Thomas Groome

Thomas H. Groome is an author, academic and former priest. He is a professor in theology and religious education at Boston College. Groome has been critical of the Catholic Church's stance on clerical celibacy.

Groome was born in County Kildare, Ireland. Groome studied at St. Patrick's, Carlow College and was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1968. After he had been in the priesthood for 17 years, Groome took a one-year leave of absence. During that time, he fell in love with a woman. He asked for dispensation from the church and got married. Groome said that he found celibacy to be a destructive force in his life and that his faith had been enriched by marriage.

Groome has a doctoral degree from Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University. He has taught at seminaries in several countries. Books have been published about his teaching in several languages. In 1998-99, Groome was president of the Association of Professors and Researchers in Religious Education (APRRE). As of 2014, he is a professor of theology and religious education at Boston College. He chairs the school's Department of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry.

In 2012, Groome said that the struggling Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston had made progress by keeping parishes from closing and by reconnecting with lapsed Catholics. He cautioned that the archdiocese would be affected by a coming shortage of priests and said that the church would eventually have to make the decision to allow married men in the priesthood.

Writing a piece for The Boston Globe in 2002, Groome advocated for the inclusion of women in the Catholic priesthood. "What a loss it is when ordained ministry is limited to men, excluding the consciousness and gifts of women; at best we benefit from only half our priestly resources," he wrote. In the same article, he wrote that the priestly requirement of celibacy may have inadvertently attracted a number of gay men to the priesthood. He said that when young men are taught that those with a homosexual orientation must remain chaste, some of those men may choose the celibate lifestyle of a priest.

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