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God, Not Mammon

A Medieval Suggestion for Clergy Reform

BY CHRISTOPHER ZEHNDER

To reform the Church, the Church must reform the clergy. This is the truth in a hierarchical institution, and the Church, as Vatican II points out, is hierarchical. But is the Church reforming the clergy?

The year 2005 saw what seem to be the beginnings of some sort of clerical reform. In September, the Holy See commenced a visitation of U.S. seminaries that may prove to be more thorough and decisive than the last visitation in the 1980s. Then, in November, the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education issued an instruction that truly homosexual men should not be admitted to holy orders.

It is clear, to many, at least, that bringing seminary instruction and admissions standards into line with Church teaching and discipline would go a long way to reforming the clergy. And barring affectively immature men from the clerical ranks would be an obvious boon. But even if all the bishops should go along (a forlorn hope?) with the doctrinal and disciplinary reforms the Holy See does and may demand, would it be enough? Would such measures suffice to reform the clergy? To reform the Church?

One pope would probably say no. Like Pope Benedict XVI, Pope St. Gregory VII in his day (the 11th century) confronted a very corrupt clergy. Of course, the problems of that period were not entirely those of our own, but they were not radically different, either. Laxity, immorality, simony, luxury, ignorance, lay domination, and avarice beset the medieval clergy. The ark of the Church, it seemed, would be swamped by the floodwaters of the world, the flesh, and the devil. But then Gregory became pope and gave decisive impetus to a movement that resulted in what has been called the medieval reformation. His agenda, though never fully realized, had at its core one essential item -- the return of the clergy to an apostolic purity of life.

This apostolic purity envisioned by Gregory demanded more than doctrinal orthodoxy and sexual purity. It demanded more than obedience. To these necessary aspects Gregory added the renunciation of personal property (poverty) and community life. Priests were to take a vow of poverty, as well as of chastity and obedience. They were to live a kind of monastic life -- holding all property in common, praying in choir, living in obedience to a superior. Theirs was to be a life of renunciation, not only of sex, but of personal possession; not only of heresy, but inheritance. Like Christ and the apostles, they were to follow the narrow path of complete and radical renunciation.

"The ideal of the Gregorian reform, which is the ideal of the Latin fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries, is really the apostolic ideal, that the clergy live a common life, period, in virtue of being clergy," said Father Aurelio (not his real name), a priest belonging to a religious order. "In the Eastern Church," he continued, "priests were permitted to marry; the bishops were the only ones who had to be monastics. But though the West managed to maintain the imposition of celibacy, it, in many cases, lost the common life. So, in a certain sense it's true to say that the requirement of celibacy is a survival in the West of the idea that priests should be 'regular' [following a religious rule.] But in fact they're not. If they can own property, then they're not."

In fact, what has been called "secular clergy" became the norm in the West. Secular clergy (today more typically called "diocesan clergy") make a vow of obedience to a bishop and a vow of celibacy, but they may own property. According to Father Aurelio, while "Church law insists that even secular clergy should not have immense amounts of money," there is yet "no effective means of keeping a secular priest from being a well-to-do man, if he works at it" -- or if he, say, inherits property or money. A secular priest "does not have to reject an inheritance," said Father Aurelio.

And while probably many diocesan priests do not live the high life (a Los Angeles archdiocesan priest told me, "we don't make a lot of money and most of us don't live luxuriously"), some, at least, make a rather decent salary, for a single man. A priest of the diocese of Orange (who asked not to be named) told me that priests there make over $3,000 a month; and while this does not necessarily include housing (many Orange priests live away from the rectory), nor does it include health insurance, food, and car expenses, Orange diocesan priests receive Mass stipends, about $200 extra a month, and an allowance for employer-generated benefits -- seminars and retreats, for instance.

The Orange priest said that so much discretionary income, coupled with what amounts to a bachelor life (especially for priests who keep their dwellings away from the church), is a threat to detachment from the goods of this world, not to mention chastity. While only a minority, said the priest, abuse minors, unchastity with adults is far more prevalent. "How could it not be?" he said. "Given the formation they've got, the amount of money they have, the lack of accountability, and this pure freedom to do whatever they want and dress however they want, they're just asking for it."

Chastity and poverty are linked. A Benedictine monk, Dom Rembert Sorg, made this point in his 1951 book, Towards a Benedictine Theology of Manual Labor. "Private ownership," he wrote, "necessarily belongs to the institution of marriage ... For, the human love in marriage, which is sacramentalized, is possessive and exclusive -- jealously so. St. Paul tells us beautifully that the husband and wife mutually own each other. Private ownership, therefore, is inherent in the spirit of matrimony." This ownership "obviously," continued Dom Rembert, "extends to the possession of material goods, which the wants of married people demand. The idea that a communistic society or any other agency might support them shocks the nature of their love and despoils it of life." Private ownership, too, said Sorg, is necessary on account of the parents' "full responsibility of their children's support."

But private ownership is not inherent in the state of chastity undertaken for the Kingdom of God. While Dom Rembert says only that "private ownership, which means perfect poverty, must be accompanied by celibate chastity," and not that celibate chastity must be accompanied by perfect poverty, still, since the two "are the same spirit," according to Sorg, it is most fitting they should be joined. For not only does chastity imply renunciation, a celibate man has no children whom he must support. Whatever he requires in way of maintenance should be supplied by the Church. As St. Paul said, "the laborer is worthy of his hire."

Father Aurelio said he agreed with Dom Rembert. "In a way," said Aurelio, the "Eastern arrangement" -- which has a married clergy that own property -- "makes more sense in that they simply made the concession that the clergy did not have to live the common life and, in making that concession, they say, 'well, then they marry.' The Eastern position was, you either marry or you take monastic vows, so there is no such thing as secular clergy. (In the Eastern rite Catholic tradition, that's been muddied up, and they do have secular clergy.) The Latin arrangement, on the one hand, is more edifying in the sense that at least they maintain celibacy; but celibacy with property holding has all kinds of difficulties with it." These difficulties include not only unchastity, but the dangers of luxury and absorption in worldly rather than spiritual affairs.

An important companion to clerical poverty, said Aurelio, is life lived in common with other priests. This has long been an aspect, not only of monastics but of what are called canons -- clergy serving a bishop, ministering in parishes and in other diocesan ministries, but yet living a common life of prayer in obedience to a superior. (Historically, there have been "secular canons," who lived in community but who could, individually, own property, and "canons regular," who took a vow of poverty.) Common life, said Aurelio, does not require that clergy "live an uncomfortably poor life; they just live a life in which they don't have property in their own name." It was the canon regular, continued Aurelio, that was "the model that Gregory VII intended to impose, but he could not break through the local opposition of secular clergy, the secular canons, who were more like secular dignitaries of different dioceses who drew a salary from the cathedral or chapter.

"The real reform of the clergy in the western Church would be to abolish clerical property," said Aurelio. Of course, "you'd always have exceptions; that's always been the case. You have that even with monastics. And there are practical reasons why a priest may have to own property for one period or another. But the point is that the ideal, the norm, and expectation is common life, and that certainly is not the case with the secular clergy. If they have any seminary experience that is even somewhat monastic, they are all told, 'you won't have to do this later on.' The expectation is that they 're going to be set free of it."

Father Aurelio said that, when challenged as to their poverty of life, one often hears from secular clergy "that refrain, 'oh, we're not religious.' Well, what does that mean? There is a call or vocation to a particular, local church; there is a vocation to be, say, a priest of the Orange diocese or the Los Angeles archdiocese. But there is no special call to property as opposed to poverty. And so if someone says he does not feel he has a religious vocation but a vocation to the diocesan priesthood, unless he means he feels called to serve God in a particular local Church under the bishop of that community, then he's deceiving himself. If he means, I want to be a priest, but I'm not called to give up my property, then that's just an illusion. But it's a very widespread one."

The ideal of Pope Gregory VII was not of his invention; it had been practiced in Hippo under its bishop, St. Augustine, who insisted that all of his priests lived a common life with him. However, said Father Aurelio, "Augustine did make an exception, but it was a very painful one. He has a famous homily on that, where he says, 'I know how much men love clerical offices, and so if [the priest] insists on keeping his property, I will not deprive him of his clerical office, and he does not have to live with me. Let him have his property, but let him see if he can have God."

I asked two priests of the Los Angeles archdiocese what they thought of Pope Gregory VII's attempted reform of the clergy. One priest, Father Philip (not his real name), said he did not think, taken as an entire package, it was the needed reform; however, priests, he said, could benefit from the accountability that is characteristic of life in community. "I do agree," said Father Philip, "that priests need to be accountable, and the key is, no matter where you may be, you have to have spiritual direction. You have to have accountability to someone who directs your soul, and I think that really is the key. It's not a question of religious versus secular but of making sure you are getting the assistance you need if you're going to survive. Let's face it, it's a lot more difficult as a secular priest, and so the dangers are far greater, and therefore the need even greater to have some spiritual support. I go to weekly confession, and I have a support group and a couple of priests that I go to. We all need to have accountability, community, and direction because we are our own worst enemies, and left to our own resources, we're definitely going to fall."

"I don't think it's realistic," said Father Clement (not his real name.) "There are certain parts of [Gregory's reform] that the Church should try to implement, like priests living together, being accountable to each other, to have a prayer life and fraternity. Those are things which prevent problems down the line. But the reality is that we have a diminishing number of priests, and community life is not always going to be possible."

In approaching the problem of clerical reform, the bishops, said Father Clement, "seem to be getting a lot of advice from lawyers and human resources people and so forth; they are using models of the secular world, not using models from our Faith. And I've yet to see anything about the spiritual reform of the clergy." But it's a spiritual reform that is needed, said Clement. "In the area of celibacy, for instance, to see why chastity is of value, why it is something we need to practice. And it's not just in 'boundary violations;' there's still such a thing as custody of the eyes, of proper reading, of not exposing ourselves to things that will cause problems. We haven't had any of those kinds of things. All the workshops that we've had are about boundaries and how to talk to people and what things not to say and sexual harassment, and all these kinds of things. And that's fine, we need those things, but we also need a spiritual dimension. We haven't had enough. And not just in L.A., but at the national level."

It seems that Father Clement is right -- that a modern Gregorian reform of the clergy is not possible; less drastic reforms, maintaining clerical property but providing priests more community life -- something along the lines of St. Philip Neri's oratorian movement or less formal groupings where priests gather for prayer and spiritual direction -- are perhaps more realistic. But, said Father Aurelio, such measures may be more realistic only because the current clerical mindset, even at the highest levels of the Church, cannot think beyond a secular/religious dichotomy. "The problem," said Aurelio, "is that even the most reform-minded people are secular clergy, and they've begun to think that the secular clergy is the norm and religious are the special exception, instead of that religious life is the norm and the secular clergy are the derogation. Even the word 'secular' should indicate that, and that's why they avoid it now. They say 'diocesan' -- correctly, in a sense, because in terms of vocation or for ecclesiastical dignity, diocesan is what they are called to be. No one is called to be secular."

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