In a recent Eureka Street article I remarked that in the Catholic Church clericalism is a pejorative term. I tried also to identify some of the attitudes and behaviour associated with people regarded as clericalist. The article sparked a lively conversation.
Some contributors criticised me for focusing on individuals and not on the more insidious culture of clericalism. The criticism was justified, and in this article I shall reflect on the culture and its byproducts.
As a culture clericalism displays a world view in which the Catholic Church is a self-sufficient world. Its security, reputation and internal relationships are the centre of attention. Within the Church relationships are hierarchical, and the difference between grades is in practice seen as more important than what Catholics have in common.
The relationships are also often authoritarian: bishops and priests are fearful of Rome, formal in their relationships with one another, and priests are prescriptive in their relationship to the laity. Clergy feel no need to consult the laity in matters of liturgy, finances and policy. The boundaries between the Church and the world outside are strongly marked, as are the boundaries between faithful and unfaithful Catholics. In all these respects clericalism is a culture of control that privileges secrecy.
Like any culture, clericalism finds expression in a network of relationships. They are relationships of people with the material world: through distinctive everyday and liturgical dress, for example, distinctive church arrangements, and distinctive liturgical artefacts.
They are also relationships between people: both those between individuals and especially those mediated through institutions. The latter include forms of address, of remuneration, of formation of children and adults, of the disposition of space, of processes of involving people in decision making and governance, of customs, of imagining the history of parish, diocesan and national church.
The institutional relationships are particularly important because they are often simply taken for granted as necessary and inevitable. They shape what participants see and how they see it. They also create patterns of expectation of how clergy and laity will speak and behave to each, will express or conceal disagreement, respond to injustice, accept direction and view the outside world.
"An authoritarian and controlling network of relationships of this kind generates fear, timidity and a disengagement that can be rationalised as virtue."
In an undiluted clerical culture (which of course does not exist) all bishops will automatically follow Roman instructions and all priests will be formed to obey their bishops