Two takes on clericalism

In our discussions of the scandals currently afflicting the Catholic church, Jack and others have pointed to clericalism as one of the chief culprits.  So when I recently ran across a couple of passages about clericalism, they piqued my interest.  I'm sharing them here.

The first is from an outfit on whose mailing list I've landed for some reason, known as the National Center for the Laity (NCL).  From time to time they send me their newsletter, which is called Initiatives.  The group apparently is based in Chicago - their masthead lists the editor of Initiatives as Bill Droel, with contributions from Mark Piper.  As far as I know, I've never met either person nor heard of them before.  It appears, from the masthead and a couple of seconds of Googling, that their web presence is hosted by the Catholic Labor Network, which seems to be based in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC.  In a welcome exercise in transparency, this issue printed NCL's financial report for the previous fiscal year; the group's income was $36K, its expenses $30K.  So they are running their operation on a shoestring - and speaking as a guy who is helping to run a couple of operations on shoestrings, I know shoestrings when I see them.   But good things can be done by a small group on a shoestring budget, and from what I see in Initiatives, they're doing good work.

I hope they won't mind if I retype here a passage their lead article from the current issue of Initiatives, because it pertains to clericalism.  Here it is:

     Our National Center for the Laity is on the side of priests, deacons and professional lay ministers.  NCL opposes clericalism, however.  Enablers of clericalism include some Church employees, some rank-and-file Catholics, some on the left and some on the right, some senior citizens and some young adults.
     All Catholics are challenged to "divest ourselves of clericalism and elitism, to return to the purity of the gospel," says Bishop Vincent Long, OFM Conv. (Chancery Office, PO Box 3066, North Parramatta, NSW 1750 Australia).
     Long came here to Chicago in August 2017 and visited our major seminary.  "I noticed an interesting feature of the seminary chapel," he told a national gathering of priests at Dooleys Lidcombe Catholic Club in a Sydney suburb.  "There were seven steps leading to the high altar and on the side of each step was written the respective name of one of the seven Holy Orders.  Each step would create an ever-growing chasm between the candidate and the people ... [These steps] are powerful symbols of the clerical class.  [They] emphasize the ontological change and separation of the ordained from the faithful.  It is a powerful ingredient and ideal condition for the disease of clericalism to fester."
     Long's example is a small one.  Yet clericalism - small examples or front-page worthy examples -- is deeply embedded.  It harms Church employees because it gives off a false mist of influence.  It harms lay people because it encourages them to tune out good Church employees.
     "We cannot go on the way we have," Long concludes.  "The old wineskins of triumphalism, authoritarianism and supremacy, abetted by clerical power, superiority and rigidity, are breaking."  Instead, the whole church needs to exemplify "God's unconditional love, boundless mercy, radical inclusivity and equality."  Catholics must be servant leaders whose lives are "poured into new wineskins of humility, mutuality, compassion and powerlessness."

FWIW, I've been to that chapel at Chicago's seminary, the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, IL, quite a few times, and I can confirm what Bishop Long reports.  I've posted a photo of four of the steps at the top of this post; if you look closely, you can see the names of four of the old clerical ranks on the steps.  In one sense, those ranks are artifacts of a bygone era; the minor orders were suppressed by Paul VI, with a couple of them (Lector and Acolyte) being refitted as ministries open to laypersons.  The chapel itself is quite beautiful, and in the interest of preserving it, I don't think it's wrong to keep the old titles on those steps, even if they're anachronistic now.  But I agree with Long that they are symbols of separation from, and perhaps even more so of elevation over, the laity.  The minor orders may be no more, but clericalism lives on.

As for the second passage I recently ran across: Katherine had recently posted on what she is currently reading, and I had mentioned in a comment that our parish staff, including the deacons and wives, are reading Divine Renovation: bringing your parish from maintenance to mission by Fr. James Mallon (New London, CT: Novalis Publishing, Inc., 2014, ISBN: 978-1-62785-038-4).  The archdiocese is asking the leadership of all parishes to read the book as part of its Renew My Church initiative.  It's a good book - I'd recommend it to anyone who is interested in revitalizing parish communities.  Fr. Mallon is pretty clear-sighted in assessing aspects of Catholic culture that are obstacles to thriving, growing faith communities.  Here he is on clericalism (pp. 72-73):

     What do you think of when you hear the world "clericalism"?  Perhaps you think of priests in clerical garb, even a cassock.  Do you think of Pharisaic clerics who are obsessed with the minutiae of religious observance?  Perhaps you think of a kind of old boys' club that is suffused with a sense of superiority and privilege.  If so, then you may already have been shocked by how Pope Francis defined clericalism in his address to the leaders of CELAM at World Youth Day in 2013.  Describing clericalism as one of the temptations against the Church forming missionary disciples, he said that "in the majority of cases, it has to do with a sinful complicity: the priest clericalizes the lay person and the lay person kindly asks to be clericalized."  In these words, he provides the best definition of clericalism I have ever found.
     During my very first years as a pastor, we had started running Alpha as a way for the Catholics of my parish to hear the kerygma, experience Jesus personally and have a new, vital experience of Christian community.  Lives were slowly being transformed, and many who experienced this transformation were inviting their fallen-away friends and family members, and even non-believers, to attend.  I personally invited many of my parishioners.  As I can be as stubborn and determined as anyone, many eventually yielded and took Alpha to get me to leave them alone.  This worked for the widow pleading her cause to the unjust judge, so I figured that this approach was biblical, at least.  Then one day, an older man who had so far resisted my "invitations" drew a line in the sand ... He had had enough and said, "Look, Father, I'm just not that religious."  With those words he shut me down.  I was stunned.  Since that time, those simple words have been the source of much theological reflection.  What was he really saying?
     It occured to me that he was pushing back, with a sense of indignation, because I was breaking a kind of unspoken agreement about his involvement at church.  He would carry out the bare minimum of his religious duty, and I would leave him alone and not expect anything else.  He was content in this because, for the most part, ordinary Catholics were just not "that religious".  People who were "that religious" were those who became priests or nuns.  Since that conversation, I have run into this attitude again and again.  The Second Vatican Council may have spoken about the universal call to holiness and mission, but for the average Catholic, holiness and mission is not their job.  It is the priest or nun who can be holy and can evangelize.  Ordinary Catholics just do not do these things; they are fundamentally unable to do these things.  It took me several years before I could put a name to this disconnect between official Catholic theology and popular theology: clericalism.
     In the end, clericalism's association with distinct garb or the abuse of power is rather superficial.  Clericalism is nothing but the appropriation of what is proper to the baptized by the clerical caste.  In this caste I include religious professionals, both clergy and religious.  In the last decades, this professional clerical class has also come to include the clerical class of lay people who minister within the Church in an official capacity.  If, by virtue of their baptism, all Catholics are called to holiness and mission, to the task of witnessing to Christ, to evangelizing, to maturity - in short, to being missionary disciples - clericalism is ultimately a suppression of baptismal identity.  Priests and nuns become the super-Christians who have the superpowers to do what ordinary Christians cannot.  This elevation leads to two outcomes: the isolation of the clergy and the immaturity of the baptized ...
     The isolation of the clergy left alone to be holy and to do the work proper to all members of the Church has been, and is, death-dealing and unsustainable.  Clergy were trapped by inhuman expectations held up by such a gulf of double standard that none could pass from here to there.  It became obvious to me years ago that the pushback and resistance I received from parishioners when calling them to holiness and mission was none other than indignation that I had broken the unwritten rule about leaving them alone in their mediocrity.  

There is a good deal more in this vein.  I recommend the book (at least based on what I've read so far - I'm only in chapter 4!)

It is interesting that Mallon does not position clericalism as a problem of clergy disempowering the laity.  Quite a few discussions I have seen about the problem of clericalism, especially as it pertains to the abuse scandals, tend to view the problem of clericalism through this prism of power and authority.  The suggestion is that the laity, somehow, in some way, need to wrest power and authority from the clergy, and then the laity can fix clericalism.  To be sure, Mallon's book is not primarily about the abuse scandals (although he doesn't ignore them).  But it's notable that he doesn't see clericalism as a problem that divides the laity from the clergy; rather he sees both categories as complicit in fostering clericalism.  He uses the word "symbiosis" to describe the dysfunctional relationship between priests and the people they are supposed to serve.  He stresses that clericalism doesn't only hurt the layperson in the church; it also hurts clergy by imposing unbearable burdens on them.  In a sense, clergy are victims of clericalism as much as laypersons are.

The implication of Mallon's view would seem to be that the best way to solve the problem of clericalism is to realize and reinvigorate the baptismal identity of Christians.  Baptismal identity is something that laypersons and clergy have in common.

One practical example of reinvigorating our baptismal identity is the program we use in the Chicago Archdiocese to raise awareness and foster responsibility for protecting minors from abusive clergy and other potential abusers in Catholic settings.  That program, called Protecting God's Children, makes it clear that it is everyone's responsibility to create and maintain an environment that is safe for children.  In the archdiocese, all adult clergy, church and school employees, and volunteers who would come in contact with children are required to acquire and maintain a certification in the program.

I think Catholicism is at its best when laypersons shoulder their baptism-rooted responsibilities.  Another example that springs to mind are Catholic schools, which are often quite competent in educating children, in many cases superior to the far better funded public schools with which they exist side by side.  One of the hallmarks of Catholic schooling is the high level of parental involvement in the education of their children.