So familiar is his anti-clericalism rhetoric, by now there's little energy devoted to pondering what exactly he means by it.

For those wondering, however, the pope delivered a fairly clear overview in an address to the bishops of Peru.

Typically, the assumption is that "clericalism" refers to a system of power and privilege enjoyed by clergy, the usual manifestations of which are clerics who assume they can boss people around by virtue of being ordained, and also clerics who live in luxurious surroundings purchased by the sacrifices of ordinary people.

Francis does appear to include all that when he derides "clericalism," though not always quite in the way one might think.

This is a pope, after all, hardly shy about wielding his own personal power when he believes something important is at stake, from firing Vatican personnel to making big-picture decisions on matters such as the admission of divorced and remarried Catholics to Communion.

Pastors not shopkeepers

Often, the aspect of clericalism that seems to frustrate Francis the most actually isn't power or privilege, but distance - a disengagement from the lives, experiences and perspectives of ordinary people, in favor of largely internal ecclesiastical obsessions.

That's what he seemed to mean on Saturday, for instance, when he urged priests in Peru to avoid the temptation of becoming "professionals of the sacred."

In other words, the opposite of "clerical," in Francis's mind, isn't so much "powerless" or even "poor," but rather "close."

Get out from behind the desk

In speaking to Peru's bishops, Francis invoked the example of Saint Turibius of Mogrovejo, a Spanish cleric born to a noble family and a onetime Grand Inquisitor for King Philip II, who was later named the Archbishop of Lima and spent the rest of his life evangelizing Peru and the Americas.

Describing Turibius's relationship with his priests, Francis used language that amounts to a synthesis of what it means for a church not to be "clerical."

"He was a pastor who knew his priests," Francis said, "a pastor who tried to visit them, to accompany them, to encourage them and to admonish them."

"He reminded his priests that they were pastors and not shopkeepers, and so they had to care for and defend the indios as their children," the pope said.

"Yet he did not do this from a desk, and so he knew his sheep and they recognized, in his voice, the voice of the good shepherd." Continue reading

• Inés San Martín is an Argentinean journalist who covers the Vatican in Rome for Crux.

Catholics of all stripes—conservatives and liberals and in-betweens—are declaring a pox on clericalism.

From Pope Francis to the back pew widow, from seminary rectors to lay ecclesial ministers, it's agreed that clericalism is crippling the pastoral mission of the church.

At the same time it is strengthening the secularists' claim that Catholic clergy are nothing more than papal agents bent on enforcing rigid moral controls which smother our human instinct for pleasure and freedom. So let's end clericalism in the church.

Yes, of course, let's end clericalism. It's just plain right to heed the growing consensus that clericalism must go.

But something tells me, "not so fast."

This cancer crippling the Catholic world—from local communities to Vatican offices—is so deeply embedded in our past and present church fabric that a careful pre-surgery examination is called for.

So, pull on your surgical gloves and join me in the pre-op room.

We know clericalism when we encounter it, whether on the parish level or in the media's caricaturist portrayal of priests and bishops.

No smell of the sheep

But although we know clericalism when we see it, it's not so easy to define it.

Here's how I see it: Clericalism is an attitude found in many (but not all) clergy who have put their status as priests and bishops above their status as baptized disciples of Jesus Christ.

In doing so, a sense of privilege and entitlement emerges in their individual and collective psyches.

This, in turn, breeds a corps of ecclesiastical elites who think they're not like other men.

Clergy caught up in this kind of purple-hewed seduction are incapable of seeing that it freezes their humanity—their ability to simply connect on a human level with the various sorts of God's holy people.

Of all the sour fruits of clericalism, this inability to connect with others might be the most damaging.

When the ordained come across as somehow superior to their parishioners and people they encounter, the playing field is tilted. This kind of disconnect can be fatal to a priest's efforts to build a sense of community in his parish.

It's often difficult for parishioners to feel comfortable with a clerical priest.

They simple don't find "Father" approachable.

The same can be said of bishops who are all too comfortable thinking of themselves as princes by divine selection.

They connect neither with their priests nor with the people they're meant to shepherd.

And you won't find the smell of the sheep on them.

Professional distance, but...

Often that's exactly what clergy caught up in clericalism want: They believe a certain distance from the non-ordained is fitting and right.

Of course, priests need not be chummy with their parishioners, and the pastor-parishioner relationship requires maturity and prudence on the part of the ordained.

Most pastors are all too aware of the smothering demands of some of their flock.

Without question, they need to safeguard their privacy and find time when they are, so to speak, "off the clock."

But clericalism by its nature exaggerates this need.

Without fail, it breeds artificiality and superficiality between pastors and parishioners.

Though often unnamed, something real is missing.

Clerical priests and bishops (and yes, clerical deacons) come to see their power to confer sacraments, to preach, and to teach and administer as the bedrock of their identity.

When this happens, they lose sight of the truth that the church's power is ultimately the power of the Holy Spirit. Without words, they seem to say "We are clergy... and you're not."

A kind of lay clericalism!

Years ago, when I served as my diocese's vicar for priests, I spoke with a highly placed lay diocesan official who related his fear that he was being co-opted by the system—that he was becoming "clerical."

I told him not to worry.

The very fact that he sensed the danger was his deliverance.

We agreed that a number of his lay colleagues apparently didn't see the danger.

These lay chancery workers thought of themselves as insiders. And in a real sense they were.

And like many of their ordained colleagues, their first loyalty was now to the church as institution rather than to the gospel and to the faithful they served.

So the cancer of clericalism, in its broadest sense, is not restricted to deacons, priests, and bishops. Continue reading

- Father Donald Cozzens is a writer in residence at John Carroll University, where he teaches in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies.

Image: St John's Atonement Seminary

On the subject of Church leaders, he said: "You know what I think about this? Heads of the Church have often been narcissists, flattered and thrilled by their courtiers. The court is the leprosy of the papacy."

The interview with Eugenio Scalfari, the atheist editor of La Repubblica, followed a long letter the Pope sent the paper in September, in response to an editorial.

Then the Pope followed up with a phone call, suggesting a meeting.

Scalfari said the two joked about whether one wanted to convert the other, and the Pope said: "Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us."

When Scalfari observed that some priests make him anti-clerical, the Pope replied sympathetically: "It also happens to me that when I meet a clericalist, I suddenly become anti-clerical. Clericalism should not have anything to do with Christianity."

Questioned about the problems facing the Church today, Pope Francis answered: "The most serious of the evils that afflict the world these days are youth unemployment and the loneliness of the old. The old need care and companionship; the young need work and hope but have neither one nor the other, and the problem is they don't even look for them any more. They have been crushed by the present.

"You tell me: can you live crushed under the weight of the present? Without a memory of the past and without the desire to look ahead to the future by building something, a future, a family? Can you go on like this? This, to me, is the most urgent problem that the Church is facing."

Francis also revealed he had an unusual spiritual experience just after the conclave elected him.

As he fought off anxiety and doubt, the Pope recalls, "I closed my eyes and I no longer had any anxiety or emotion. At a certain point I was filled with a great light. It lasted a moment, but to me it seemed very long."

Sources:

La Repubblica

Reuters

Image: Catholic Online

That era of simplistically captioned silent movies is now re-created through the awkwardly translated liturgical readings soon to be expensively imposed on what these self-styled "reformers" hope to be passive and silent parishioners. Americans are not, however, alone in experiencing this phenomenon. In May the bishops of England and Wales restored meatless Fridays year round for Catholics. In the same month a nun held up a silver reliquary carrying the blood of the newly beatified Pope John Paul II, to applause by a large crowd in St. Peter's Square. Besides alerting Pope Benedict to beware of doctors holding syringes, this reveals the Transylvanian caste of some of the clerics now decorating the set of Catholicism throughout the world.

As demanding and sometimes as narcissistic as great actors, these set-dresser clerics are tantrum ready if they pick up any symbol or practice of Vatican II in their sight lines. While the makers of "The Untouchables" knew that they had emptied a warehouse of dusty props to create a temporary illusion of Prohibition era Chicago, these "New Men," as they sometimes style themselves, believe that placing pre-Vatican II artifacts everywhere in contemporary Catholicism actually restores the high times of the hierarchical Church.

Clericalism redux energizes this spreading movement to reinstate that Neverland age of Catholicism when priests controlled the church, lay people knew their place, the Mass was in Latin, God was in His heaven and all was right with the world.

All they need are church parking lots filled with twenties era Pierce-Arrows and Model T's to match the retro-fitted customs, such as recruiting people to keep vigil with a supposedly lonely Jesus in overnight adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

The examined life is not, however, the focus of set-decorators who promote an unexamined return to Flapper-era Faith.

Read more of Set-decorator Catholicism and thriving clericalism