COVID-19 and the Clerical Church

If there’s something positive to have emerged from these many months of pandemic, it’s the constructive thinking going on about what it might mean for the Catholic Church. There’s a kind of collective and individual self-examination underway, perhaps exemplified best by Czech theologian Tomas Halik, who is a psychotherapist by training.

Jun 27, 2020

By Massimo Faggioli
If there’s something positive to have emerged from these many months of pandemic, it’s the constructive thinking going on about what it might mean for the Catholic Church. There’s a kind of collective and individual self-examination underway, perhaps exemplified best by Czech theologian Tomas Halik, who is a psychotherapist by training. As he put it in one of the most perceptive articles published recently on the topic: “Our time of civilisational change calls for a new theology of contemporary history and a new understanding of the Church.”

Worldwide, the pandemic has revealed examples and witnesses of holiness, of living the Gospel, often in straightforward but “anonymously Christian” ways. The virus has masked us and at the same time it has unmasked hypocrisies that are deeply ingrained in contemporary forms of militant Catholicism, such as the absolutist pro-life and religious liberty stances and the rhetoric that ignore the fact that protecting the health and life of others outweighs your own proclaimed indifference to the risks to your health and life.

The crisis has also dispelled the illusion that the Church can be a space exempt from what happens outside of it. We can see this in the profound disorientation the institutional Church seemed to experience in contending with measures made necessary by widespread infection. Forced to operate within the restricted spaces defined by health-protection guidelines, it seemed unable to respond with anything more than what read like pre-written answers to pre-written questions.

But in these last few months we’ve also witnessed, once again, the arrogance of power, the recurrence of internecine conflicts, and the persistence of particular ecclesial interests. Any ecclesial reform? The fact is that the pandemic has exacerbated the typically Catholic ecclesial distancing between clergy and laity, and helped the institutional Church reinforce its centrality.

All its energies have been spent in keeping the existing system going, especially in terms of liturgy and Church governance. Even granting some exceptions, the clergy remain in charge of liturgy, and from the Pope on down they have shown limited creativity in inserting something into the symbolic discourse. For example, it would have been a sign if, at least on one weekday, the Pope had celebrated in Santa Marta, not Mass, but a liturgy of the Word.

The Eucharistic fast would then have united the whole body of Christ. But it’s not just clerical control of the liturgy. The Catholic laity have been dispersed and almost voiceless, except in their invisible domestic liturgies and private spiritual expressions.

Even if “the life” of the Church as an institution has been suspended by the pandemic, the institution itself remains a pervasive presence. But those who, during the pandemic had to care for the spiritual needs of the elderly and the sick, or for small children are probably a little less confident about their ability to do just fine without the institutional Church.

It was probably wishful thinking to view this crisis as an opportunity to reimagine the liturgy in a progressive way, or to do away with clericalism in favour of community-centred reform.

Of course, the pandemic also casts a light on what the pontificate of Francis means: the transition to a spiritual and theological hermeneutic of incarnate reality as it is and as there is. Given the necessity and urgency of this transition, the institutional problem of the Catholic Church only gets more serious.

There is no question that the Church must begin again from the kerygma and go forth in the heart of our world. --commonwealmagazine

(Massimo Faggioli, is professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University.)

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