“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth.” (Mt 23:27-28).
The word hypocrite is from the Greek word hypokrites: stage actor. A hypocrite is essentially a pretender, that is, a liar. What is presented on the outside is a facade that has very little correspondence with what is within, as the words of a liar do not correspond to what is in the mind. Jesus referred to the scribes and Pharisees as “whitewashed tombs full of the bones of the dead,” a first century Palestinian way of saying “they’re full of s___.”
And of course things have not changed in two thousand years. I’ve been a Deacon for 17 years and I’ve seen my share of clerical elitism, opportunism, clerical envy, insecurity, pettiness, micromanaging, and immaturity, in short, clericalism, a disease that Francis spoke out against so often during his papacy. And there seems to be an increasing number of young men who are more interested in liturgical etiquette and decor, vestments, altar cloths, cassocks and ferraiolos, Latin, and clerical privilege than they are in Christ hidden in the struggles of ordinary families, in the poor, the sick and hospitalized, the lonely, in short, the suffering. If you have reverent liturgy—implying elements like elaborate vestments, altar candles, perfectly folded hands, chant and incense— everything will take care of itself in the world and life in the Church will be as it was in the 40s, or so I’ve been told.
Of course, what appears on the outside does not always correspond to what is actually there, as a whitewashed tomb hides the filth buried within. Perhaps it is a good thing that a number of the faithful do not see through the charade–when in fact it is a charade–, because disillusionment can be dangerous. Some people will in time see through the facade as a result of circumstances that helped to reveal the true character of the cleric behind it, and those who do will either leave the Church altogether or they will realize that our faith is not about the clergy, but about Christ, and so they choose to “run with patience” (Heb 12:1). I marvel at the faith of the latter, but they are certainly in the minority. I’m reminded of Sister Joan Chittister’s first trip to Rome. She writes:
The first time I went to Rome, experienced the intrigues of the Curia, saw the politics of the system, watched the maneuverings of national clerical alliances, and realized how helpless women were in the face of all of it, I felt years of ecclesiastical conditioning go to dust under my feet. What was there left to believe in? Where was the Shangri-La of my religious dreams? How could I possibly continue to profess any commitment to any of this? It was all so human. It was all so venal. It was all so depressing. “Don’t worry,” the old monk said to me. “You’ll be all right. Everybody who comes to Rome loses their faith here the first two weeks.” Then, he smiled a small smile and added, “Then in the last two weeks, they put it back where it should have been to begin with: in Jesus.” (The face of God is imprinted on everyone, June 24, 2024)
We do have a tendency to idealize the Church. Despite the warnings of our late Holy Father, so many continue to place clergy on pedestals, in some cases carrying on like fawning sycophants, but grace does not obliterate nature, and the members of the hierarchy suffer from the same cognitive limitations that constrain everyone else in the world, and when those caught up in the illusion of clerical superiority are eventually disillusioned, they find themselves in a “no man’s land” that can lead to 1) a higher level of spiritual growth, that is, a resurrection that follows upon a death, or 2) anger, which if not resolved can fester into bitter rebellion. Sister Joan continues:
I grew immensely in those four weeks—out of spiritual infancy into spiritual adulthood. Out of adoration of the church, into worship of the God whom this tradition had made accessible to me. To understand the value of the church, ironically, I had to understand its limitations. To worship God I had to stop worshiping the things of God. “Open yourself to the Tao,” the Tao Te Ching teaches, “then trust your natural responses and everything will fall into place.” Now I knew what that meant (Ibid.).
It will take at least a century to see the reforms of Vatican II established and fully in place, which is another 40 years. At the Council, we saw a return to an earlier Apostolic model of the Church as laos (Greek: people).[1] The Church is first and foremost the people of God (Cf. Lumen Gentium, 9-17), that is, the laos from which is derived the English word ‘laity’. Included in that people (laos) are the presbyters (elders, but which has come to be translated as priests) and the episcopos (Greek: overseer, i.e., bishop). In the Apostolic era, presbyters did not enjoy “clerical status”; rather, the entire Church was kleros. In 1 Peter 5:2-4, we read:
Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight [thereof], not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; Neither as being lords over [God’s] heritage (kleros: lot, inheritance), but being examples (types, models) to the flock.
The kleros, the Lord’s inheritance, is the entire people of God, the people he has chosen as his own: “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people chosen as his inheritance” (Ps 33:12). This of course includes those in Holy Orders. Clericalization, the process by which servant-leaders were separated from the laos and given a privileged status, was a gradual phenomenon, and it was particularly in the 4th century when Christianity became the official religion of the Empire that the “clerical state” of the pagan priesthood of the Roman Empire was transferred to the servant-leaders (presbyters and episcopi) of the Christian Church, elevating them above the laity, so to speak, portraying them as the ‘chosen ones’ (kleros).[2]
Those ordained to be servant-leaders (deacons, priests, and bishops) come from the people (laos) to whom they are called to serve, not the other way around, and servants are not elevated above, but remain at the feet of those they serve (Jn 13:1-17).[3] As Jesus said in Matthew’s Gospel:
You know how those who exercise authority among the Gentiles lord it over them; their great ones make their importance felt. It cannot be that way with you. Anyone among you who aspires to greatness must serve the rest, and whoever wants to rank first among you, must serve the needs of all (Mt 20:25-26).
It is rather remarkable that this text of scripture has for centuries gone in one ecclesiastical ear and out the other but having to endure emotionally abusive clergy can turn out to be a blessing in many ways. For example, encountering “clergy” whose priesthood was little more than the sanctuary and who have been almost completely indifferent to social outreach, who have as much pastoral prudence as a young teenager — not to mention misogyny, chauvinism, and an institutionally entrenched sexism–, has allowed me to come to a deeper appreciation for my older colleagues who grew up in a time when a much greater percentage of the clergy were just like that. I did not understand my colleagues who wrote for the Catholic New Times and who were very politically minded and social justice oriented, until relatively recently. I would never have come to appreciate them as I have if I had not been exposed to clerical-minded elitists who lack basic hospitality, thoughtfulness, generosity, and humility.
We know from history that love of liturgy can co-exist with profound sexual immaturity, not to mention a serious lack of concern for the faithful. What is loved in such cases is the liturgical ambiance of the sanctuary, which has become for them a stage on which one performs and takes delight in the fact that the eyes of all in the congregation are focused “on me.” But this delight does not sustain, but leaves a person empty, because at its roots it is essentially a degree of narcissism. Joy that sustains a vocation is the joy of loving (Mother Theresa), the joy that is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. This is the joy of allowing yourself to be used as an instrument through which the Holy Spirit reaches into the most impoverished regions of the world’s darkness; it is the joy of being dead so that the life of Christ can be made manifest through us (2 Cor 4:10), to those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.
Notes
[1] At the Council, Belgian Bishop Emile-Joseph De Smedt intervened with the following: “In the first chapters of the Draft the traditional picture of the Church predominates. You know the pyramid: the pope, the bishops, the priests, who preside and, when they receive the powers, who teach, sanctify, and govern; then, at the bottom, the Christian people who instead receive and somehow seem to occupy second place in the Church.
We should note that hierarchical power is only something transitory. It belongs to our status on the way. In the next life, in the final state, it will no longer have a purpose, because the elect will have reached perfection, perfect unity in Christ. What remains is the People of God; what passes is the ministry of the hierarchy.
In the People of God we are all joined to others and have the same basic rights and duties. We all share in the royal priesthood of the People of God. The pope is one of the faithful; bishops, priests, lay people, religious: we are all the faithful. We go to the same sacraments; we all need the forgiveness of sins, the eucharistic bread, and the Word of God; we are all heading towards the same homeland, by God’s mercy and by the power of the Holy Spirit.
But as long as the People of God is on the way, Christ brings it to perfection by means of the sacred ministry of the hierarchy. All power in the Church is for ministering, for serving: a ministry of the Word, a ministry of grace, a ministry of governance. We did not come to be served but to serve.
We must be careful lest in speaking about the Church we fall into a kind of hierarchism, clericalism, episcopolatry, or papolatry. What is most important is the People of God; to this People of God, to this Bride of the Word, to this living Temple of the Holy Spirit, the hierarchy must supply its humble services so that it may grow and reach perfect manhood, the fullness of Christ. Of this growing life the hierarchical Church is the good mother: Mother Church.” Acta Synodalia Sacrosancti Concilii Oecumenici Vaticani II, 32 vols. (Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1970-99) I/4, 142–44. See Ormond Rush. “Inverting the Pyramid: The Sensus Fidelium in a Synodal Church.” Theological Studies, 2017, Vol 78(2). P. 301.
[2] See Piet F. Fransen. Hermeneutics of the Councils and Other Studies: “Some Aspects of the Dogmatization of Office,” p. 382-389. Collected by J.E. Mertens and F. De Graeve, Leuven University Press, 1985. See also Joe Holland, Roman Catholic Clericalism: Pacem in Terris Press, 2024, p. 61-62. Yves Congar. Power and Poverty in the Church: The Renewal and Understanding of Service. New York: Paulist Press. 2016. See also Joseph Mattam, S. J. “Clergy-Laity Divide in the Church.” New Leader, (Chennai, India,) July 2012. https://www.churchauthority.org/clergy-laity-divide-in-the-church-mattam/.
[3] The “pyramid model” is really an anachronism that perpetuates a number of dualisms that have proved dangerous to the Church and civilization, such as the two-tiered notion of “nature and grace,” or the depiction of the ordinary work of the laity as profane and directed outward to the world vs. the life of “clerics” as holy, interior, ordered to the sanctuary; or the laity not called to a life of holiness vs. “clerics” and religious who are; or the depiction of the earth and the world as the profane realm vs. the interior as the realm of the sacred; or science as profane vs. theology as sacred; or body, matter, marriage and sex as shameful vs. the soul and celibacy as higher, etc.
Image: “Oxford: Latin Mass in the Extraordinary” (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) by Catholic Church (England and Wales). Credit: catholicrelics.co.uk.
Douglas McManaman was born in Toronto and grew up in Montreal. He studied philosophy at the University of St. Jerome’s College (Waterloo) and theology at the University of Montreal. He is a permanent deacon of the Archdiocese of Toronto and ministers to those with mental illness. He taught Religion, Philosophy and the Theory of Knowledge for 32 years in Southern Ontario, and he is the current chaplain of the Toronto Chapter of the Catholic Teachers Guild. He is a Senior Lecturer at Niagara University and teach Marriage Prep for the Archdiocese of Toronto. His recent books include Why Be Afraid? (Justin Press, 2014) and The Logic of Anger (Justin Press, 2015), and Christ Lives! (Justin Press, 2017), as well as The Morally Beautiful (Amazon.ca), Introduction to Philosophy for Young People (Amazon.ca), Readings in the Theory of Knowledge, Basic Catholicism, and A Treatise on the Four Cardinal Virtues. He has two podcast channels: Podcasts for the Religious, and Podcasts for Young Philosophers. He currently lives with his wife and daughter in Ontario, Canada.
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