The Lay Clergy

I've been mulling over the most recent post at In Exsilium, especially in light of some things discussed on Reditus and some of my own concerns that I've written about regarding clericalism and also the question of self-righteousness/fundamentalism among the "good Catholic" neocons and trads.

I'd like to quote from the In Exsilium post as a jumping-off point for getting out my own thoughts. I'm going to ramble, so please bear with me.

A Medieval Christian knew that he was a sinner, yes, but, he also knew that, as a member of this Mystical Body, his failings and short comings were being mended in the lives of the Saints, in the cloistered clergy and the anonymous women religious living their entire hidden lives praying for other anonymous persons such as himself. He knew other people were suffering with Christ for his sins. The Protestants were right- there was an elevated class of persons who were living the full intensity of Christian self-oblation. The majority of people simply could not muster it, and society actually could not afford universal monasticism, so the broader society supported this class materially

So, Christianity (at least since medieval times) has been (at least) two-tiered (and, in fact, I'll argue farther down it should be three tiered). There have been different classes with different levels of expectations placed on them. Really, such a double standard was the only way to get the vast majority of a society Christian; the demands would be too rigorous otherwise.

The question of 'good' and 'bad' Catholic can not enter into this system in the same way it does presently. Sin is taken both more seriously and more lightly at once. There is no obligation to the take the Blessed Sacrament or confess your sins more than once a year. Yet, the Sacrament will be worshipped with dramatic fervor. In this fact of Medieval life, there is the paradoxical idea that one is typically both too sinful to take the Sacrament regularly and yet ought not to be so worried for his sinfulness that he needs to be reconciled and fed from week to week. Compare this to the present state where to abstain from the Eucharist is often to draw a few eyebrows.

I thought that "paradoxical idea" was a very interesting point. As nowadays there is both a liberal and a conservative horror at the idea of abstaining from the Eucharist. The liberals think the idea of abstaining is elitist, or legalistic, or filled with "guilt." No one should feel "unworthy" to receive the Eucharist, the liberals say, that's a judgmental and un-accepting or un-affirming idea. Yet the conservatives also look down on abstaining: for the conservatives, you may be unworthy to receive, but then you'd better damn well get worthy as quickly as possible!

And yet, in the early church, canonical penance excluded people for years from communion (and many people opted for deathbed baptisms, etc.) There is also the notion that, according to Reditus, even Archbishop Lefebvre apparently held, among the polygamous in Africa, that it was better to leave these people as sort of "perpetual catechumens" for many years rather than baptizing them before they were ready to take on the full burdens of Christian life.

The Catholic People were to become a regimented army with weapons of Rosaries, they were to know their doctrine in and out, and a Catholic education would become absolutely necessary. Eventually, you had to have all the right responses to the haranguing questions of the nun with her ruler.

In other words, the idea was for everyone to become religiously literate, as it were. And what was a "cleric" medievally except someone literate? The development of a literate lay class is something "new" (in the long history of the Church) and may be the source of some of the tensions we see today.

The ideal eventually emerged that one should be taking the Eucharist daily, for example. Of course, this meant one needed to be as holy as a monk- without actually being a monk. The whole of the laity had to be as holy as they thought the clergy were, to live as a “people set apart“, yet, not actually being set apart. In the past, it was obviously the clergy who were set apart. But the laity were to be incorporated into this. The same standard, one and for all.

This point is very interesting too. There has been clericalization of the laity or, at least, some of us (the "good" ones) for some time now.

This has its origins back to Trent and the Counter-Reformation, as he posits, but possibly even earlier (in fact, as I'll discuss, I might peg it to the implementation of universal celibacy for the clergy).

So there are now "high-powered" laity who pray the Office, read the Summa and catechisms and moral theology manuals and the Encyclicals of Popes (and Catholic blogs), watch EWTN, receive daily communion, and are also expected to conform in intimate detail to all the detailed tenets of sexual morality, use only NFP, understand Theology of the Body, etc, when previously there was a more benign neglect or at least discretion toward the laity in these regards.

My thought is this: this new religious literacy for the laity isn't bad necessarily. Because the "literate" Catholic laity, like anyone reading this blog, who know the finer points of orthodox theology, and for whom Catholicism is not just our religion but also our "hobby," and who are (usually) the self-appointed "good Catholics"...are probably just that segment of the population that would have been secular clergy in the past. As such, I think a "clerical" piety and orthodoxy is appropriate for us.

The fact that 80% of Catholics are not totally orthodox or orthodoxly moral or all-out zealous or whatever...doesnt really concern or surprise me, and hasn't for some time (a sentiment I think I've expressed before) because I guess I see them as sort of equivalent to the ignorant but well-meaning peasants of the Middle Ages; they have their dispensation and will be saved in their own way. They don't know any better, but I know they're good people at heart. Simple folk, spiritually at least. And though some could be educated, I'm not too concerned with enforcing too many things on them or shattering the blissful ignorance which allows the objectively immoral things they may do to be unculpable in the subjective forum.

Nevertheless, that doesn't excuse those of us who are religiously literate (and you can never take that back once it happens) from living up to the standards of orthodoxy, however. The ignorance of the laity could always be winked at; the hypocrisy of the clerical class, however...that has long been considered contemptible in the Catholic imagination. The self-righteous dogmatism of the fundamentalist-Catholic laity...may indeed be just a manifestation of the same phenomenon as clericalism, as we are in some ways now pseudo-clerical by the very fact of our religious literacy and opinionated intellectual investment in the whole thing. However, it also means, on the flip-side...that immorality and heresy among those of us who are religiously literate is as contemptible and disgusting as the hypocrisy and corruption of the Renaissance clergy (for we are now the equivalent to that class).

So the real problem (and it is a very real problem for some who really do feel called to the priesthood, but not under the current model) is, as it was so perceptively put:

Still, remarkably and unjustly, the [actual] clergy retained all the distinctions and privileges of being a unique class, with the laity being burdened with same expectations. Sure, they could have sex, but they couldn’t enjoy it. Unable to consecrate the Eucharist through their own powers? Of course such a power is barred to them, but they are also expected to be sanctified and take the Eucharist every Sunday just as the priest himself must. You are not called to be a “lay person” you are called “to be a saint”, but with none of the pretty robes or the excessive free time before the Monstrance.

A segment (and we here are part of it) of the secular laity has been "clericalized" by being made religiously literate. And also, as the recent Reditus post points out, by being institutionalized psychologically in a typically "clerical" way through a more regimented control of sexuality. I commented on that post that this may be merely our equivalent of the psychological leash mandatory celibacy creates for the actual priests (or, as JD exaggerated: we can have it, but not enjoy it, lol). Yet we are still not, in fact, actual priests or clerics of any sort. So, as he says, all the expectations, but none of those privileges.

So, there is now an unofficial three-tiered system, as it were. The actual clergy, the religiously literate laity, and the simple folk. In a way, there have always been officially three tiers too, but not necessarily corresponding perfectly to the categories that exist in practice. Namely, the laity, the secular clergy, and the consecrated religious. The secular clergy once formed the sort of middle class that the "clericalized laity" now form: the segment that was both religiously literate and secular, that was officially orthodox but not among the "perfect" according to the standard of the evangelical counsels (which really do require an institutional structure like a monastery to enforce).

But now, as I've discussed before, all priests (even the nominally "secular" [ie, diocesan] ones) are basically expected to exist on the model of religious life when it comes to things like mandatory celibacy, training in the "enclosed monastic hothouses" which are the seminaries, remaining a full-time salaried employee of the bishop, etc.

At some point in the Middle Ages, the secular clergy as such began to cease to exist in the West in a meaningful sense. The “middle tier” between the religiously illiterate peasants and the highly institutionalized monastics was eliminated as diocesan clergy took on a variety of features designed to basically merge or move them up into the category of monks. This was a development long in the making, but I think the elimination of the natural "middle category" in this way...was a big part of the process which eventually lead to the unhealthy duality of "good" and "bad" lay Catholics that is so toxic among the self-righteous neocons and trads today.

For the old second-category niche has come to be filled by highly motivated and educated lay Catholics. Lay Catholics who are, however, denied the priesthood or clerical-caste status of some sort (including the status of priest's wife for the women). Oh, they/we find pseudo-clerical roles in other ways (this all reminds me of my post on the politics of lay readers), including even a few as married permanent deacons who are technically "clerics" in canon law (but not really treated like it in practice in terms of having any say).

But since for the most part we're still laity, it creates this fundamentalist animosity with other laity, with the laity who would have been (in the old world) the "peasants." You know, the 80% who are using contraception, or not fully understanding, or sinning but not worrying too much about it, etc. Now they're considered "bad" by the arrogant "good."

In the past, this "bad" group was treated rather leniently because they weren't expected to be any better. Of course they weren't totally up to par: they weren't clerics! As JD said, there was assumed to be a holier-than-thou class, and this was considered natural.

But now, since the class of "clerical laity" has seemingly "proven" that lay people too can live up to the clerical standard of religious literacy and orthodoxy and orthodox morality (even if not the perfection of cloistered consecrated religious), everyone in the laity is held to it. Even though it's still only just a certain type of lay person who can live up to it: namely, those of us who would have been of the clerical class in the old world! But now there is a resentment towards those who don't live up to such standards among the "good" laity similar to that of the elder brother for the prodigal son. Since we bear these burdens, shouldn't everyone?

Well, that attitude is bound to antagonize the "peasant believers"...and of course it should. It's an unrealistic expectation for them, and not even what God has called them to or the role He has for them. No wonder many have reacted by simply leaving the Church or becoming, sadly, knowing/explicit (as opposed to merely ignorant) heretics, outright rejecting orthodox teachings as opposed to merely accepting that they were sinners and abstaining from communion for long stretches.

These "cafeteria Catholics" are now constantly being berated by the "good Catholics" and told that they are "bad"...or, perhaps, "false" might be the more accurate concept; people in the past didn't mind being sinners, but now they're being told that they're not even "real" Catholics, even if they were willing to recognize their sin. At that point, of course they're driven away or embrace heterodoxy. The message they hear from the orthodox is basically, "We don't want you, filth!"

Of course, that's not to say we shouldn't educate who we can (we should; we could be the instrument of their vocation to the "clerical" state) but it's never going to be everyone or even a majority. And I do, of course, think we men who are religiously literate probably should be made secular clerics officially to create that distinction again, without the consecrated-religious-like expectations of monastic seminary formation or not being able to have a wife (not that all would want one, of course).

There are fewer vocations because it used to be that basically all literate individuals became clergy and there was a distinction between the more strictly orthodox "clerical religion" and the more lenient "folk religion." Furthermore, there was also a segment spanning between the ignorant peasants and the perfect monks: secular priests in the true sense of the word (literate, but living in the world, potentially married, etc). But now...this second segment of literate Catholics doesnt need to be priests (in fact, many of us couldn't stand to be under the current system, because the current system basically assumes all priests will also live like consecrated religious).

Equating even secular clergy with consecrated religious led to clericalist dualism (as opposed to the natural triune structure) wherein religious literacy was equated with being "good" or holy (which previously was the domain of the Monks and Nuns only, not necessarily the secular priests). Well, this of course wasn't acceptable. For one, a good portion of the secular clergy were bad, and so with such evident hypocrisy, it was especially patronizing for the laity. The Protestants rightly protested this:

"I wonder if, perhaps, it could be said that Protestants tried to absorb all the energy of the dismantled priesthood into the laity [while still retaining a nominal clergy], while the response of Trent was to turn all the laity into priests [while retaining all the privileges for the actual priests]. The result is roughly the same, in the end."

The result was indeed the same.

For Protestants, it was unacceptable to identify religious literacy (ie, clerical status) with "goodness"...so their "clergy" were basically laicized to eliminate such a distinction; goodness was for everyone, because everyone was to be a secular. For Counter-Reformation Catholics, on the other-hand, the unacceptable duality was solved in the reverse manner: we couldn't get rid of the concept of the religious (as opposed to secular) life, so the ideal became just for the laity to all be clericalized and all the clergy to become like Religious.

But the result is indeed basically equivalent either way inasmuch as it leaves the ideal as everyone being the same, everyone being held to the same very high standard.

In the end, it won't work. Because there is always going to be a distinction between the religiously literate and the illiterate. Between those who just happen to adhere to a religion, and those who do so zealously. Between those who do believe but aren't that interested or concerned with religion actively, and those who think about it a lot and get a real kick out of liturgy and prayer and theological discussions.

We in the "clerical lay" group may romanticize the "folk religion," or try to fight for it to be benignly neglected rather than condemned or antagonized by our peers, but ultimately we ourselves are not and can never become peasants. For better or worse, we are bound by the rigors of orthodoxy and morality in a way they (subjectively, in practice) aren't. However much we might envy their care-free ignorance and lower expectations, however much we might resist the emotional leash they've gotten on us, however much we might wish we could be one of those peasants, however much we might resent our vocation to this status and the obligation it imposes on us.

Not everyone is called to be religiously literate. Many people are naturally those "peasants" and only some of us are meant to be "clerical." The problem, I think, is that not everyone religiously literate is meant to be a Religious. Not everyone meant to be of the clerical class is meant to be non-secular. By getting rid of that middle class (of secular clerics) in practice (if not in name)...they caused first clericalism (since even the very often not-holy secular clergy basically became identified with the holy religious) and then (as Protestantism reacted against this) fundamentalism, as the "good" laity (the ones who would probably become secular clerics if it weren't for the 'religious' aspects of the current secular priesthood: ie, mandatory celibacy, seminary formation, etc) were then set against the "bad" laity.

Another friend of mine responded to these thoughts in the following manner:

This idea of the tiered structures and now the removal of a tier might explain why within the Roman Church there is so much tension from various groups. I don't perceive within the Orthodox Churches (but then again I don't search out news of the Orthodox in the same way I do for RC.) These groups are made of religiously literate laity. They feel as if they need a say in the Church since they'd be the ones who a thousand years ago would have been the secular clergy and actually had a say.

Exactly! Yes, I certainly feel that's a large part of our frustration. I'm religiously literate, "clerical" as it were...but there is no class for real secular clerics in between the peasants and the monks (and all priests are basically now expected to be monks, even if they are diocesan, by the mere fact of mandatory celibacy, monastic seminary, a life "apart" from the world, etc).

Well, I know I'm not called to be a monk, but I also care and have opinions and ideas to try about church matters...yet being part of the segment (it's maybe 10-20%) that is religiously literate...is no longer enough to be an actual cleric. So, there is a lot of tension, and yet not enough vocations to the real priesthood. A lot of energy and ideas and motivation among the religiously literate laity, and yet they are denied the say that the actual clergy get except, like, on parish committees (shoot me if I ever join one).

So the "clerical laity" get self-righteous because (since they aren't of a class with different expectations) they want to demand everyone else be like them. The priests get all clericalist because, being identified with the Religious in externals, people assume they are holier and not just more literate. In the meantime, the actual Religious get less strict and watered-down since they are made essentially equivalent to secular priests. And many lay people are left frustrated, seeking pseudo-clerical roles and activities (including, in the end, even just altar serving, or catholic-blogging, or theological debates, etc).

In some sense, the breakdown of the clerical/lay distinction or roles in the liturgy since Vatican II was already there implicitly in allowing lay servers, in having a portion of the laity that follows along in missals, in having lay people who were well versed in catechism or for whom Catholicism was our "hobby" and not just our religion. The attempt to clericalize the laity while denying them actual clerical status...eventually burst out in the modern culture wars within the Church among the armchair lay theologians, and in the destruction of the liturgy according to "populist" premises ("populist" as ironically determined by a revolutionary elite).

The solution, however, is not to discourage this segment who are called to a higher standard, or to excuse ourselves from orthodoxy just since we're lay/seculars. Rather, these people (the men at least) should be made actual clerics minor and major (and the women like this would probably be inclined to marry that type of man). Definitely, some sort of official recognition should be given to this class to take the pressure off the simple peasants to conform to it.

The removal of the "middle" tier leaves religiously literate laity in a weird position. It also antagonizes the "peasants" because there is this pressure now that they too become the catholic-fanboy type, because they're lay too and, the logic goes, if some of the laity (ie, the clerical laity) can do it, then all of them can. But they can't. So it turns their mere apathy or ignorance or accepted sinfulness...into actual apostasy, explicit and knowing heresy, and obstinancy about sin.

What is the celibate clergy's investment or ulterior motive in allowing all this? I can't say for sure, but one theory might include the fact that it creates a niche market for the paraphernalia of clerical-catholic piety (regular confession, EWTN, books and booklets on theology, websites and the blogosphere, retreats, "good liturgy," Newman Centers, etc) without us being able to confect the sacraments ourselves, with us remaining dependent on them to supply it. So they get us hooked, get the leash on us psychologically, but then deny us the corresponding privileges.

By doing so they create a greater demand for themselves (since we can't do it without them) and maintain even the secular clergy as a full-time salaried position. When, really, if the "clerical laity" were allowed to be actually clerical (the role I feel they are naturally called towards, the men at least)...almost all its tasks could be fulfilled by part-time volunteers and their wives. But, as it is, we keep "needing" the lazy alcoholic who works only 2 hours a day and lives off our donations...

It is a real structural problem in the sociology of the Church. The secular clergy needs to be untied from the pseudo-Religious expectations it is now held to and be opened to a model which is meaningfully secular. This will both return rigor to the actual consecrated religious, solve the vocations crisis, and also give the religiously literate segment of the laity an official place and voice within the Church so that they will stop having to antagonize the simple folk as self-appointed inquisitors.