Priests were put on a pedestal but now need to learn from critics

BY a remarkable coincidence the readings provided by the Catholic Church throughout the world for last Sunday’s masses were an ideal scene-setter for priests intending to preach about the Ferns report.

This is the case even if the relevant passages made uncomfortable reading for Church leaders everywhere.

The readings for the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time came from the prophet Malachi and the Gospel according to St Matthew.

Malachi has the Lord giving a stern warning to priests: “And now, priests, this warning is for you ... You have strayed from the way; you have caused many to stumble by your teaching ... And so I, in my turn, have made you contemptible and vile in the eyes of the whole people...”

In the Gospel reading, Jesus was giving a roasting to the Scribes and Pharisees, the Jewish religious leaders of his day. “You must do what they tell you and listen to what they say,” he says, “but do not be guided by what they do, since they do not practice what they preach.”

It would be a bit much, even in the wake of the Ferns report, to say that looking for notice, acting hypocritically and creating burdens for people was the preserve of bishops, priests or other religious leaders.

That would let the rest of us off the hook rather nicely, and would be a recipe for more scandal.

The Jesuit priest, Fr Paul Andrews, put it well recently as he reflected on nearly 50 years of priesthood. “The informal alliance of clergy and State was so pervasive that we didn’t see it. There was a respect for priests and a holding back from them as being powerful and different, a caste apart. We became used to exercising power in a way that was not always conscious. Police would be reluctant to bring an action against a priest even for a traffic offence. If people criticised us, we tended to write them off as enemies of the Church.”

That’s an honest reflection from someone who desires neither to overstate the past failings of clergy nor ignore the gaping moral holes in our society which true Christianity can do so much to heal.

That old model of priestly leadership wasn’t just something that the Church imposed on people. As Fr Andrews puts it, such powerful priests were “useful in helping build up an independent Ireland” and we can see their benign influence in the achievements of priests like Monsignor James Horan and Fr James McDyer. But there were many downsides to this clerical culture. The passivity of many lay Catholics and the failure to develop a constructively critical lay Catholic spirit was one. The development of an overly-protective mentality among Church leaders was another. The priests were on a pedestal and the people had to be protected from the reality of clerical failings. We now know that the desire to avoid scandalising people was partly the reason why bishops sought internal, therapeutic solutions to the problem of abusing priests - with disastrous results.

Church leaders, in their nation-building role, could be too fond of the trappings of office, and clerical power was often wielded in an arbitrary way. Some religious leaders were complicit in society’s cruel responses to social problems, for example the placing of mothers who gave birth outside wedlock in the Magdalene laundries.

Why should we be surprised, then, that the public revulsion at the Ferns revelations has been tinged in some quarters with a little schadenfreude, with some people feeling, very understandably, that a long-awaited comeuppance has finally arrived?

Part of the cross which sincere Catholics must now bear is to accept that such feelings are normal and should be given space to express themselves.

However we might cavil at the harsher, more intemperate and sometimes loaded analysis of Church structures and actions, we must accept that there is more than a grain of truth in the criticisms of our Church leadership. Some of us might find it hard to imagine that resentment towards the Church is even compatible with Christianity.

BUT how can we possibly deny that there is a space for righteous anger, and that only when people express their anger can they be free to participate in a more wholesome Church life? However, we are already undergoing a process of positive change.

As Fr Paul Andrews puts it, “we have learned to combine reverence and love for the Church with a cool appraisal of its officials.” The clergy, religious and the bishops have their part to play in the Church, and we the people need to keep them up to scratch. We are no longer surprised when we find traces of the seven deadly sins even in those who profess greater piety.

Yet a mature approach to life and faith will recognise that the ground from which we point to the sins of others is a bit like the last few hundred feet near the top of Croagh Patrick. The earth beneath us is slipping fast and the fog is coming down quick, clouding our vision. “Let the one who is without sin among you cast the first stone” - it is a useful exercise to ask how any of us, if we had the task of being a bishop in the 1970s, ‘80s or 90s, would have handled the abuse cases. Would our approach stand up to scrutiny now? Or would we have stumbled? All through the centuries the Church has had to criticise and reform itself.

So often, this reform has been made possible by people on the outside of the Church, or arch-critics of the Church, because those of us on the inside always want to believe the best. The Catholic Church needs these critics more than its staunchest members sometimes care to admit.

But for anybody who is still a Catholic, there can be no waiting impatiently for the bishops to get the house in order. Rather we must set about doing it ourselves.

The 2005 Lenten pastoral letter, Towards Healing, put the challenge rather well in the specific context of child sexual abuse: “There are many resources in the community of the Church - spiritual direction, counselling, educational skill, financial know-how, medical and psychiatric expertise, artistic talent. The list could go on. To people with these skills - and with many others - we say, ‘would you consider putting these at the service of the journey towards the many dimensions of healing that are needed to address the great harm done to those who have suffered child abuse?’ It would be a practical and realistic step if each diocese could call on a pool of people who would be willing to help someone along the road towards putting their life together and, perhaps, towards finding their way back to the Church and to our loving God.”

That would be a positive way to channel our anger.