Clericalism: we need to de-construct just what it means
Rene Pols from South Australia discusses the many aspects of clericalism.
There is general consensus that clericalism is indeed a serious problem in the church. [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]
It strikes a chord for many, Whilst the term “clericalism” is a good descriptor of a gestalt that comprises a wide range of beliefs, attitudes, problems and behaviours that surrounds men ordained to the catholic priesthood, it conflates a number of important issues that need to be examined and disentangled; issues, many of which undermine “church credibility” in the 21st century.
A process of deconstruction will help us to focus on the underlying problems that need to be addressed, quite apart from the current focus which is on the resented and criticised behaviour of all the ordained.
This can contribute to an “us and them” antagonism, unhelpful responses and unnecessary conflict between ordained and lay catholics.
The task of seeking a deeper understanding of clericalism
Firstly, naming the word “clericalism” as a component problem is a start to deconstructing the phenomenon.
The culture of clericalism that has built up over centuries, has left us with a term that conflates many things. The term itself results in an emotional response that leads to withdrawal and divisions within the Christian community without respectful dialogue. Such withdrawal enables dissention to grow and fester; there is more heat and less light.
In its extreme, it can lead to claims that some lay renewal movements are simply “demolitionists” wanting to do away with bishops and insultingly describes large numbers of deeply committed lay people as “a micro-swarm of gnats” as expressed recently by one of the former periti to the Plenary Council (Catholic Weekly 2.12.2021). This is simply an outrageous suggestion or conclusion to draw; its vitriol borders on the delusional.
Alternatively, this is an extreme example of clericalism afflicting the laity. The need to defend the current “clerical status quo” for some lay people in positions of leadership can be a serious problem also potentially affecting the advice given to bishops. These senior lay leaders risk becoming more clerical and less objective or approachable than some bishops themselves.
As an active member of the SA Catholics for an Evolving Church, I have the deepest respect for my brother priests who have consecrated their lives for the People of God wherever they have found them to serve as their priests. I have worked with many and count some of them amongst my very good friends; I admire the work they have done and continue to do and I respect them for their fortitude and forbearance during this terrible time, since they have had to live through the daily pain of being treated as suspect paedophiles within the Australian environment as a consequence of the terrible crimes committed by consecrated people against children.
And even more so, because of the fact that some bishops have been accessories before and after the fact of these heinous crimes. The latter have possibly even been the greater crimes. Systemic failures often cause greater harm than individual failures and this has simply not been acknowledged. It remains unspoken and our priests carry the stigma of this every day.
Clericalism is such a systemic failure. The bishops owe their priests an apology.
Superiority and ontological change at ordination
Ontological change, as held by some priests, can lead to an attitude of superiority which is seriously problematic in all areas of interaction between priests and the laity. It interferes with genuine hospitality and friendship; relationships of all kinds including in the celebration of the Eucharist, reconciliation and even saying hello. In developing relationships, it results in distance and shame, or a sense of being less than the priest, for lay people. In counselling situations, it can violate the requirements in the therapeutic relationship of unconditional positive regard; it makes the priest less approachable.
Arrogance, a “holier than thou” demeanour, even the way a priest dresses, can contribute to such a demeanour that is in fact offensive to many and can become a quite grotesque caricature of holiness that is insulting for other priests.
A further problem is that many lay people share this belief which can lead to “father knows best” decision-making. It creates distance and makes for the frequent occurrence of systematic error in many areas. Many lay people now, have much greater knowledge, experience, wisdom, skills and education than priests. This makes for conflict that is often denied. Mistakes made because of ignorance or simple lack of expertise, can be costly not only financially, but by the withdrawal of, often the most appropriately educated in the parish community, away from decision-making. This affects men disproportionally and is possibly one component as to why there are so few men coming to mass. Covert lack of respect for the priest often results.
This in turn results in those in the parish who are in the inner group who attend mass during the week, pick up after father, work around and manage him, superficially fitting in with his views of how things should be done. Surrounded by ‘yes women and men’, he is not challenged; mediocre outcomes are inevitable. This split in a parish between the good people and the also-rans who are on the fringe, is a cancer that grows. What is worse is that canon law that pertains to the parish priest clearly gives him the responsibility and legal power to veto anyone he wishes. People simply fall into line; some/many stay away.
Clericalism as a way of denying previous limitations of our understanding
Some clerics are poorly informed, ill-educated and not up-to-date. For some, their clericalist behaviour is the tip of an iceberg of ignorance and disdain for new knowledge held by some in the ordained hierarchy. Some new knowledge challenges the way that our Christian beliefs are currently enunciated. In part, clericalism comprises the underlying problem of the failure by the church to keep up to date in its adaptation to new knowledge and change.
This is a serious problem for the church in many areas where new knowledge and data sit side-by-side with simplistic, outdated examples, beliefs or the ways that beliefs are expressed. This affects pious practices particularly and traditions that have grown over the centuries.
These have been portrayed in wonderful art and music, mystical writings and great scholarship; great and good work. New knowledge clearly cannot negate these magnificent expressions of our deepest held beliefs about our relationship with our God. However, new knowledge and the current expression of Christian beliefs appear to be in conflict. These need to be clarified, better understood and better enunciated if we are to be true missionaries in Australia in 2022.
Alienation and lack of respect for the ordained by the educated laity
Clericalism magnifies the alienation experienced when a pompous, arrogant, superior demeanour is accompanied by homilies with simplistic examples, incorrect information or errors of logic or simple disorganisation or lack of structure. Often such behaviour is a cover for lack of knowledge. These clericalist behaviours cover over the deep fear of new knowledge and its implications for the way we conceptualise Christian beliefs expressed over many centuries, when our current new knowledge was not available. God the Father, creator of the universe “saw and it was good” (Genesis: 1).
He made humankind in his own image and indeed, as we slowly evolve in our understanding of cosmology and the creation of the universe, we start to see how awesome our Creator God really is, and it poses problems for the way that we have expressed the cosmological realities many years ago, in ways that need to be updated rather than denied.
This is an extremely serious problem for Christianity as a whole. It is clear that there are many things that require a much more sophisticated approach to the expression of Christian belief than is the case now.
Another component conflated with “clericalism” is the abuse of power. This has been most graphically documented in the Royal commission on the Institutional Responses to Childhood Sexual Abuse (2017).
However, it manifests in many other places within the church and it points to the outdated monarchical structure of the church and its historical roots, distorted by the confluence of church, state and in modern times, economic, predominantly capitalist power (for example the Vatican bank scandals, or bishops at the lunatic far right of politics in the US funded by rich Trump people; or the influence of the Medici family on the papacy).
As clearly analysed in The light of the Southern Cross report (2020) it persists in the structure, history and jurisprudence of canon law that needs a more modern interpretation, as has been done in that report. It shows that there is nothing to fear when we honestly and openly go back to canon law and re-examine how it is interpreted.
Our beliefs do not change but how we understand what we believe, does. The report shows very clearly what needs to be done to stop such abuse and to bring church governance up to date and at a level of transparency and excellence expected for any multi-million-dollar enterprise in 2022.
Clericalism as a way of ignoring mistakes made by many powerful ordained men
There are many historical consequences of the confluence and confusion of power, roles and loyalties. Many evils have been perpetrated by powerful, ordained men both at the individual level but particularly in systematic ways. These include: colonialisation and missionary endeavours in the name of the church; the inquisition, the crusades; the evils perpetrated during the reformation; and many others. Each of these grave errors need a new analysis and reconciliation with modern understandings of history, politics and social anthropology.
These decisions implemented with good intentions in many cases, resulted in many hundreds of thousands of deaths and incalculable harms to children, families and nations: including Christians being perpetrators and the church hierarchies, accessories to the genocide of many native peoples.
Modern scholarship needs to reconcile Christian teaching and such knowledge. A humble, synodal dialogue is required and an acceptance of the fact that knowledge then, is not the same as knowledge now.
Such evils and error need acknowledgement if the church is to regain any credibility in the 21st century and Sullivan (The Swag 2021) alludes to this also. Any year 12 student of history or English literature cannot but be confronted by these issues, where simplistic catholic teaching about our glorious and wonderful missionaries, many of whom have been beatified and in fact often did great things individually, is contrasted with huge inconsistencies with the facts of history taken over time and reflected upon now.
This creates gross cognitive dissonance for these young people that is simply too great for them to continue to treat their faith seriously. The church needs to update and disentangle its understandings of all these conflations between power, history then and now, infallibility, ordination, gender and morality.
We need to reconsider what all these things mean in the light of our modern insights into scripture, theology, philosophy, biblical studies, archaeology and the gospels; let alone the sciences, history, social anthropology, neuroscience and psychology.
Ultimately truth is sought by all Christians and truth does not differ when sought in the many ways we are gifted to perceive what scholarship reveals to us. These new understandings have been gained from the great gift to human kind of human intellectual capacity by our Creator God: “He saw that it was good” (Genesis:1). The church needs to have a new and deeper respect for the “creative good of the Father” and the emergence of whatever new knowledge may have for us.
It is the Father’s gift to us and for which we have stewardship.
New knowledge in many areas need to be studied and reconciled with the message of Jesus.
Clericalism stands in the way of such scholarship through papal and curial injunctions and absolute denial of undeniable errors made in earlier times; papal infallibility, as defined in Vatican I is a serious problem of our limited understanding of what this really means because it was not directly or fully confronted during Vatican II; the ostrich trick simply does not work in the 21st century!
Clericalism has had a systematic type II error-effect upon the jurisprudence associated with the church’s canon law over the ages.
Clericalism has the consequential problem that it has introduced systematic bias into the scholarship required when making laws and in their interpretation; jurisprudence. Jurisprudence within canon law is affected and afflicted by cultural biases as can be seen when we examine laws made within other cultural systems, such as those by totalitarian states. Critically reviewing laws made within a particular context from the outside can often clearly identify the flaws in logic made when such flaws cannot be seen from the inside.
Such new insights from safety engineering about perceptions from within the tunnel, developed from catastrophic disasters, is critically important. This is a very serious problem for the law-makers in the church and for those who interpret and apply these laws.
Another component of clericalism is that the ordained are male
To simply “fight the good fight” against “clericalism” by seeing it as simply being a gender issue also has serious costs. It places women against men.
The importance of general gender equity and equality issues in Australian society, the safety of women in the home, walking home alone at night and in the workplace are all important; as are the changes in our understanding about gender, power and sexual issues; same sex unions; contraception and fertility control. Whilst related to women’s ordination, they are separate issues caught up in the many, highly charged changes occurring within Australian society. The nature of the soul, its gender and its ordination is caught up in the gender debate that is in fact separate from clericalism per se.
The ordination of people is clearly a theological question that requires review in the light of our current understanding of the teachings of Jesus who gave a totally new egalitarian message for all, at a time when culturally then, and historically since, gender issues have clouded this debate. It is also clearly a women’s issue.
Genetic issues and power hierarchies also conflate clericalism. Ancient, genetically based power hierarchies have been innate to the evolutionary survival of some invertebrates and all vertebrates for hundreds of millions of years and to human kind also. They are not simply human, social constructs. Some are gender-based where females are dominant such as some arachnids where the dominant female devours the male after mating, whilst others, including chicken and human hierarchies, which are established based on environmental constraints as well as genetic gender. We need to be much more careful in the ways that we discuss clericalism.
Conclusion
Much further thought and discussion is needed when we think about clericalism. Each of the above issues have ways in which we can come to conclusions that take it out of an ‘us and them’ emotional Mexican standoff, where we, the laity, are ok and they, the clerics, have to change.
Change is required by us all. Most of all, the church really needs to address and reinterpret the message of Jesus in a way that is meaningful for our Australian people in 2022. [/s2If]
