c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Leon Gambetta was an anti-Catholic 19th-century French politician, but he sounds up-to-date in his proclamation, “Clericalism, there is the enemy.”

Clericalism is still the enemy of all religion, especially Christianity, and it is found exclusively in members of the clergy themselves.

Poet T.S. Eliot once identified a parson’s “features of clerical cut” as “his brow so grim, and his mouth so prim.”

These traits can easily be found among self-righteous members of the cloth, but they are like beauty marks compared to the basic sense of entitlement to place (as in processions and parking) and privilege (as in practically everything else) that is found among the clerical state.

The full-bred cleric thinks hierarchically, placing himself on the topmost perch of a steplike reality. From there, he can preside over the descending ranks of inferiors that are arrayed, as he firmly believes, by God himself. Who else but God could recognize that he, the cleric at heart, possesses just the right looks, talent and presence to look down on everybody else while expecting them to look up to him?

Confirmed clerics live in a world of their own, somewhat like British royalty, and are used like antique chairs to dress up large public occasions. They have no understanding that the Space/Information Age has forever eclipsed hierarchy as an adequate model of reality.

Nevertheless, clericalism survives in the Catholic Church among some clergy who seem to believe that their calling makes them better than others, and exempts them from the rules that bind the rest of humankind.

Clericalism can be found at the heart of minor irritations, such as unprepared sermons, and major tragedies, such as the sex abuse crisis. The abuse scandal was covered up with little regard for its victims _ precisely because the predatory priest was thought to have divine privileges and therefore the right to every human protection.

The most obvious symptom of clericalism is the satisfaction that the cleric derives from controlling other people in their relationship to the official church. It can be as minor as the way they are ordered to approach the priest who distributes the Eucharist, or as crucial as the arrangement of sacramental events such as weddings or funerals.

Watch for the pastor who does not allow a close friend of the bride or bridegroom to celebrate the wedding Mass, or of the deceased to celebrate the funeral. Watch for the bishop who denies a parish the rite of general absolution that the church approves for its people. Or watch for the young cleric who fancies that his gifts are so great and his time so precious that he refuses to take sick calls or to visit hospitals or nursing homes.

So many contenders crowd the field for the Cleric of the Year Award that it is difficult to make one choice. There is, for example, the first bishop to forbid friends or relatives from speaking at funeral Masses, and the one who said, “Funerals are about God rather than the dead person.”

Bishop Robert Finn is a prime contender. After he arrived in Kansas City, Mo., as practically his first act, he ordered his newspaper editor to drop theologian Richard McBrien’s column from the diocesan newspaper. If Finn had actually read any of McBrien’s calm, highly educational columns, he could not possibly have so grotesquely and yet so confidently dismissed him as a dissenter.

These pastors and bishops all seem like nice men until they drink deeply of the cup of their appointment. Such is the case of Boston’s Archbishop Sean O’Malley.

O’Malley, in his brown monk’s robes, seems to embody the hopes of a de-clericalized church. But perhaps it is when he dons his archbishop’s miter that he is overtaken by the clerical spirit.

He is a finalist for the Cleric of the Year Award for, first of all, raiding the priests’ pension fund for cash to help settle sex abuse cases. He followed this up with a redeeming promise to open up the books of the archdiocese early in 2006. Then he closed down by ending Father Walter Cuenin’s pastoral work at St. Mary’s Church in Newton, Mass., on charges of financial impropriety that are stoutly denied by the parish finance committee.

This is the clerical trifecta for 2005. While it pains everyone to give this award to such an unassuming man, nobody can doubt that O’Malley has earned it.

KRE/JL END KENNEDY

(Eugene Cullen Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author of “Cardinal Bernardin’s Stations of the Cross,” published by St. Martin’s Press.)

Editors: To obtain a photo of Eugene Kennedy, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.