A FEW REFLECTIONS ON CLERICALISM

Predicated on an understanding of the human person as made in the Divine Image (Imago Dei) -a matter of faith and the fundamental underpinning of what is called, Catholic Anthropology, about which I will write at length later.

McGarry (2002) said so succinctly, “The clergy preached that celibate life was superior to married life, that "impure thought" was evil, as was all sexual activity without a marriage license. Sexual pleasure was taboo. It was "dirty", "disgusting", all too powerful evidence of an inferior animal nature, which so constantly threatened what was divine in the human.” The Church still has an attitude towards sexuality, which acts as a religious bulwark against the liberalism of the secular world. In the Catechism (Church, 2013) in section 2351. “Offenses against chastity” we find teachings, which might seem bizarre.to the secular mind, namely:

 “Lust is disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure. Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes..” and in section 2352 “By masturbation is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. "Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action." And "The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose." For here sexual pleasure is sought outside of "the sexual relationship which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved."  

Religious and Catholic educators are still obliged to teach this official Church Dogma, often in the face of the incredulity of their pupils who find such an attitude most foreign to that to which they are exposed in all the media and in western liberal democratic society.

The rigorous correction by corporal punishment for any observed “impurity” was the norm until the end of the 1960’s. Did this attitude arise from putative Jansenist influences on the Clergy and Religious who came to our shores from Ireland?  That is problematic.

I have often heard the accusation the Jansenism tainted our Irish-Australian faith, but the evidence is scanty and hypothetical rather than specific. Jansenism is a polemical term introduced by Jesuit critics to label those sympathetic to the theological views of Cornelius Jansen, the Louvain theologian and later bishop of Ypres. (Schmaltz, 2006) Brian Van Hove in a well-researched article in Jesuit Insight “ (Jansenism, the Liturgy, and Ireland, 2010) argues that popular Irish rigorism derived from tradition and the monastic heritage was quite different from the "university, elitist" reform movement of the Early Modern period (1615-1789) on the European Continent where Jansenism flourished. The Jesuits, of course, were the relentless adversaries of the Jansenists, but there is no account of a "Jesuit versus Jansenist" engagement, taking place in Catholic, post-Tridentine Ireland. Even if the Irish clergy who were trained in France and were exposed to Jansenist ideologues, there is no clear Irish Jansenism.  There was abundant “cultural rigorism” but not “Jansenism which was a creature of Continental intellectuals”. The Irishness of the Irish spiritual tradition was not a fertile ground for Jansenism.  Van Hove sums it up as, “Some say without proof that "Jansenistic priests" took refuge in Ireland and spread their ideas to the people. But this hearsay remains hearsay…. Finally, while Jansenism was known for its "resistance to authority," an Irish "resistance to authority" was not the same thing because the Irish resisted quite a different authority.” [1] (Hove, 2010)

So, Jansenism was not a major influence on the morality of the Church in Australia, however,  it is undeniable that unhealthy attitudes to sexuality, gender, and power abounded in Catholic homes and Institutions. The “Poisonous Pedagogy” (Miller, 1991, pp. 5-8) which was so widespread up to the 1970’s certainly left its mark. Coldrey (A Most Unenviable Reputation: The Christian Brothers and School Discipline over Two Centuries, 1991, pp. 1-4) has a telling section on their particular poisonous pedagogy.

“A delegate to the 1947 General Chapter 1 of the Christian Brothers Institute prefaced his remarks on the topic 'Discipline in the schools' be referring to the 'most unenviable reputation' which the Congregation had acquired in its use of corporal punishment. On the question of reputation, he was correct…. 'Irish Christian Brothers' should be rephrased 'lnternational Child Beaters' according to one humorist. Certainly most Christian Brothers have used corporal punishment in their classrooms over the last two hundred years. However, the Brothers were hardly unique educators in this regard. Yet, the image of the Institute is that its members were quite unusually and exceptionally severe, more unrestrained than teachers in general, more uncontrolled than members of other Religious Institutes serving the Catholic people.”[2]

Molony (The Roman Mould of the Australian Catholic church, 1969)  describes a Romanised clerical evolution in the Australian Church in the late 1800’s. The influences of this Roman Hierarchic model linger today. He maintains that, what he calls the “essential Irishness” of our Catholic Church is false.  He allows that the outward demonstrable appearance of Irishness in such as St. Patrick Day festivities and a strong strain of anti-British political sympathies seem to support the Irish trait, but that the model of the Irish and later Australian Hierarchy established by Cardinal Cullen was thoroughly Roman. Dixon (The Catholic Community in Australia, 2005, p. 24) asserts that, in Australia, “The Catholic community had grown to be what the Irish bishops of the nineteenth century had worked for and dreamed of: a thriving Church based on the Irish model.”    The piety of the laity was Marian[3] and full of Irish sentimentality, even if the hierarchy or the Kyriarchy [4] ploughed on in the Roman mould.

But what of Clericalism, that hubristic distortion that, consciously or insentiently, corrupts true servant-priesthood and culminates in clerical privilege and dominance? It has been mentioned as one of the contributing factors in the prevalence of sexual child abuse by priests and religious. (Hamilton, 2011) Clericalism is the attitude, widely shared by Catholic laypeople as well as many priests, that clerics make up the active, elite corps in the Church, and laypeople are the passive mass; that clerics alone have intrinsic responsibility for the Church's mission while the apostolate of lay-people comes to them (if they come at all) only by delegation on the part of the clergy.” (Shaw, 2011). Priestly power and the corruption of such power is contrary to the teachings of the Gospels. “Cultural clerical inbreeding has wed the ‘god complex’ with hubris. A person who is said to have a ‘god complex’ does not believe he is God, but acts so arrogantly that he might as well believe he is a god or that he was appointed to act by a god.”  (Nauheimer, 2009) Again, these sentiments are echoed by Brian Lennon (Re-balancing authority in the abusive Church, 2012), “Catholic Church structures are riddled with patriarchy, clericalism and deference and these were at the very centre of the abuse problem itself. Repentance therefore means changing these.”

Is Clericalism alive and kicking in today’s Church? According to Cozzens (The Changing Face of the Priesthood: Reflections on the Priest's Crisis of Soul, 2000) it is. He maintains convincingly that priests need to face the unconscious dynamics at work in their own lives and in the life of the church. He  cites the corruptions of legalism, clericalism, careerism, sexism and autocracy as being at the root of the fundamental problems facing the priesthood today. "Clericalism is always dysfunctional and haughty," he says, "crippling the spiritual and emotional maturity of the priest, bishop or deacon caught in its web." (Cozzens, 2000, p. 117). So our Church is in need of reform. 

Let the last words in this entry come from an Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney Catholic Archdiocese. “While the Church has both corporate and civic dimensions to it, it is neither of these in essence. Consequently, the kind of reform that the Church needs to undertake has to be particular to its ecclesial reality. In other words, each reality calls for a response that is particular to its identity and structure. This is because the sources for reform will be found from within, even when the need for reform is recognised from without. Otherwise, there will be no genuine effort to foster a culture of reform, no real movement towards the good.” (Comensoli, 2013) A cry echoed by women, homosexuals, the marginalised, the dissidents, the disenchanted and the exiles. (Turner, 1992. Chapters 30, 31, 32) 

 [1] The British ‘invaders’.

[2] My own experience of arbitrary, unjust, un-Christian discipline is not unique, even if the Christian Brothers schooled me in the 1960’s.

[3] In my home popular devotions were often Marian. We prayed the Angelus, and the Rosary. We had statues at home, especially Jesus as the “Infant of Prague.” We had numerous pictures of the Sacred Heart, both Jesus and Mary. We all wore medals, scapulars, and carried rosary beads on our person as a matter of course.

[4] "Kyriarchy" is a term coined by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza. It means, literally, structures of lordship. It denotes the inter-structured forms of oppression--gender, race, class, nationality, sexuality and the like--that result in power differences and injustice. Kyriarchy is used to distinguish the hierarchical, clerical model of church from the larger Catholic community. (Hunt, 2006)

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