, 48, likes to set two alarms half an hour apart to ease into the morning. He doesn’t bother making his bed.  

Their days, their desks, and their general approaches to priesthood differ widely. Yet they are both Dominican priests serving the same parish, St. Thomas More Catholic Newman Center in Tucson, Arizona.

When they are standing side by side on Sunday, the contrast is clear. Father Bart wears a simple white habit, a green chasuble, and sandals. Father James wears the same habit and chasuble, along with an alb, an amice, and black shoes. He looks fancier, yet he is the associate to Father Bart, who considers his junior’s dress “overkill.”

The amice “is truly a pre-Vatican II vestment, not required in any circumstances,” he says. “Here in the desert, it makes little sense to put on an extra layer of clothes.”

So it is no surprise, with clothing differences that translate into liturgical ones, that parishioners wondered what would ensue when Father James—fresh out of seminary—was assigned to assist their more casual pastor.

“Father James led such a sheltered life, growing up in a traditional Catholic family in the country, so he shows up at the Newman Center and he’s all set and ready to fight the good fight,” says parishioner Cliff Bowman, 45, a pilot instructor and father of four. “I was a little concerned how they were going to work out.”

The two priests had the same questions. Father Bart had just attended Father James’ ordination, “a very high-church liturgy at a big Gothic church”—a far cry from the informal Newman Center where, alas, the avid organist would have no organ. “That was my first impression: How is he going to survive here without an organ? And is he going to push us to try to get an organ?” Father Bart recalls. “I knew his liturgical style is much more high church than mine, so I worried, how is that going to affect our ministry here? Is that going to be something that’s a sadness for him? Or is it going to be something where he comes in and tries to change the dynamic here?”

Father James had no plans for a takeover, but he did bring a penchant for Gregorian chant, a knowledge of Latin, and a “curiosity as to how it would play out.”

How is it playing out two years later? “Pretty well,” Bowman says, which is remarkable when you line the two men up and break down their differences. The short list is the stuff they have in common: the Dominican formation, the Newman mission, the commitment to priesthood and service.

The list of differences is virtually everything else, beginning with where they preach, how they preach, and what they preach on. Father James uses a prepared text and stands at the lectern; Father Bart leaves the lectern and the script. Father James addresses morality, church teaching, and church history, while Father Bart applies scripture to everyday challenges and temptations.

Even the way they position their hands at Mass reflects broader discrepancies: Father Bart folds one hand over the other, palms facing his chest, while Father James presses his hands together, fingers pointing up.

Changing of the guard

As a younger generation of priests joins and replaces an older generation, parishes across the country are feeling the change. City by city, diocese by diocese, it is a changing of guards that is neither swift nor soundless and comes with no choreography to guide the steps.

Many young priests arrive with an unabated zeal for the church, a solid grasp of liturgical rubrics, and a preference, if not insistence, for traditions of the past. They call themselves “JPII priests” because their formative years were shaped by Pope John Paul II’s pontificate. They are unafraid to preach on touchier moral teachings and eager to share rituals they consider timeless—ones their gray-haired peers often interpret as a step backward from the hard-won changes of the Second Vatican Council.

For these older priests, zeal for the church has softened into an abiding love, tinged by an awareness of its shortcomings. They’ve seen many messy relationships, and they’ve mastered the fine art of meeting people where they are and gently drawing them in.

At best, the change can puzzle parishioners, surprised at how different the same vocation can look. It can result in awkward moments—a parishioner sitting between a pastor and an associate pastor engaged in a tense debate at a council meeting, or seeing the older priest roll his eyes and reference “the young buck.”

At worst, it can induce an exodus of parishioners. When the old priest and the new priest are diametrically opposed, Catholics say it can feel as if the axis of a familiar home church is tilting, the ground moving beneath their feet.

It’s “jarring,” says Mary Deeley, the pastoral associate at the Sheil Catholic Center in Evanston, Illinois. “Whenever you have a change in leadership, there are going to be people who say, ‘I just can’t do this. I’m out because he’s out.’ ”

On a personal level, that can result in a crisis of faith—someone who stops going to Mass or someone who never comes back.

That major decision can be prompted by minor liturgical changes, which parishioners quickly pick up on and often read into, says Karon Latham, who has worked as a pastoral associate and now serves as director of faith formation for a cluster of three parishes in rural Central Michigan. “The liturgy is the heart of who we are and what holds us together as Catholics,” she says. “Any time there is an abrupt change in the way [liturgy] is done, it can really interfere with the way people are encountering God.”

Identity crisis

Latham speaks from experience. She was dismayed that fellow parishioners who had been strong in their faith stopped showing up on Sundays during a difficult transition to a new pastor, which coincided with the mandated implementation of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal.

To try to ease their struggles, Latham met with parishioners at church, at coffee shops, and in homes. “You could see how they were grieving the loss of something that had been so meaningful to them,” she says. “And for parishioners who happened to be experiencing personal loss—whether it was illness or struggling with relationships—it was almost too much for them to come to a liturgy that was unfamiliar.”

In the face of these changes, priests experience plenty of pain, too. At question, ultimately, is their very identity: Are they defined by baptism or by ordination?