In his homily during the opening Mass of the recent National Meeting of Parish Priests for the Synod in Manila, Cardinal Jose Advincula, archbishop of Manila, exhorted priests to listen to ordinary Catholics.
“We priests are often tempted to discount, or even suppress, the boldness of our parishioners, making them sheepishly dependent on us priests. But let us recognize and encourage their boldness as witnesses to our faith,” he preached.
Striking for me is his use of the pronoun “we,” which includes himself!
Borrowing from the Letter to the Hebrews, he mentioned a great “cloud of witnesses”: the dedicated lay minister, the devout mamamasan and voyador, the patient devotees, the vigilant Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting volunteer, the honest civil servant, and the overseas Filipino worker who all manifest prophetic boldness and faith in building the Reign of God. For the cardinal, we must listen to and learn from their witness: “Let us include such voices and contributions in the life of our parish communities.”
“Clericalism” is the attitude clerics discounting and suppressing the voices and contributions of laypeople.
In Pope Francis’ 11 years in the papacy, “clericalism” has become an ecclesial buzzword.
In the same vein as the cardinal’s homily, Pope Francis stated in a 2019 address about the evil of sex abuse: “The holy and patient, faithful People of God, borne up and enlivened by the Holy Spirit, is the best face of the prophetic Church which puts her Lord at the center in daily giving of herself. It will be precisely this holy People of God to liberate us from the plague of clericalism, which is the fertile ground for all these disgraces.”
“Clericalism is a thorn, it is a scourge, it is a form of worldliness that defiles and damages the face of the Lord’s bride; it enslaves the holy, faithful people of God.” This strongly worded statement criticizing clericalism comes from Pope Francis’ intervention at the 18th General Congregation of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on October 25, 2023. Pope Francis is known to use metaphors ranging from the colorful to the controversial in his speeches.
In 2013, Pope Francis warned superiors of religious orders during a closed-door meeting of the danger of forming seminarians into “little monsters.” In the same meeting, he mentioned that seminary formation that is more of a rigid “police action” than a heart-centered “work of art” is “hypocrisy that is the result of clericalism, which is one of the worst evils.” In short, clericalist formation creates “little monsters.”
In 2018, Pope Francis told Jesuits from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia that clericalism is a “perversion of the Church.” Altogether, these statements do not exhaust what the Pope has said about the dangers of clericalism. There are many more instances wherein he condemned this mentality and culture. “Pope Francis has made the term clericalism a leitmotif of his teaching, so much so that on more than sixty occasions he has described it with harsh words,” observes the Italian theologian Serena Noceti.
The choice of words by Pope Francis in describing clericalism — “thorn,” “scourge,” “worldliness,” “little monsters,” and “perversion” — speaks of its destructive capacity in the life of the Church. According to Serena Noceti, “the clergy affected by clericalism devalue baptismal grace, fail to recognize and to value the contribution of the laity, and betray their missionary vocation.”
In his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis identifies “excessive clericalism” as the cause of the weakening of the participation of the laity in ecclesial life because it provides no room for them to speak and act when it comes to decision-making. Clericalism “injects a noxious injustice into ecclesial relationships, and it misrepresents the nature of power and authority,” Serena Noceti further explains.
“Father knows best” is the perfect slogan for this thinking. The priest by virtue of his being ordained a priest is superior to the laity, the non-ordained, the people of God. This is reflective of the model of the hierarchical pyramid wherein the laity are at the bottom to “pray, pay, and obey” while the Pope, bishops, and priests occupy the upper rungs — a medieval distortion of the Church which sadly still persists up to now.
Realistically speaking, clericalism easily blends into Philippine society. As a majority Catholic country with a hierarchical culture and high respect for authorities, priests, and religious are commonly put on pedestal. The clergy is treated very well. Even as a seminarian, I cannot deny that I feel privileged to a certain extent. I remember my late grandmother who once told me as a kid that I should receive Holy Communion from the priest instead of the lay minister for the priest is “holier.” The depth and sincerity of her faith is doubtless, but what she said is a concrete example of clericalism.
Contrary to some critics and overreactions, combating clericalism doesn’t entail erasing the distinction of charism between the ordained and the non-ordained, the priest, and the lay faithful. In fact, combating clericalism is returning to the ultimate model of priesthood, Jesus Christ. He is the Good Shepherd who knows, loves, and is willing to die for the sheep. He is the Master who as a servant washed the feet of his disciples. To be like Jesus is to be a “shepherd with the smell of the sheep,” to use the celebrated phrase of Pope Francis.
This image of the priest is irreconcilable with the hierarchical pyramid model of the Church. Pope Francis himself inverted the pyramid: “But in this Church, as in an inverted pyramid, the top is located beneath the base. Consequently, those who exercise authority are called ‘minister,’ because, in the original meaning of the word, they are the least of all.”
For this to happen, formation in the seminary should adapt to the signs of the times. “Good priestly formation means men must learn to interact with lay men and women in healthy, professional, and respectful ways,” writes two former seminary professors Colt Anderson and Christopher Bellitto in their essay in Commonweal magazine calling for reforms in seminary formation to eradicate clericalism.
Some of the suggestions include allowing seminarians to study with the lay faithful, exerting explicit effort to keep seminarians as the lay people they are both in their thinking and clothing (avoid wearing Roman collar or cassock before ordination), and taking into account the professional opinions of religious sisters, lay professors, professionals, and supervisors when voting on whether a seminarian will proceed in formation and eventually to ordination. Besides the wider culture of clericalism, we must strike at its roots.
Let me end with these unforgettable words of Bishop Joseph De Smedt in his intervention during the Second Vatican Council, a global meeting of bishops from 1962 to 1965. He is well remembered as the bishop who heavily criticized mentalities and structures inspired by the triumphalism, juridicism, and clericalism in the Catholic Church.
“We all participate in the royal priesthood of the People of God. The Pope is one of the faithful; bishops, priests, laity, religious, we are all [the] faithful….We must be careful when speaking about the Church [therefore] so as not to fall into hierarchicalism, clericalism, and bishopolatry or papolatry. What comes first is the People of God.” – Rappler.com