Getting a handle on Robert T. Francoeur, AS '67PhD, is challenging at best. His background seems a bizarre amalgam, as if the resumes of several people were accidentally cobbled together.

Francoeur is a married-with-children, semi-retired biology professor who is the author of multiple textbooks and academic reference works on sexuality and articles for such popular magazines as Penthouse Forum. He champions the most modern views of sexuality and advises clergy and religious groups on issues of sexuality--their own and that of their flocks. And, he was ordained a Catholic priest in 1958.

Francoeur took an unlikely route to becoming an expert on sexuality. Raised in a traditional Catholic family in Detroit, he entered the seminary in the ninth grade. After becoming a priest at the age of 27, he served as pastor at a small parish in the Ohio Valley and taught at a Catholic high school.

Francoeur pursued graduate studies in Catholic theology at St. Vincent's Seminary in Latrobe, Pa., where he wrote a master's thesis on the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. A poet and paleontologist, Teilhard de Chardin was banished by the Vatican in the 1920s because of his radical writings.

"Teilhard de Chardin changed my life," Francoeur says. "He offered a synthesis of the best of cutting-edge Catholic theology with modern evolutionary science. Teilhard gave me a world view that has guided my work in sexology and my daily life."

Francoeur later did graduate work at Fordham University and eventually earned a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Delaware. He went on to a 35-year career as a biology professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, where, as professor emeritus, he continues to teach a popular course on human sexuality. He also teaches graduate courses at New York University.

He met his wife, Anna, while in graduate school. Enlisted to be her escort on a double date, Francoeur went incognito, without his priest's collar. It's not the usual boy-meets-girl love story, but the couple recently celebrated their 33rd wedding anniversary.

Somehow, Francoeur received permission from the Vatican to retain his status as a Catholic priest after his marriage, with the help of Father John King Mussio, bishop of the diocese in Steubenville, Ohio, who ordained him.

"He wrote to Rome on my behalf," says Francoeur, "and, after the third try, I got permission.

"The Vatican made a mistake," Francoeur explained in a June 20, 1999, article on him in The New York Times. "The response came from Pope Paul VI rubber-stamped 'granted as requested.' It was obviously a clerical error, which they did not want to call attention to, so I just fell through the cracks."

In the same article on Francoeur, Marianna Thompson, director of communications for the Diocese of Paterson, N.J., was quoted as saying, "Mr. Francoeur, who may be in a unique situation, is not an active priest in the Diocese of Paterson."

Life proved interesting for Francoeur's two daughters, Nicole Francoeur, AS '92, and Danielle Francoeur Murray, AS '93. As children, Danielle and Nicole used to tell skeptical friends and teachers that their father was a priest who taught sex. Neighborhood children came to the girls with their questions, the answers for which they found in their dad's library. And, dinner guests were not the usual sort.

"My father brought home all sorts of people," Nicole explains, "those who were in the field of sexuality and in the Catholic Church. He was very open with us and introduced us to different types of relationships."

Because of that openness, Nicole, like her father, is accepting of alternative lifestyles. As a freshman at UD, she was the only heterosexual in the Gay and Lesbian Student Union.

Francoeur considers himself a religious person. His ministerial work, he says, has been as a sex educator. "My human sexuality course is like missionary work. You know, the kids today are just as ignorant about sex as they were 20, 30 years ago. There's still a desperate need for some kind of education. Unfortunately, there's a taboo there, and I see it worldwide. There aren't many cultures where parents can talk to their kids about sex."

In addition to teaching college students, Francoeur lectures at universities, corporations, government agencies and churches. One important mission is teaching clergy members what they need to know about sexuality in order to be good pastoral counselors.

He recounts a retreat a few years ago when he was asked to speak to a group of some 15 church leaders, the majority of them ministers. "They said to me, 'The gays are out of the closet, and the churches have to deal with that. Premarital sex is no longer a problem for 90 percent of Americans. Those problems are out in the open and we're dealing with them. The one problem we haven't dealt with is closet alternative-marriage patterns.'

"So, you have a problem," Francoeur told the workshop participants. "How are you going to deal with it?"

Francoeur's answer was his book Sex, Love and Marriage in the 21st Century (Universe 1999), which recounts anonymous stories of people who have looked for a connection between sexuality and spirituality in unorthodox ways.

It's the latest publication by Francoeur dealing frankly with sexuality. He has authored or edited more than 30 books, including the college textbook, Becoming a Sexual Person (Macmillan, 2nd edition, 1991), and seven editions of Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Human Sexuality (Dushkin), plus countless articles. He has appeared on radio and television nearly 300 times, including interviews with Barbara Walters, Phil Donahue and Dick Cavett.

Francoeur says he believes his most important contribution has been in editing reference books on sexuality, an academic subject that came into
its own less than half a century ago. These include The Complete Dictionary of Sexuality (Continuum, 1995) and The International Encyclopedia of Sexuality (Continuum, 1997). The three volumes of the encyclopedia issued thus far provide in-depth studies of sexual attitudes and behavior in 32 countries, including Argentina, China, Greece, India, Iran and Russia.

The extensive report on the United States also was issued as a single volume work, Sexuality in America (Continuum, 1998). Francoeur is currently working on a fourth volume of the encyclopedia that will include 15 additional countries. (Bahira Sherif, UD assistant professor of individual and family studies, is writing a chapter on sexuality in Egypt.)

"There is a revolution going on around the world, and, in every country, it's being led by women," Francoeur says. Few young women today, he says, would be willing to live the constricted lives common for their mothers and grandmothers. Even in Kuwait, Francoeur points out, women are fighting to get the vote.

In tradition-minded Japan, increasing numbers of women are declining to marry. Those who do marry are often so quick to divorce that a new term has been coined, Francoeur says. A so-called Narita divorce, named after Narita International Airport in Tokyo, is one in which the bride meets with a divorce lawyer at the airport when the couple returns from a honeymoon abroad.

Women's liberation, geographic mobility, birth control and even penicillin (as a treatment for sexually transmitted diseases) have radically altered our society, creating a totally new environment, Francoeur says. The old ethic was based on the nature of genital acts, their reproductive function and marriage. The new sexual ethic, Francoeur asserts, will be more holistic and will emphasize such qualities as mutual responsibility, growth, love, joy, honesty, self-fulfillment and transcendence.

"As a biologist, I say that if the environment changes and you don't adapt, you're not going to survive," Francoeur says. "Every society adapts marriage and family to its changing environment. Our problem is we're changing very, very fast. Technology moves a lot faster than social values."

Francoeur acknowledges that in the 21st century, heterosexual "pair-bonding" will remain the dominant type of sexual relationship. But, he emphasizes that variations on that standard will continue to proliferate. Just as non-married couples living together has become commonplace and widely accepted in the U.S., gay couples will also find greater acceptance. Long-distance commuter marriages, stepfamilies, co-marital relationships and networks of "intimate friends" will become more commonplace and accepted, he says.

So, where does that leave those who came of age in the early stages of this continuing sexual revolution? "We have to educate ourselves," Francoeur says, "be aware of what's going on; be flexible; most important of all, know what your particular values are at this time, how they've changed and how they could continue to change."