BishopAccountability.org
	Recovering from the sickness of clericalism (and anti-clericalism) By Drasko Dizdar CathNews November 29, 2011 http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=29256 The solution to the problem of clericalism is not in anticlericalism but in the undoing of the clerical distortion of priesthood by recovering what Irish teacher and poet John O'Donohue called "the priestliness of the human heart". Clericalism is a disease; and the entire church — "clergy" and "laity" — are infected. Anticlericalism is the same disease, only in reverse. The pathology is in the rivalry and the violence at the heart of both. If clericalism is the arrogation of power to and by the clergy, then anticlericalism is its mirror image, its ugly twin, its envious rival. Instead of heaping contempt on priests and attempting to undermine the "clerical institution", we need to heal the "ecclesial body", for the body is one and needs to be whole. Our clerical brothers and sisters are our brothers and sisters: part of an "us" that (God knows how) is Christ's Body, his "priestly people". And therein lies the seed of the only authentically Christian solution to this problem: Christ, the priest of a new kind of "temple", prophet of new kind of "law", and king of a new kind of "kingdom". Useful as sociology and psychology can be, they will not be our best means of finding the cure we need. We need Christ more than we need systems analysis and conflict resolution strategies, therapy or counselling — useful as they all may be. Indeed, their usefulness will come into its own when, and only when, we use them in the light of the Gospel and in relationship with Christ. Prayer must be our first and last "strategy" in dealing with the problem of clericalism (and anticlericalism), for prayer is the lifeblood of the priestly human heart. To undo priesthood's distortion into clericalism, and clericalism's mutation into its rival twin, we need to practice the priestly art of prayer, the prophetic science of love, and the royal dignity of service. We need to start by asking Christ to heal us of the disease we all suffer from — at once its victims and its carriers. We need to open our minds to the Gospel and the example of Jesus, imitating him who "emptied himself" and not each other in our envious and rivalistic pathology. Prophetic honesty — and that means, above all, a radical self-honesty — is the natural consequence of prayer. If in prayer we can allow ourselves to be loved just as we are, then we can turn around and face ourselves and admit to just how and what and who we are, personally and individually, and therefore communally and even institutionally. Truth, as it sets us free, also empowers us to serve; and in serving, to give true leadership in the way of the Gospel. We are a priestly, prophetic and royal "People of God" — all of us. As we learn to receive this identity more and more, we shall be healed of our diseases, and be the stronger for it.
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