Wanted – a Holy Thursday Church

Peter Day, Canberra priest, invites us to hear the cry to be a servant church and resist clericalism. [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]

We spend too much time in airport lounges and not enough time in ‘soup kitchens’.

I was not baptised in the name of this this pope or that pope; this group of bishops, or that group of bishops. Nor was I baptised in the name of the conservatives, or the progressives; this faction, or that faction. I was baptised in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

I was baptised and ordained to serve, but that’s not as romantic as it sounds:
He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel he was wearing… ‘If I, then, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you should wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you’.
(John 13: 4-5, 13-15)

‘There’s no real story of the Last Supper in the Gospel of John as we find it in the other Gospels. There is no passing of the bread or passing of the cup. Instead, we come upon the story of Jesus on his knees washing the Apostles’ feet.’ (Richard Rohr) On his knees like a domestic slave: Jesus became poor.

No wonder St Paul was moved to write:
He did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped. But emptied himself, taking the form of a slave. (Phil. 2:5-7) This ‘becoming a slave’ is the high point of Catholic ecclesiology. It is the template for Christian leadership: to serve from a place of humility and vulnerability – a place that too many of us have been loath to visit ever since.

Thus, the self-emptying nature of the Holy Thursday church envisaged by St John has been hijacked by a pervasive and self-serving clericalism. Is there not a lesson in Pope Francis’s humility and simplicity; his love of the excluded: his Holy Thursday leadership?

Indeed, clericalism is a cancer the Pope has been tackling head-on since his inauguration in March 2013. His scolding of church leaders is redolent of Christ’s scolding of the scribes and Pharisees: Woe to you who have the psychology of princes. Woe to you who are concerned with appearances, the colour of vestments, and honorific titles. Woe to you careerists who abandon pastoral service and limit yourselves to bureaucracy and personal gain.

The reality of this clerical disconnect was brought home to me during a conversation with a member of the military earlier this year. He expressed genuine disappointment at seeing a Catholic archbishop checking into the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge at one of our airports. ‘This is not a good witness – it just doesn’t pass the ‘pub test’, he said, ‘it’s poor leadership’.

Instead of being a church of the people, by the people, and for the people, we have evolved into a generally unaccountable corporation run by careerists: hired men removed from the smell of the sheep. No wonder the wolves have been left to run amok.

Jesus – Our Way, Our Truth, Our Life – has become the forgotten man of the institutional church. Our systemic abuse of power, and the exclusion of so many people, has all but eroded our capacity to speak with credibility to the marketplace.

The ‘men only’ sign that sits above the doors of our places of governance only serves to further diminish this voice:  it’s high time women were also seated at the head table to help shape and govern our church.

What has become abundantly clear is that a church of the clergy, by the clergy, and for the clergy, is not where our future lies; and it never will be.

Catholicism is not an intellectual system. It is not a collection of dogmas, nor is it a moralism. Catholicism is instead an encounter; a love story; an event (Joseph Ratzinger).

When one is in love, one is drawn to those places in which the beloved is to be found. I want to be where they are; what’s important to them is important to me; I’ll risk and leave everything behind for them.

A church that professes Jesus to be its first love must hasten to the ‘margins and befriend the poorest and learn from them’ (Jean Vanier). This is our most natural habitat because it is His.

A church that professes Jesus’ leadership as its cornerstone must humbly kneel at the foot of humanity and serve it. This is our most natural disposition because it is His.

It wasn’t pope Francis who first envisaged the church be a ‘field hospital’ serviced by disciples with ‘bedpans’ and towels; it was Jesus of Nazareth. He is our North, our South, our East, Our West. That our institution has lost sight of this is of great concern to many Catholics – and so it must be.

A tremendous struggle lies ahead because those in the thrall of power don’t easily give up the privileges it bestows. In our clamour for ‘honour at banquets and the most important seats at churches’, we have forgotten our place. And what is our place? No one has said it better than John the Baptist: ‘In order for Christ to increase, I must decrease.’

We are the towel people,
Soothers, cleansers, healers
Of feet tired and sore and cut from the journey.
Christ’s sent people,
Wiping away the dirt and blood and spittle
Of the world’s hatred spewed onto the faces
of the weak.
On our knees before others –
And in homage to them,
for Christ is there. (Anonymous)

This is the story that liberates. This is the story we must tell. This is our story.[/s2If]