SEPTEMBER 14 2019
ABOLISH THE CLERGY?
James Carroll certainly thinks so. A former priest he knows the Roman Catholic Church inside out, and wrote an article on THE CHURCH AND THE CLERGY in the Atlantic Magazine, in which he boldly stated that to save the Roman Catholic Church it would have to get rid of the clergy.
Here is an excerpt of his essay.
“The virtues of the Catholic faith have been obvious to me my whole life. The world is better for those virtues, and I cherish the countless men and women who bring the faith alive. The Catholic Church is a worldwide community of well over 1 billion people. North and South, rich and poor, intellectual and illiterate—it is the only institution that crosses all such borders on anything like this scale. As James Joyce wrote in Finnegans Wake, Catholic means “Here Comes Everybody.” Around the world there are more than 200,000 Catholic schools and nearly 40,000 Catholic hospitals and health-care facilities, mostly in developing countries. The Church is the largest nongovernmental organization on the planet, through which selfless women and men care for the poor, teach the unlettered, heal the sick, and work to preserve minimal standards of the common good. The world needs the Church of these legions to be rational, historically minded, pluralistic, committed to peace, a champion of the equality of women, and a tribune of justice.
“That is the Church many of us hoped might emerge from the Second Vatican Council, which convened in the nave of Saint Peter’s Basilica from 1962 to 1965. After the death, in 1958, of Pope Pius XII—and after 11 deadlocked ballots—a presumptive nonentity from Venice named Angelo Roncalli was elected pope, in effect to keep the Chair of Peter warm for the few years it might take one or another of the proper papal candidates to consolidate support. Roncalli—Pope John XXIII—instead launched a vast theological recasting of the Catholic imagination. Vatican II advanced numerous reforms of liturgy and theology, ranging from the jettisoning of the Latin Mass to the post-Holocaust affirmation of the integrity of Judaism. Decisively, the council defined the Church as the “People of God,” and located the clerical hierarchy within the community as servants, not above it as rulers. The declaration, though it would turn out to have little practical consequence for the clergy, was symbolized by liturgical reform that brought the altar down from on high, into the midst of the congregation.
“Clericalism, with its cult of secrecy, its theological misogyny, and its hierarchical power, is at the root of Roman Catholic dysfunction.”
My question: “Does the same apply to the Protestant wing?”
That’s what I am exploring. For this I am intrigued by Walter Brueggemann’s book, THE PROPHETIC IMAGINATION. This well-known theology professor, already on the first page of his 1978 book – of the five books I have by him, I think this is his best – writes, “The contemporary American Church is so largely enculturated to the American ethos of consumerism that it has very little power to believe or to act.”
He sets out – and succeeds – to explore that, “The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.”
There’s no doubt that today circumstances have changed for the worse: Climate Change is starting to rip, drench and destroy: we all know, or should know that we cannot continue to live as we do. This means that the church too must change.
Brueggemann again, “It is the task of the prophet to bring to expression the new realities against the more visible ones of the old order.”
Today it is becoming generally accepted that Business as Usual will lead to annihilation, which means that ‘nihil=nothing’ will remain the same. Basically the world is at it wit’s end. How can we stop the current track of commerce, of consumerisms, of industrial growth? Our business world is built on them. No growth means stagnation, means layoffs, means less tax income, means deathly deficits.
Already in prosperous times we experience enormous revenue shortfalls. When inflation comes – and in a world where soil, air and water are under ever growing stress – a rise in the cost of basic food items is bound to happen, we will see the worst of all possibilities: shrinking incomes and rising costs.
Churches are middleclass institutions. Especially the middle classes will face the brunt of financial cutbacks.
Back to Brueggemann.
Jesus was a threat then and is now. Writes Brueggemann: “Very early Jesus is correctly perceived as a clear and present danger (by the church of his day)”.
It reminds me of an
episode that ties in with this. I noticed it in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, Dostoevsky’s
last book. It’s called “The Grand Inquisitor”. It’s a story that Ivan, the
atheist Karamazov brother, has composed and recounts to his younger brother
Alyosha, the aspiring priest. In it Jesus returns to the earth during the
Spanish Inquisition. Ivan says: “It is fifteen centuries since signs from
heaven were seen. And now the deity appears once more among the people.”
Everyone recognizes him, because a blind man sees and a dead child rises. But
the old cardinal, in charge of the Inquisition, takes Jesus to prison and tells
him that: “You have no right to add anything to what you have said…. Why have
you come to hinder us?” Ivan explains that this is a fundamental feature of the
Church that God cannot ‘meddle’ now because “all has been given by you to the
Pope. The Church is the authority now.”
The Grand Inquisitor then tells Jesus that he erred when he resisted the
devil’s three temptations in the wilderness, where the devil offered him
miracle, mystery and might, which the Church has accepted. Jesus, however,
wanted them to have freedom of choice. But, says the clergyman, freedom is too
difficult and frightful for the masses and so the Church has taken the three
awesome gifts for them. The Inquisitor concludes: “We are not working with you,
but with the devil– that is our mystery.” Jesus, still not speaking, kisses him
on the lips. “That was all his answer.” The Grand Inquisitor opens the cell
door and says, “Go, and come no more, never, never.” And the divine visitor
leaves.
“Freedom is too difficult for the masses” says the cardinal, but that is an
important part of Jesus’ teaching: “The Truth shall set you free”.
That perfectly illustrates that the church then and now rather not give the people a free hand. Yet, before Jesus returns, more imminent by the day, we have to break free from the ecclesiastical enterprise. Yes, James Carroll is correct.
The Bible again.
Already in the letter to the Hebrews the immaturity of the pew-sitters is evident. The author writes, (Hebrew 5: 11-14):
“Concerning him we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.”
That was 2,000 years ago when the church was in its infancy. Now the problem is worse, and the structure of the church is to blame. Our crutches have to be taken away and we either walk by ourselves, or tumble and fall.
Brueggemann hints at that when he writes: “Jesus’ ability to heal and his readiness to do it on a Sabbath (Mark 3: 1-6) evoked a conspiracy to kill him. The violation is concerned not with the healing but with the Sabbath.”
This is a clear indication that Jesus directly aims at the institution, and the maintainers of the establishment, the clergy. Then and now they have become a hindrance to the coming of the kingdom.
I have mentioned ATONEMENT before. Atonement is an expression of compassion. Brueggemann again: “Jesus in his solidarity with the marginal ones is moved to compassion. Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness.”
Do you know of any church that has initiated a Day of Atonement?
The Bahamas has been ravaged by our actions. Climate Change has been put on our debit account. Jesus loves the ‘cosmos’ and today he is in tears and agony because of us, because we have totally despoiled HIS creation.
Brueggemann again, “Jesus brings newness in the situation, but only in his grief: grief, embodied anguish, is the route to newness.”
The refusal to confess ATONEMENT represents denial of The New Creation. Brueggemann writes, “Prophetic criticism knows that only those who mourn can be comforted and so it first asks about how to mourn seriously and faithfully for the world passing away”.
There is no doubt that this world is passing away: all the signs are there.
Back to James Carroll’s article:
“My five years in the priesthood, even in its most liberal wing, gave me a fetid taste of this caste system. Clericalism, with its cult of secrecy, its theological misogyny, its sexual repressiveness, and its hierarchical power based on threats of a doom-laden afterlife, is at the root of Roman Catholic dysfunction. The clerical system’s obsession with status thwarts even the merits of otherwise good priests and distorts the Gospels’ message of selfless love, which the Church was established to proclaim. Clericalism is both the underlying cause and the ongoing enabler of the present Catholic catastrophe. I left the priesthood 45 years ago, before knowing fully what had soured me, but clericalism was the reason.
“Clericalism’s origins lie not in the Gospels but in the attitudes and organizational charts of the late Roman empire. Christianity was very different at the beginning. The first reference to the Jesus movement in a nonbiblical source comes from the Jewish Roman historian Flavius Josephus, writing around the same time that the Gospels were taking form. Josephus described the followers of Jesus simply as “those that loved him at the first and did not let go of their affection for him.” There was no priesthood yet, and the movement was egalitarian. Christians worshipped and broke bread in one another’s homes. But under Emperor Constantine, in the fourth century, Christianity effectively became the imperial religion and took on the trappings of the empire itself. A diocese was originally a Roman administrative unit. A basilica, a monumental hall where the emperor sat in majesty, became a place of worship. A diverse and decentralized group of churches was transformed into a quasi-imperial institution—centralized and hierarchical, with the bishop of Rome reigning as a monarch. Church councils defined a single set of beliefs as orthodox, and everything else as heresy.”
Back to our roots.
The Beginning is in the End and the End is in the Beginning. We live in End Times, that’s why everywhere churches are dying, including the church I attend. All institutions, all human endeavors, will fail, including the church. The End is in the Beginning.
In the beginning believers met at each other’s homes. Church buildings are energy hogs, and getting there means driving polluting cars, while sitting to listen to a monologue is the most ineffective way to communicate ideas.
What is needed is personal exploration and reflection, discussion, praying together, hosting events, and inviting neighbors. In a world, desperate for answers, Christ is the only answer: The Coming of The New Creation.
That means going back to the church in its infancy, when the “Christians” met in pious anticipation of the coming of the Lord.
All the old will be new again.
Brueggemann ends his book with these words, “Those who have not cared enough to grieve, will not know joy.”
Just as in Jesus’ days, the church structure has become an impediment to The Coming of the Kingdom, the New Creation.
James Carroll is right: “Clericalism is at the root of the church’s dysfunction.”