INDIVIDUALISM has its limits. We need to work on the interconnectedness, our sense of fraternity with one another and with our bishops. This is how we could ensure that there is hope for the future.
Any realistic strategy for the continued health and happiness of the Catholic community has to start with the past and present. So it is logical that we begin a review of the future state of the Catholic priesthood by looking backwards. It is a proud story that deserves to be better known, from past-Reformation martyrdom to the priestly ministries dedicated to the service of the nineteenth-century urban poor in a hostile Victorian climate.
It is a tale of remarkable individuals shaped by the isolation – not to mention the sheer terror – of initial persecution and then of social prejudice, an individualism that still characterizes the priestly personality of today.
But the martyrdom model is not always appropriate, and may be misleading if it encourages an attitude of one-against-the-rest. Bishops have to worry about the cohesiveness, the togetherness, of their clergy, through which they draw mutual support. We know of individual clergy who take pride in being out of step with their colleagues – for instance, by grumbling about, or even being in open rebellion against – the papacy of Pope Francis.
One remedy would be a renewed emphasis on evangelization, explicitly aimed at seeking converts – something the Catholic Church seems shy of doing – but also at transforming the world in the name of social justice.
Both these objectives have the same precondition. It is necessary to understand why the world is the way it is, and why people are the way they are, before changing them. Nowhere has this need for understanding been better expressed than in the famous opening words of the Second Vatican Council decree Gaudium et Spes.
“The joys and the hopes, the grieves and the anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, those are the joys and hopes, the grieves and anxieties of the followers of Christ”.
If the Catholic Church has a fault, it is that it has to a degree lagged behind translating those words into its declared mission and purpose.
Priestly individualism can also hinder the participation of the laity in the Church’s work. Here bishops can lead by example. The connectedness the Church needs if it is to flourish is not only between priests and priests, but between priests and people – and between bishops, priests and people.
A former Bishop of the diocese had some favorite priests for whom he bought the title of monsignor from the Vatican for a lot of money. The title of monsignor belongs only to the Bishop and also to his vicars. That is clearly corruption... between clergy and laity.
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