I WANT TO CHANGE MY ANSWER

A seminarian interviewed me for a project on which he was working and one of his questions was if I thought there was still a climate that promoted clericalism within my circle of priest acquaintances. I readily agreed that there are individual priests who have clerical tendencies but that the general mindset is frowned upon in the presbyterate as a whole.

I want to change that answer.

There was/is a reaction against the abuse of the collar that was so strong that it could be labeled bitter. But when a reaction is too strong the correction tends to be an over compensation and in the end we are left with a mirror image of what it is we tried to eliminate. In other words, we become what we hate. It is like being in a small sailboat listing heavily to port in a strong wind and overcompensating too much to the starboard side. End result: You get wet. You just happen to be on the other side of the boat.

So at the Mass, says Pope Benedict XVI in The Spirit of the Liturgy, “It must be plainly evident that the oratio (prayer/praying) is at the heart of the matter.” “In this prayerful approach to participation there is no difference between priests and laity.”

The priest does what he does because we need him to do it. But the heart of the action is the great prayer being offered to God (and God’s offering to us.) It is devastating to our understanding of who we are as Church to downplay the role of the priesthood of the baptized. What the average Catholic does in the pew every Sunday is not a passive absorption of something important someone else is doing but in itself a vital, essential, meaningful role.

But we do not believe it.

As evidence of this I offer you a common theme in liturgy planning meetings. The sentence is often murmured, “What can we do to get people more involved?” This usually means inventing or duplicating ministries. This is a huge mistake. It sends the message loud and clear that what is happening in the pew is not important. It says if you want to be important you need to find a role that comes as close to mimicking the role of the priest as possible. What does that smack of? The clericalism we tried to snuff out.

Further quoting the pope, “Of course, external actions – reading, singing, the bringing up of the gifts – can be distributed in a sensible way. . . We should be clearly aware that [these] external actions are quite secondary . . . The almost theatrical entrance of different players into the liturgy, which is so common today, especially during the Preparation of the Gifts, quite simply misses the point. . . If the liturgy degenerates into general activity, then we have radically misunderstood the “theo-drama” of the liturgy and have lapsed almost into parody.”

This abuse is particularly prevalent in “youth masses.” People want the kids "more involved." But in fact what we are inadvertently teaching is that what they do at Mass when they do not have an extraordinary role is not really not all that important. What a tragedy! The opposite is in fact the case. Those busying themselves about are actually fulfilling secondary roles. What happens in the pew is (or should be) the primary action. The oratio!

Here we can also see why the Church makes such a fuss about people not taking on multiple ministries at the same mass. That is if they are the lector, they should also not be an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion or some such combination. Even if the person does not mind it is patently unfair as it robs the person from performing their priestly and ultimately more important role.

Hence we have from the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (5) “In addition, the ministerial priesthood puts into its proper light another reality of which much should be made, namely, the royal priesthood of believers. Through the ministry of presbyters the people’s spiritual sacrifice to God is brought to completeness in union with the sacrifice of Christ, our one and only Mediator. For the celebration of the Eucharist is the action of the whole Church, in it all should do only, but all of, those parts that belong to them in virtue of their place within the people of God. In this way greater attention will be given to some aspects of the Eucharistic celebration that have sometimes been neglected in the course of times. For these people are the people of God, purchased by Christ’s blood, gathered together by the Lord, nourished by His word. They are a people called to offer God the prayers of the entire human family, a people giving thanks in Christ for the mystery of salvation by offering His sacrifice. Finally, they are a people growing together into unity by sharing in Christ’ s Body. These people are holy by their origin, but becoming ever more holy by conscious, active, and fruitful participation in the mystery of the Eucharist.”