Pope Francis has broached the subject of
clericalism again in the church, much to the discomfort of clergy.
The spirit of clericalism is an evil that
is present in the Church today, and the victim of this spirit is the people,
who feel discarded and abused. That was the Pope’s message in the beginning of
December. If there’s someone who consistently opposes the clerical
attitude in the Roman Catholic Church, that’s the Pope himself. He has
understood that the menace of clericalism is at the root of most of the
problems troubling the Catholic Church.
Unam Sanctam Catholicam defines clericalism as a
state of affairs in which there is an unnecessary or overly exaggerated
importance attributed to clergy, in such a way that the laity relate to them as
subjects to be ruled rather than a people to be lovingly pastored. “Basically,
a clericalist ideology is one that places too much emphasis on the clergy or
attributes undue importance to their actions. It is a defect of the virtue of
temperance by excess as applied to the government of the Church,” it says.
It has often led to sacramental blackmails
in the church which are suppressed within its four walls.
Pope Francis warned pastors of the dangers of
becoming “intellectuals of religion” with a morality far from the Revelation of
God. The poor and humble people who have faith in the Lord are the victims of
the “intellectuals of religion,” those who are “seduced by clericalism,” who
will be preceded in the Kingdom of Heaven by repentant sinners.
The law of the high priests is far from Revelation
The
Pope directed his attention to Jesus, who in the day’s Gospel turns to the
chief priests and the elders of the people, and focuses precisely on their
role. “They had juridical, moral, religious authority,” he said. “They decided
everything. Annas and Caiaphas, for example, judged Jesus. They were the high
priests who ‘decided to kill Lazarus’; Judas, too, went to
them to ‘bargain’, and thus ‘Jesus was sold’. They arrived at this
state of arrogance and tyranny towards the people,” Pope said.
Judas was a traitor, he sinned gravely. He sinned forcefully.
But then the Gospel says, “He repented, and went to them to return the money.”
And what did they (priests)
do? “It’s
your problem,” they said and left him alone – discarded. The poor Judas, a
traitor and repentant, was not welcomed by the pastors. They had forgotten the First Commandment, which God had
given to our father Abraham: “Walk in my presence and be blameless.” They did
not walk: they always stopped in their own convictions. They were not blameless.
Pope said they had forgotten the Ten
Commandments of Moses: “With the law they themselves had made –
intellectualistic, sophisticated, casuistic – they cancelled the law the Lord
had made, they lacked the memory that connects the current moment with
Revelation.” In the past their victim was Jesus; in a similar way, now their
victim is the humble and poor people who trust in the Lord, those who are
discarded, those who understand repentance even if they do not fulfil the law,
and suffer these injustices.
They feel condemned and abused, Pope said, by those who
are vain, proud, arrogant. And one who was cast aside by these people, Pope
Francis observed, was Judas.
They were the
intellectuals of religion, those who had the power, who advanced the catechesis
of the people with a morality composed by their own intelligence and not by the
revelation. The evil of clericalism can still be found in the
Church today.
“There is that
spirit of clericalism,” he explained. “Clerics feel they are
superior, they are far from the people. They have no time to hear
the poor, the suffering, prisoners, the sick,” he
said.
The evil of clericalism is a very ugly thing. It is a new edition of
these people. And the victim is the same: the poor and humble people who await the Lord. The
Father has always sought to be close to us: He sent His Son. We are waiting,
waiting in joyful expectation, exulting. But the Son didn’t join the game of
these people. The Son went with the sick, the poor, the discarded,
the publicans, the sinners – and that is scandalous – the prostitutes. Today,
too, Jesus says to all of us, and even to those who are seduced by clericalism:
“The sinners and the prostitutes will go before you into the Kingdom of
Heaven.”
Writing in National Catholic Reporter, Robert
McClory said, “clericalism is contagious, breeding a kind of mentality
that revels in ecclesiastical ambition, status and power. For some, especially
those attracted to the episcopacy, it often leads to indifference toward the
experiences and needs of ordinary Catholics. It encourages the creation (or
repetition) of teachings and regulations worked out in ivory-tower isolation
from the real world.”
“For many generations earnest, young male
seminarians have been taught that they are aspiring to a higher level not
available to the laity, a level at which they will have the authority to teach,
sanctify and govern those below,” he says.
“In effect, they become members of a kind of
boys club that is warm, supportive and exclusive — and never breaks ranks. For
what they give up, they can expect a relatively high standard of living and the
respect, even adulation (at least until the abuse scandal hit), of their
grateful congregations,” McClory writes.
“Priests were so well respected that they were
often times feared rather than loved, the sacraments so revered that their
power was almost magical, the stress on clerical obedience so emphatic that
independent thought was stifled, and the hierarchy exercised so much power that
the priesthood became in effect a boundary restricting the faithful's access to
God rather than an intermediary who brought their petitions to God,” says Unam
Sanctam Catholicam.
Will Pope succeed in eliminating clericalism
from the Catholic Church? He himself set an example with his frugal lifestyle,
avoiding pomp and pageantry, after becoming the Pope. It’s not going to be an easy
task.
The following incident is a classic case of
clericalism happened over two years ago. Similar incidents are frequent in the
Catholic world but remain unreported.
An unmarried woman with a baby had to embark on
a depressing pilgrimage around Buenos Aires city to find a place
where she could have her baby baptised. She was turned away by priests.
The Archbishop of the region questioned, “Why a
poor girl, who has resisted the temptation to have an abortion and stood up at
great cost to herself for the right to life should be persecuted in such a
way.”
The Archbishop reminded the priests that the
young woman was requesting baptism for her child, not herself, and that they
have no right to deny a sacrament in that manner.
“I say this with sadness and if it sounds like a
complaint or an offensive comment please forgive me: in our ecclesiastical
region there are presbyteries that will not baptise children whose mothers are
not married, because they have been conceived outside holy wedlock,” a Vatican
insider quoted the Archbishop as saying.
The Archbishop said he was making a call to end
what he called sacramental blackmail.
He went on to speak about the hijacking of a
sacrament, calling it an expression of a rigorous and “hypocritical
neo-clericalism”, which uses the sacraments as tools to affirm its own
supremacy.
He was critical of priests for what he described
as rubbing the fragility and the wounds of people in their faces by hosing down
their hopes and expectations, simply because they do not fit squarely into
parish requirements or live up to someone else’s moral expectation.
He said that apart from being misleading, such
pastoral models distort and reject the dynamic of Jesus Christ’s incarnation,
which he pointed out cannot be reduced to a doctrinal slogan or used to serve
the power hungry.
The Archbishop was none other than Jorge Mario
Bergoglio – currently Pope Francis. This happened months before his selection
as Pope.
