c. 2003 Religion News Service

CLEVELAND _ Father Mark Ott slips out of his shoes, steps over dozens of sneakers and scattered bodies, puts on his green-and-white stole and green liturgical robe and begins to celebrate Mass for 50 teenagers in a suburban living room.

As teens read from Scripture, Ott takes a seat on the living room floor, closes his eyes and clasps his hands in prayer. Then he stands like Jesus in the center of his young disciples and delivers his sermon from memory, holding their attention by comparing Father Damien’s work with lepers to the modern call for the faithful to minister to people with AIDS.

All hold hands during the Our Father, with Ott in the center of a labyrinthine weave that stretches into the dining room of the Olmsted Falls home. At the sign of peace, the room erupts into hugs for some five minutes. Ott embraces most of the teens.

Afterward, standing in the back of the kitchen with a soda and a cookie, Ott smiles at the cacophony before him Sunday night. Teens approach him about his request for volunteers to bring handicapped parishioners to Mass. Mostly, he hears just the low roar of a group of young people checking one another out or making plans for fast food after a locustlike sweep through the snacks after Mass.

This was the way he imagined life as a priest, leading the type of personal youth ministry that got him excited about the church and put him on a path to the priesthood.

It is a gift he wants to pass on, as generations of priests have done before him. But for Ott and the Catholic church, nothing is simple these days. Where once there might have been four priests in a parish, with the new guy given primary responsibility for youth ministry, the clergy shortage has shrunk the ranks so thin that even the largest parishes today are lucky to have a single associate pastor.

Only two others were ordained with Ott in his class of 2001 _ and everyone must make sacrifices.

Men like the 30-year-old priest are needed more than ever to show a youthful face to the church around the Cleveland diocese, where only 6 percent of priests are under age 40. Yet they find themselves running the same endless race as their pastors to meet the demands of thousands in their own churches.

Many burn out. A Catholic University of America study found one in seven newly ordained men resigns in the first five years.

For the newest priests, the winds blowing in their faces are even stronger these days. Shortly after they were ordained, the sins of the fathers were visited on the younger fathers as the scandal of clergy sex abuse drew national attention.

For Ott, that means not only squeezing in youth ministry as the last job in a full week, but also worrying about arriving early at a youth gathering outside the church, lest he draw stares as a priest sitting alone with one or two youths.

It is OK to hug teens at a public Mass, but he is careful to draw boundaries on personal contact. “You can just kind of tell when it means one thing, and when it means something else,” he says.

St. Mary of the Falls is what is called a “bowling-alley church,” with the priest up front, no one on the sides, and the church members set far back from the altar in two sections of pews stretching back to the point where the cleric becomes a tiny figure. The old altar, built when priests faced away from their congregations, was never taken out but is embedded in the front of the sanctuary.

It is an architecture that in some ways suits the newest, more traditional generation of priests such as Ott. Raised really knowing only one pope, the charismatic traditionalist John Paul II, they are far more conservative than the guys before them.

Ott rarely ministers without a black shirt and white collar. And don’t call him Mark, or even Father Mark. He prefers Father Ott, a more formal sounding name that stands out as a sign of his priestly status even to older members who say he looks a lot like their grandchildren.

The congregation at Mass this Monday morning resembles a ship listing to one side as the 30 or so people all sit in the left pews. Few sit together, but rather go back about 15 rows.

Before Mass, Ott sits alone praying in the front pew on the opposite side.

Unlike many middle-aged priests, who come down during daily Mass to shake hands with members during the exchange of peace, Ott stays on the altar, arms raised up, far away from the congregation.

Later Monday morning, during a funeral Mass, he stops the service to inform mourners before Communion that the Eucharist is only for Catholics. Non-Catholics may receive a blessing if they come up with their arms folded across their chest.

Ott is less worried about offending non-Catholics or church liberals than he is about trying to uphold church law and the unique identity of a priest. He compares priests to doctors, who set themselves apart in dress and demeanor to most effectively do their work.

It is a delicate balancing act _ one which if done to any extreme can separate him from church members and make a lonely profession even more solitary.

At the funeral, Ott makes one compromise. The family is allowed to play a piece of popular music that was a favorite of the deceased, but only before Ott enters the sanctuary and the service begins.

(FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM BEGINS)

After the burial, at a reception back at the church, a middle-aged man approaches Ott. The man, with some embarrassment, confesses he has not been to church much in recent years.

“Father, what do I have to do for Communion?” he asks Ott.

Ott smiles and encourages him to come back to church. No lectures, no rules for returning.

As they wait in line for lunch, the priest places his hand on the man’s forearm.

“We’d love to have you back,” he assures him. “We’d love to have you back.”

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Those who know Ott well say the 6-foot, 200-pound priest with a shy smile was destined to become a priest. As early as second grade, Ott was the kid who would be put in charge of the parochial school class when the teacher left. He has only missed Sunday Mass once in his life, and that was in high school, when a major storm flooded the roads while his family was vacationing in Myrtle Beach.

But Ott was never that sure. The sixth of seven siblings, he assumed he would get married and have a family like his brothers and sisters.

Up to the day he was ordained a deacon, when seminarians make their lifetime vows of celibacy and obedience, Ott was continuing his conversation with God. He went for a walk that fall morning in 2000 with a classmate, the Rev. Joe Koopman.

Shuffling through the leaves of the North Chagrin Reservation east of Cleveland, he and Koopman talked about giving up marriage and a family. After a while, the two separated, and Ott hiked on, doing a personal inventory before God about whether he was ready to make his leap of faith.

“Am I going to be able to do this? Is there happiness on the other side?” he asked God. In his heart, the answer was yes.

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In the foyer of St. Mary of the Falls is a huge organizational chart. Off to one side are the two priests, but surrounding the chart are some 40 circles listing all the various ministries of the church from liturgy committees to religious education. In all, the chart touches 2,400 families with some 6,000 parishioners.

What makes this organization run are hundreds of volunteers. What makes the volunteers run in large part is the spiritual and pastoral nurture of the priests.

But even with so much activity, it can be a lonely life. The only other person Ott lives with is a workaholic pastor 27 years his senior. In the Catholic University study, half of the new priests who left said loneliness was a great problem.

(SECOND OPTIONAL TRIM ENDS)

On Tuesday, his day off, Ott goes skiing with another young priest. He squeezes every last minute out of his day off, arriving back in the rectory close to midnight.

The pastor, the Rev. Robert Cole, celebrated both morning Masses on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Cole’s day off, Ott gets up at 5:30 a.m. to celebrate the first of two Masses.

In his office, where lectionaries and Bibles are side by side with humor books such as “The Far Side Gallery,” Ott spends Wednesday morning mixing appointments with parishioners with office work. In the afternoon, he meets with a couple to discuss their upcoming wedding and gives someone else spiritual direction. That evening, he celebrates Mass for fifth-graders in the religious education program.

Thursday is more of the same. Morning Mass at St. Mary, then a special Mass at Kemper House, where many of the patients have Alzheimer’s disease. Later that afternoon he hears confessions.

The one break in his pastoral work is a two-hour dentist appointment to have a crown put on.

A parish priest on Sunday morning has to be a lot like a traffic cop during rush hour. As Ott leans back on the sink in the sacristy, trying to collect himself before the early morning service, ushers, lectors, deacons and Eucharistic ministers are busy around him.

On this Sunday, there are no altar servers, so he has to stand by the door and recruit a couple of last-minute replacements, neither of whom is too happy with the extra work. They resign themselves when plaintive silent appeals to their parents are rejected. Ott tells the boy to put his shirt with a rock band on inside-out so it will not show through the white robes.

In the foyer after Mass, he greets worshippers with a smile.

Later Sunday, Ott drives down to Akron to spend some time at his godson’s symphony recital. While the rest of the family goes back to his sister’s house for supper, Ott races back to the church.

On Sunday night, with an exhausting week coming to an end, Ott re-energizes himself at a home Mass for teens. Behind him, six, sometimes seven giggling youngsters pile themselves on or over the sides and back of a small couch. Ott is lost in the moment.

“Lord, I lift your name on high,” he sings loudly, lifting his arms upward.

The kids sing and lift their arms along with him.

Ott breaks out of his reverie and into a big grin. “You guys rock,” he tells them.

DEA END BRIGGS