Tim Sullivan

Generations of Catholics who embraced the modernizing tide sparked in the 1960s by Vatican II are increasingly giving way to religious conservatives who believe the church has been twisted by change, with the promise of eternal salvation replaced by casual indifference to church doctrine.

Fr. Joshua Whitfield is a husband, a father of four and a relentlessly good-natured priest beloved by the parishioners. He is, he says, "an ecclesiastical zoo exhibit," one of the tiny community of married priests — men who slipped through a clerical loophole created 40 years ago — that even most Catholics don't know exist.