NEW YORK (NY)
America Magazine
Dec. 9, 2019
By Catherine R. Osborne
Since Pope Francis identified “clericalism” as a key factor in the sexual abuse crisis, it has been a topic of intense discussion among both laypeople and priests. Francis sees it as a sickness that associates ministry with power rather than service. A hierarchical attitude that separates clergy and elevates them above the laity, clericalism seems to permeate the institutional church. But while there has been much discussion of clericalism and sexual abuse, the overall sexual behavior and identity of clergy is relatively unexamined territory.
That may change with a three-year research project on “Clericalism and Sexuality” at the Von Hügel Institute for Critical Catholic Inquiry at St. Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge. In September, an international, interdisciplinary group of scholars gathered for a symposium to identify questions of interest. Luigi Gioia, the project’s originator, said he hopes to “collect reliable data and analyze it from an interdisciplinary viewpoint,” especially inviting sociologists and anthropologists to weigh in.
Symposium attendees came from the fields of psychology, sociology and history, as well as theology. Nearly all were Catholic and many were priests, vowed religious or lay members of movements ranging from Opus Dei to the Catholic Worker. To this deeply committed group, it seemed obvious that clericalism has been a disaster for the church. As the theologian M. Shawn Copeland argued, clericalism is based on the assumption that some human beings really are different than others in God’s eyes. It both resembles and overlaps with patriarchy, racism and colonialism, all systems that maintain hierarchical relationships among groups.
Midway through the symposium, the value of an interdisciplinary exchange came clearly into view when the anthropologist Maya Mayblin upended the conversation, which had been largely devoted to identifying the false theological and historical premises of clericalism. Ms. Mayblin observed that, from a more neutral point of view, clericalism seems to have worked quite well, for quite a long time, in the church. But its rewards do not seem to go only to the clergy who attain elevated positions; they also go to the many laypeople who support and even demand this system of hierarchical separation.
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