I drafted this paper in 1959 and published it, at the request of a friend, in The Critic of Chicago, in 1967.
Great changes must take place in the structure of the Catholic Church if it is to survive. I believe that such changes will come about and, moreover, that they can now be visualized in terms consistent with the most radically traditional theology. Nevertheless, such changes would thoroughly upset the idea of the Catholic Church deeply imbedded in the imagination of Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
One could have spoken about these changes in abstract terms. I preferred to illustrate my general thesis by indicating what, in my opinion, will happen to the “clergyman,” to his status, his role, his self-image, his professional standing, I wanted to raise a question, clearly and simply.But I had further reasons for making my statement through a concrete example.
For one, I did not want to say anything theologically new, daring, or controversial. Only a spelling-out of the social consequences would make a thesis as orthodox as mine sufficiently controversial to be discussed within the overwhelming conservative majority of the Church.
A second reason for my decision to focus on the clergy was the attempt to render the discussion relevant to the “Catholic left.” Suggestions for a reform of the Catholic priesthood abounded in these quarters in the mid-sixties. The majority of these suggestions seemed neither sufficiently revolutionary to be worth while (a married clergy, priests engaged in social action or revolution) nor sufficiently faithful to fundamental traditional positions—which I would not like to see compromised (such as the value of freely chosen celibacy, the episcopal structure of the Church, the permanance of priestly ordination).
The Roman Church is the world’s largest non-governmental bureaucracy. It employs 1.8 million full-time workers—priests, brothers, sisters, and laymen. These employees work within a corporate structure which an American business consultant firm rates as among the most efficiently operated organizations in the world. The institutional Church functions on a par with the General Motors Company and the Chase Manhattan Bank. Recognition of this fact is accepted, sometimes, with pride. But to some, the machine-like smoothness itself seems to discredit the Church. Men suspect that it has lost its relevance to the gospel and to the world. Wavering, doubt, and confusion reign among its directors, functionaries, and employees. The giant begins to totter before it collapses.
Some church personnel react to the breakdown with pain, anguish, and fright. Some make heroic efforts and tragic sacrifices to prevent it. Some, regretfully or joyfully, interpret the phenomenon as a sign of the disappearance of the Roman Church itself. I would like to suggest that we welcome the disappearance of institutional bureaucracy in a spirit of deep joy. In this essay, I shall describe some aspects of what is taking place in the Church, and suggest ways in which the Church could seek a radical reorganization in some of its structures. I am not recommending essential changes in the Church; even less do I suggest its dissolution. The complete disappearance of its visible structure would contradict sociological law and divine mandate. But change does entail much more than drastic amendment or updating reform if the Church is to respond to God’s call and contemporary man. I shall outline certain possible changes, solidly rooted in the origins of the Church, and boldly reaching out to the necessities of tomorrow’s society. Acceptance of this kind of reform will require the Church to live the evangelical poverty of Christ. At the same time, the Church, sensitive to the process of the world’s progressive socialization, will come to have a deep respect for, and joyful acceptance of, this phenomenon.
The institutional Church is in trouble. The very persons on whose loyalty and obedience the efficiency structure depends increasingly abandon it. Until the early sixties, the “defections” were relatively rare. Now they are common. Tomorrow they may be the pattern. After a personal drama played out in the intimacy of conscience, more and more ecclesiastical employees will decide to sacrifice the emotional, spiritual, and financial security which the system benevolently provided for them. I suspect that within this generation these persons will have become a majority of the Church’s personnel.
The problem lies not with the “spirit” of the world, nor with any failure in generosity among the “defectors,” but rather with the structure itself. This can be taken as an almost aprioristic conclusion, since the present structures developed as a response to past situations vastly different from our own. Further, our world continually accelerates its rapid changes of societal structures, in the context of which the Church must carry out its real functions. To see the situation more clearly, I shall focus my attention on the nature and function of ministry, the complex channel through which the Church touches the world. We can thus gain some insight into the Church of tomorrow.
It seems evident that basic and accepted concepts of ministry in the Church are clearly inadequate. Quantitatively, for example, the Church really does not need the present number of full-time employees who work in its operational structure. More fundamentally, the situation suggests the need for a deep reappraisal of the elements which make up. the current idea of the priest as the Church’s basic representative in the world—a concept still maintained in the conciliar decrees. Specifically there is need for a re-examination of the relation between sacramental ministry and full-time personnel, between ministry and celibacy, and between ministry and theological education.
Today it is assumed that most if not all of the Church’s ministerial operations must be carried out by full-time underpaid employees who possess a kind of theological education and who accept an ecclesiastical law of celibacy. In order to begin a search for new directions which are more evangelically and sociologically relevant, I shall discuss separately four aspects of the problem: the radical reduction in the number of persons dependent on the Church for their livelihood; the ordination to sacramental ministry of men independently employed in the world; the special and unique renunciation implied in perpetual celibacy; the relation between sacramental ministry and theological education.
The Church’s personnel enjoy remarkable privileges. Every teenager who seeks employment among the clergy is almost automatically guaranteed a status which confers a variety of personal and social benefits, most of which come with advancing age, not because of competence or productivity. His rights to social and economic security are more far-reaching than plans for the guaranteed income.
Ecclesiastical employees live in comfortable Church-owned housing, are assured preferential treatment in Church-owned and operated health services, are mostly trained in ecclesiastical educational institutions, and are buried in hallowed ground—after which they are prayed for. The habit or collar, not competent productivity, assures one’s status and living. An employment market, more diversified than any existing corporation, caters to the employee, discriminating against laymen who do not share his ritual initiation. Laymen who work in the ecclesiastical structure are recognized as possessing some few “civil rights,” but their careers depend principally on their ability to play the role of Uncle Toms.
Recently the Roman Church has followed the example of some Protestant churches in shifting more of its employees from parish work to paper pushing. At the same time, the traditional demand for increased personnel at the parish level and the simultaneously burgeoning process of overinflated bureaucratic machinery masks the increasing irrelevance of both these aspects of the structure. Organizational explosion results in a feverish search for more personnel and money. We are urged to beg God to send more employees into the bureaucratic system and to inspire the faithful to pay the cost. Personally, I cannot ask God for these “benefits.” The inherently self-perpetuating expansion of Church personnel operates well enough without additional help, and only serves to make an already overstaffed Church more priest-ridden, thereby debilitating the Church’s mission in today’s world.
The Vatican itself best illustrates the complex problem. Post-conciliar administrative growth supersedes and supplants the old machinery. Since the end of the Council, the twelve venerable curial congregations have been increased by the addition of numerous intermeshing and overlapping post-conciliar organs—commissions, councils, consultative bodies, committees, assemblies, synods. This bureaucratic maze becomes ungovernable. Good. Perhaps this will help us to see that principles of corporate government are not applicable to the Body of Christ. It is even less appropriate to see His Vicar as the chief executive of a corporation than as a Byzantine king. Clerical technocracy is even further from the gospel than priestly aristocracy. And we may come to recognize that efficiency corrupts Christian testimony more subtly than power.
At a time when even the Pentagon seeks to reduce its manpower pool by contracting specific jobs in the open market of industry and research, the Vatican launches a drive toward greater self-contained institutional diversification and proliferation. The central administration of this top-heavy organizational giant passes out of the hands of the “venerable congregations” staffed by Italian career priests into those of clerical specialists recruited from all over the world. The Pontifical Curia of the Middle Ages becomes a contemporary corporation’s planning and administrative headquarters.
One of the paradoxical aspects of today’s structure is that the organization priest is also a member of the aristocracy of the only feudal power left in the Western world—a power whose sovereign status was recognized in the Lateran conventions. Further, this same power increasingly uses a diplomatic structure—one originally developed to represent the Church’s interests vis-à-vis other sovereign states—in order to offer services to the emerging international agencies, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, UNICEF, UNESCO, and to the United Nations itself. This development demands more and more employees for a wider range of jobs, requiring even more specialized education for the recruits. The hierarchy, accustomed to absolute control over its employees, seeks to staff these positions with captive clergy. But the big push on more intensive recruitment runs head-on into a strong and contrary trend: yearly almost as many trained personnel leave as are recruited. Hence we see the reluctant acceptance of submissive and obedient laymen to fill the gap.
Some individuals explain clerical “defections” as the elimination of undesirable elements. Others blame the various contemporary mystiques of the world. The institution instinctively attempts to explain this loss and the concomitant vocation “crisis” in terms flattering to itself. Then too one needs strong justification for the enthusiastic and emotional drives for more “vocations.” Few wish to admit that the collapse of an overextended and disproportionate clerical framework is a clear sign of its irrelevance. Fewer see that the Pope himself would grow in evangelical stature and fidelity in proportion as his power to affect social issues in the world and his administrative command in the Church decline.
Changes on the institutional periphery are as faithful to “Parkinson’s Law” as changes in Rome: work grows with available personnel. Since the end of the Council, attempts at collegial decentralization have resulted in a wildly uncontrolled growth of bureaucracy reaching to the local level. Latin America offers a grotesque example. A generation ago Latin American bishops traveled to Rome about every ten years to report to the Pope. Their only other contacts with Rome were the stylized petitions for indulgences of dispensations, channeled through the Nuncio, and occasional Curial Visitators. Today a complex Roman Commission for Latin America coordinates subcommissions of European and American bishops in the power balance with the Latin American Bishops’ Assembly. This is organized in a board (Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano) and numerous commissions, secretariats, institutes, and delegations. CELAM itself is the crown of sixteen national bishops’ conferences, some of which are even more complex in bureaucratic organization. The entire structure is designed to facilitate occasional consultations among bishops, in order that, returning to their dioceses, they might act with greater independence and originality. The real results are rather different. The bishops develop the bureaucratic mentality necessary to keep up with the merry-go-round character of the increasingly frequent meetings. The newly created organisms absorb large numbers of trained grass-roots personnel into clerical staff and planning services. Restrictive and unimaginative central control replaces creative and fresh approaches in the local churches.
In the entire Church a clergy survives partly because priestly service at the altar is united with clerical power and privilege. This union helps to maintain the existing structure. Church-employed priests assure a personnel supply to fill places in the corporate structure. Priest-clerics assure the continuance and abundance of career-minded churchmen. The ordination of self-supporting laymen to sacramental functions would eventually destroy the bureaucracy. But men whose mentality and security have been formed and maintained by the system instinctively fear the ordination of persons who remain in secular employment. The diocesan chancellor, the Catholic Charities director, and the pastor feel as much threatened by declericalization as the Catholic university president, the supplier of ecclesiastical finery and furnishings, and such civic leaders as Saul Alinsky. In different ways all are supported by, or depend upon, the power and prestige of the clergy. Nevertheless, the ordination of secularly employed men may be one of the Church’s great advances.
Today, some clerics begin to see that they are smothered in a scandalous and unnecessary security combined with restrictive and unacceptable controls. A priest, well-trained in theology, is assured life-long support, but it may be as an accountant, and not as a theologian, if he has been caught reading certain “suspect” foreign authors. Conversely, a Latin American bishop may send a priest for sociological studies in Europe and then decide to create a diocesan department of research to use the new talent he has acquired.
Some priests are dissatisfied with their work, either because their freedom to do a good job is curtailed, or because they feel unprepared for the specific task assigned them. In the first instance, better job descriptions are proposed as a remedy; in the second, better education for the jobholder. Both solutions are no more than misguided palliatives. The question must be asked: Should not this job be dropped from Church control, and the cleric either fired or challenged to compete for it—under secular control and conditions? Of course if we continue the present system, we are still stuck with our problem: the dissatisfied cleric.
Therefore the next five years will see a proliferation of retraining programs for the clergy. The outmoded product of novitiate and seminary needs different skills and attitudes to fit into the “new” Church: a multiplying growth of specialized commissions, bureaus, and secretariats. But it’s going to be a problem, selling the programs. The men themselves are beginning to say: Perhaps I need training to move into the secular world, to support myself as other men in society, to act as an adult in the world.
Dioceses and religious congregations increasingly use business consultants, whose criteria of success are taken from the American Management Association, and whose premise is that the present structure must be maintained. The resulting clergy in-service training is essentially repressive, ideologically biased, and directed toward efficient Church growth. Present ecclesiastical training improves a man’s ability to operate a more complex machine. A retreat only serves to confirm a man’s personal commitment to the structure. An adult formation concept is needed, one which would lead men to search for the right questions. Is this structure rooted in routine or revelations? Should I, a man totally at the service of the Church, stay in the structure in order to subvert it, or leave in order to live the model of the future? The Church needs men seeking this kind of conscious and critical awareness—men deeply faithful to the Church, living a life of insecurity and risk, free from hierarchical control, working for the eventual “disestablishment” of the Church from within. The very few such groups in existence today are branded as disloyal and dangerous by the clerical mentality.
A good example of such subversive education is provided by the Sister Formation Movement in the United States. This movement acts as a major factor working toward the secularization of the American Church from within. In the mid-fifties, a group of sisters set up a lobby to pressure for advanced professional education of religious. When this had been achieved, and the brothers and sisters returned to their communities with Ph.D.s, they were competent to apply for academic jobs anywhere. They no longer had to rely on preferential treatment traditionally accorded in Church institutions to religious, irrespective of their talent or professional training.
Many of these trained persons become conscious of ridiculous restrictions imposed upon them and their institutions by the clerical mind and ecclesiastical control. Some saw themselves facing the necessity of leaving their communities in order to live a meaningful and relevant career. Others chose to work for the liberation of their institutions from repressive and destructive Church control. The former were branded as defectors and the latter as subversives. Finally, religious congregations began to allow their members to seek temporary or permanent employment of their own choice in the open market, while remaining members of the community. This will lead to the persons themselves choosing their companions, places of residence, and form of community living.
Many superiors of religious women have recently begun to understand the signs of the times. Suddenly they see the possibility that the era of religious congregations might be over. Bishops are not yet aware that an analogous movement is at work among the clergy. But this movement is weaker and less sophisticated, because of the retarded nature of the American clergy. For several generations they have been pampered into unquestioning submission by their middle-class comfort and security.
Today some priests believe that they might be better ministers if they worked at secular jobs that entail real social and economic responsibility. A priest-artist, for example, questions the bishop’s right to employ him as a scribe, or to suspend him if he seeks real work in Greenwich Village. These trends produce a double effect among the clergy. The committed man is moved to renounce his clerical privileges, thereby risking suspension, and the mediocre man is moved to clamor for more fringe benefits and less adult responsibility, thereby settling down more comfortably in his clerical security.
Seeing the evangelical and social contradictions in the bureaucracy, some courageously face the possible alternatives. I know many who desire full-time jobs in poverty programs, as community organizers, teachers, researchers, professional men. They desire to earn their livings and live as celibate laymen, while exercising their ministerial functions on a part-time basis in the service of the faithful, and under the bishop’s authority. They ask if the system is sensitive enough to the real society to evolve a new form of radical and personal declericalization which would entail neither suspension from orders nor dispensation from celibacy.
Of course, such radical secularization threatens the existing parochial system. It would encourage the imaginative and generous to strike out on their own and thereby leave the clerical and outdated ecclesiastical structure in the hands of those who choose security and routine. It would frighten both bureaucratic bishops and rebellious DuBays. The bishops desire more clerics, but reject any demands for employee privileges, especially the notion of unionized power. The attitudes of both the bishops and the DuBays necessarily imply the furtherance of the clerical system.
Men in secular society sometimes recognize a real hypocrisy in this system. Groups founded for social protest and revolutionary action find the clergy suspect. The former, when they act, freely risk their careers for a cause to which their conscience impels them. The priest or nun who suddenly becomes aware that a real world exists and belatedly joins such actions risks a gentle reprimand at most Usually the more enlightened superior is quite pleased and happy with his “courageous” subject. It is much cheaper to permit a few naïve protesters, rather than face the frightening price of Christian institutional testimony to society.
To begin the task of giving this testimony, may we pray for an increase of priests who choose “radical” secularization? For priests who leave the Church in order to pioneer the church of the future? For priests who, faithfully dedicated to and loving the Church, risk misunderstanding and suspension? For priests, full of hope, capable of such actions without becoming hard and embittered? For extraordinary priests, willing to live today the ordinary life of tomorrow’s priest?
An adult layman, ordained to the ministry, will preside over the “normal” Christian community of the future. The ministry will be an exercise of leisure rather than a job. The “diaconia” will supplant the parish as the fundamental institutional unit in the church. The periodic meeting of friends will replace the Sunday assembly of strangers. A self-supporting dentist, factory worker, professor, rather than a church-employed scribe or functionary, will preside over the meeting. The minister will be a man mature in Christian wisdom through his lifelong participation in an intimate liturgy, rather than a seminary graduate formed professionally through “theological” formulae. Marriage and the education of growing children, rather than the acceptance of celibacy as a legal condition for ordination, will confer responsible leadership on him.
I foresee the face-to-face meeting of families around a table, rather than the impersonal attendance of a crowd around an altar. Celebration will sanctify the dining room, rather than consecrated buildings the ceremony. This does not mean that all churches will be converted into theaters or real estate white elephants. For example, the Bishop of Cuernavaca believes that Latin American tradition requires the existence of the cathedral church as a kind of testimony in stone, whose beauty and majesty reflect the splendor of Christian truth.
Present pastoral structures have been largely determined by ten centuries of a clerical and celibate priesthood. In 1964 the Council took a suggestive step toward changing this pattern when it approved a married diaconate. The decree is ambiguous, since it could lead to a proliferation of second-rate clergy without making any significant change in present structures. But it can also lead to the ordination of adult, self-supporting men. The danger would be in developing a clerical church-supported diaconate, thereby delaying the necessary and inevitable secularization of the ministry.
The “ordinary” future priest, earning his living outside the church, will preside over a weekly meeting of a dozen deacons in his house. Together they will read the Scripture, then study and comment upon the bishop’s weekly instruction. After the meeting, when it includes Mass, each deacon will take the Sacrament to his own home, where he will keep it with his crucifix and Bible. The priest will visit his various “diaconias” and preside at their occasional Mass. At times a number of the “diaconias” will meet for a more solemn Mass in a rented hall or in a cathedral.
Freed of present executive and administrative duties, both the bishop and his priests will have time for occasional celebrations. The bishop will be able to prepare and circulate his weekly selection from the Fathers and the outline for discussion. He and his priests will together prepare the home liturgy for the “diaconias.” These changes will require a different attitude toward weekly Mass obligation as well as a re-evaluation of present ritual practices of penance.
Present canon law provides for the ordination of those whose lifelong livelihood has been guaranteed by the Church, and of those whose own estate is sufficient to support them. To restrict ordination to this kind of economic independence seems anomalous, if not revolting, in today’s society. Today, a man supports himself by working at a job in the world, not by performing a role in a hierarchy. It is certainly not contrary to the purposes of canon law to consider professional ability or earned social security as sufficient sign of independence for ordination.
The sacramental ministry of ordained laymen will open our eyes to a completely new understanding of the traditional “opposition” between pastor and layman in the Church. As we move beyond both these concepts, we shall clearly see their transitory character. The Council, summarizing a historical development of the last hundred years, attempted to define the clerical priest and the unordained layman in two separate documents. But the future will achieve, from the apparent antithesis, a new synthesis which transcends present categories.
The current ecclesiastical imagination is still inadequate for defining this new function—the lay priest, Sunday priest, part-time or secularized minister, ordained non-cleric. Principally he will be the minister of sacrament and word, not the jack-of-all-trades, superficially responding to a bewildering variety of social and psychological roles. With his emergence the Church will finally free itself from the restrictive system of benefices. More importantly the Church will have abandoned the complex series of services which have resulted in the minister becoming an artificial appendix to established social functions. The ordained layman will make the Catholic parson pastorally superfluous.
The Church awakens anew in the city. Traditional pastoral analogies become anomalies in the asphalt, steel, and concrete context of city life. Urban renewal and new experiences of community call for another look at older terminology. Kings, crowns, and staffs have lost their meaning. Men are not subjects of sovereigns, and they impatiently question how they can be sheep led by a shepherd. The Church’s community-creating functions break down when supported by symbols whose driving force lies in an authority structure. Sophisticated urban Catholics do not seek authoritative guidance for community action from a pastor. They know that social action is ecumenical and secular in motive, method, and goal. The Protestant minister or the secularist professional can possess better credentials of leadership.
Theologically literate persons no longer seek moral guidance from a priest. They themselves think. Frequently, they have long ago surpassed the priest in theological formation. Parents with a good liberal education are increasingly skeptical of entrusting their children to the clerical system of “professional” cate-chesis. If children can be evangelized, parents see that they are called to the task, and possess the knowledge and faith to carry it out.
No thinking Catholic questions accepting the ritual which recognizes that a man has received divine power to moderate a meeting of Christians or preside over the celebration of a sacrament. But men begin to reject the claims of a pastor who, because of his ordination or consecration, feigns competency to deal with any problem of his heterogeneous congregation, be it the parish, the diocese, or the world.
The reorganization of contemporary life frees men to accept a vocation for part-time ministerial functions. Leisure time increases with reduced working hours, early retirement, and more inclusive social security benefits—time available for the preparation and exercise of Christian ministry in a pluralistic and secular society.
It is apparent that many objections can be raised. The lay priest or deacon might wish to withdraw from the ministry, he might publicly sin, he or his wife might become divisive factors in the Christian community. Present canon law implicitly contains the solution—let him be “suspended” from his functions. Suspension must become an option for both the man and the community, not just a punishment reserved to the bishop. The ordained minister might feel called to take a controversial position on some secular matter in society, and thereby cease to be a fitting symbol of sacramental unity. He might in conscience feel that he must become a sign of contradiction, not only to the world, but also in the world. Let him or the community freely seek suspension. The community which has recognized his charism and presented him to the bishop, can also respect his liberty of conscience and allow him to act accordingly. He himself, as minister, has no special benefits, income, or status to defend. His daily life has not been determined by his priesthood. Rather, the latter has been characterized by his secular commitment.
Man finds it difficult to separate what habit or custom has united. The union of the clerical state, holy orders, and celibacy in the life of the Church has confused the understanding of the individual realities involved and prevented us from seeing the possibility of their separation. The clergy have stood on their socioeconomic status and power, defending their exclusive right to the priesthood. We seldom see theological arguments directed against the ordained laymen, except perhaps in reference to the inadequacy of the term itself. Only Catholic clerics who wish to marry, and married Protestant ministers who fear to lose their clerical status, defend the extension of ecclesiastical social security to a married minister.
The link between celibacy and priestly orders now comes under heavy attack, in spite of authoritative statements defending it Exegetical, pastoral, and social arguments are marshaled against it. By their action, increasing numbers of priests not only deny it, but also abandon both celibacy and the ministry. The problem is admittedly complex, since two realities of faith—sacramental ministry of priesthood and the personal mystery of extraordinary renunciation—meet. Our secular language breaks down in the delicate analysis of their mutual relationships. The formulation and discussion of three separate questions may help us to see the proper distinctions and lead us to understand the nature of the relationships involved. The choice of voluntary celibacy, the institution of religious communities, and the legal prescription of a celibate priesthood must be seen separately.
At all times in the Church, men and women have freely renounced marriage “for the sake of the kingdom.” Consistent with such an action, they simply “explain” their decision as a personal realization of an intimate vocation from God. This mysterious experience of vocation must be distinguished from the discursive formulation of reasons to “justify” such a decision. To many, such arguments appear meaningless. This conclusion leads men to abandon their commitment to celibacy. The defenders of celibacy frequently interpret this action as manifesting a poor or weak faith among contemporary Catholics. On the contrary, it may just as well be evidence of the purification of their faith. Men now see through the alleged motives—sociological, psychological, and mythological—for celibacy, and recognize their irrelevance to true Christian renunciation. Renunciation of marriage is not economically necessary for service to the poor, nor legally a condition for the ordained ministry, nor significantly convenient for higher studies. Persons who acted on these motives now fail to see their value and relevance. Celibacy can no longer enlist social approval in its defense.
Psychological motives formerly invoked to justify the superiority of sexual abstinence are hardly acceptable today. Many celibates now see that they initially refused marriage because they were repelled, afraid, unprepared, or simply not attracted. Now they choose marriage, either because of a more mature understanding of themselves, or to prove their original feelings wrong. They no longer see themselves as heroes to their parents, because they are “faithful,” nor as pariahs, because they “defect.”
Comparative studies in religion reveal many “reasons” for sexual renunciation throughout human history. These may be reduced to ascetical, magical, and mystical motives. Oftentimes they are “religious,” but hardly related to the Christian faith. The ascetic renounces marriage for freedom to pray; the magician, to “save” a Chinese baby through his sacrifice; the mystic, to seek exclusive bridal intimacy with “the All.” Contemporary man knows that sexual renunciation does not make prayer more intimate, love more ardent, or graces received more abundant.
Today the Christian who renounces marriage and children for the kingdom’s sake seeks no abstract or concrete reason for his decision. His choice is pure risk in faith, the result of the intimate and mysterious experience of his heart. He chooses to live now the absolute poverty every Christian hopes to experience at the hour of death. His life does not prove God’s transcendence; rather, his whole being expresses faith in it. His decision to renounce a spouse is as intimate and incommunicable as another’s decision to prefer his spouse over all others.
The Church has evolved two devices to control an evangelical charism: the social and juridical organization of religious communities, and the ritual celebration of vows. Religious orders provide a community structure within which the member is supposed to deepen his baptismal commitment to sanctity, and make himself available for the manpower pool controlled by his superior. This captive personnel force enabled the religious congregations to conduct benevolent and business enterprises. Now it appears that these institutional works will disappear even faster than parish, diocesan, and curial structures, as more and more members leave to fulfill their vocations in the open job market.
Christians desiring to live evangelical celibacy see fewer reasons for joining the established, juridical communities—even secular institutes—but they do recognize the necessity to band together with others of like mind, temporarily or permanently, to seek mutual support in their common and difficult spiritual adventure. Those established religious communities which remain in existence will maintain houses of intensive prayer, available as retreat houses, spiritual training centers, monasteries, or deserts. To arrive at this kind of Christian poverty and witness, the congregations legislate their impending demise by approving shortened skirts, changing prayer schedules, and experimenting in social action. Perhaps this legislative sniping at superficialities will serve to diminish the pain of those in the dying structure, easing their stay to the bitter end.
As the traditionally accepted reasons for maintaining the present juridical communities evaporate, other means of making a lifelong vow will be explored. The Church has traditionally accepted the possibility of the private vow. Less and less shall we see this in exclusively legal terms. As living a vow moves from clerical structures to a life of renunciation in the secular world, it seems more appropriate to signify the joyful acceptance of this kind of commitment not through a juridical act creating legal obligations but through a liturgical celebration of a mystical fact. The Church moves in this direction as vows become less public, solemn, and binding. Today any religious receives his dispensation when he states that he does not intend to keep his vow. Formerly vows were treated as public renunciations of rights; now they seem more like public statements of conditional intentions. The religious makes much ado of the fact that he is not married and that he will not marry—unless, of course, he changes his mind. We move from a religious “state” to a religious “stage.” This confusion and pharisaic legalism is a sorry testimony to the world.
The celebration of a vow should be a rite established by the Church, publicly testifying to belief in the authenticity of a particular Christian vocation and charism. Only exceptional persons, after many years of living their renunciation in secular life, should be admitted to such a liturgical celebration. The Church thereby publicly manifests its willingness to entrust the testimony of a mystery to the fidelity of these new “monks.” Only then shall we return to the real and close analogy between Christian marriage and renunciation. Both sacraments will celebrate the Christian’s full awareness of the depth and totality of a commitment he has established and lived in the real society of men.
A large segment of the thinking Church questions the tie between celibacy and the priesthood. The Pope insists on their connection. Neither doctrine nor tradition gives definitive support to his position. I believe that the emergence of a new pastoral Church depends largely on compliance with his directive during our generation. His position helps assure the speedy death of the clergy.
To counteract the trends of declining vocations and clerical dropouts, many solutions are proposed: married clergy, sisters and laymen in pastoral tasks, brighter appeals in vocation campaigns, world-wide distribution of existing clergy. All are simply so many pusillanimous attempts to rejuvenate a dying structure.
During our generation, at least, there is no need to consider the ordination of married men to the priesthood. We have more than enough unmarried ones. Ordaining married priests would slow up any real pastoral reform. But there is a second, and more delicate, reason for this decision. Thousands of priests now reject celibacy, and present the painful spectacle of men trained for sexual abstinence groping belatedly into big-risk marriage. The Church dispenses them secretly, arbitrarily, and awkwardly. They are forbidden further exercise of their orders. Having chosen marriage, they could still exercise priestly functions, but they would cease to be models—except perhaps to others like themselves.
The real need here is to clarify and liberalize the process by which the Church allows a priest to marry. Further, all must see that the good of the Church requires the “ex-priest” to abandon both clerical security and ministerial function. This is as difficult for the priest who “wants out” without accepting the concomitant consequences, as it is for the bishop who wants to “hang onto” his priest at all costs. The clerical mass exodus will only last as long as the present clerical system exists. During this time ordination of married men would be a sad mistake. The resulting confusion would only delay needed radical reforms.
The one institution which has no future in the Church and which is at the same time most impervious to any radical reform, today loses an increasing number of its men because of the legislation of celibacy. The over-all seriousness of the seminary crisis, of itself, forces us to probe much more deeply into the entire question of ministerial education in the Church.
Since Trent the Church has insisted on forming and educating its ministers in its own professional academies. It hoped that this process would continue through the minister’s personal initiative, within his structured and clerical life. The Church trained its ministers for a life it rigidly controlled. But the further recruitment of young and generous men in order to shape them in the mold of clerical life as it is still described by the Vatican Council will soon border on the immoral. At the moment it seems highly irresponsible to continue the preparation of men for a disappearing profession.
This does not mean that Christian ministry will require less intellectual formation. But this latter can develop only on the condition of a better and more general Christian education. The problem here is that this term has become confusingly all-inclusive and thereby lost its precise meaning. It must be redefined. Personal maturity, theological precision, contemplative prayer, and heroic charity are not specifically Christian. Atheists can be mature; non-Catholics, theologically precise; Buddhists, mystics, and pagans heroically generous. The specific result of Christian education is the sensus ecclesiae, “the sense of the Church.” The man joined to this is rooted in the living authority of the Church, lives the imaginative inventiveness of the faith, and expresses himself in terms of the gifts of the Spirit.
This “sense” is the result of reading the sources of authentic Christian tradition, of participation in the prayerful celebration of the liturgy, of a distinct way of life. It is the fruit of experiencing Christ and the measure of prayer’s real depth. It follows upon penetration of the faith’s content through the light of intelligence and the force of will. When choosing an adult for the diaconate or priesthood, we shall look for this “sense” in him, rather than accept theology credits or time spent in retreat from the world. We shall not look for professional competence to teach the public, but prophetic humility to moderate a Christian group.
I assume that weekly preparation through readings for liturgical celebration is a better formation for the exercise of ministry than specialization in theological studies. In saying this, I do not intend to underrate the importance of rigorous theological study. I only want to put it in its proper place. Ultimately, the function of theology is to clarify a contemporary statement, or verify its fidelity to revealed truth. The contemporary expression of revealed truth is only the result of the Church’s faith. The function of theological science, therefore, is analogous to that of literary criticism. The lectio divina is akin to the savoring of literature itself. Theology verifies our fidelity; spiritual reading nourishes our faith. As the social sciences become more complex and specialized in response to the problems of technological society, so the fidelity of the Christian community increasingly depends on its competence to express the faith in a language new to the Christian, who lives in a situation never before interpreted in the light of the gospel. The Church will grow in the child-like simplicity of its faith and in the intellectual depth of its theology.
Nearly all of what is now considered theological science will pass out of the exclusive competence of the Church. Already most of the subjects of the seminary curriculum are competently taught in secular universities by men of all faiths. With the closing of the seminary the omnicompetent theological generalist will disappear. The study of theology will become oriented toward specialized research and teaching, rather than toward all-round professional performance. Christian professors who possess this “sense” of the Church will orient students toward a biblical and ecclesial unity in their studies, a task never really accomplished by ecclesiastical curriculums.
Theological study will also become more widespread. The Christian college graduate, desiring to participate more actively in his weekly small group liturgy, will seek intellectual analysis in systematic theological reading and studies. He will have the time to do so because of the increase of leisure time in our society. Those who will have combined the asceticism leading to sexual renunciation with their years of study and liturgical participation will be uniquely fitted for the episcopacy. The Christian community will not hesitate or err in recognizing their charism.
Increasingly the Church’s teaching function will cease to express itself in pastoral letters condemning abortion and encyclicals advocating social justice. The Church will discover new faith and power in the revealed word. It will teach through a living and intimate liturgy centered around this word. Small Christian communities will be nourished in its joyful celebration.
The Spirit, continually re-creating the Church, can be trusted. Creatively present in each Christian celebration, He makes men conscious of the kingdom which lives in them. Whether composed of a few persons around the deacon, or of the Church’s integral presence around the bishop, the Christian celebration renews the whole Church, the whole of humanity. The Church will clearly manifest the Christian faith as the progressively joyful revelation of love’s personal meaning—the same love which all men celebrate.