James Davidson and Dean Hoge have an essay in this weeksCommonweal entitled Mind the Gap. It highlights an emerging gap between theways that clergy and laity understand their respective roles in the Church.
The core of this gap is a disjunction between two models ofpriesthood. The first is a servant-leadermodel where priests work in a collaborative fashion with laity. The cultic model, by contrast, emphasizesthe priest as a man set apart and sees the laity having a more limited role.
Although Im generally a fan of both Davidson and Hogeswork, I dont find the distinction between the servant-leader and the culticmodels to be helpful. Adopting thisframework is as likely to exacerbate the tensions they identify as to resolvethem.
First of all, the terminology is problematic. In particular, the use of the word cultic asan apparent synonym for authoritarian carries the implicit suggestion that itis wrong for priests to place great emphasis on their liturgicalresponsibilities. This is hardly theteaching of Vatican II, which argued famously that the liturgy was the summitand fount of Christian life and that no other action of the Church can equalits efficacy by the same title and to the same degree.
Secondly, the authors deduce the existence of this culticmindset by the response of priests to statements that are theologically ambiguous. Davidson and Hoge are concerned, for example,that younger priests respond in the affirmative when asked whether ordinationconfers on the priest a new status or permanent character which makes himessentially different from the laity.While more redolent of scholastic terminology than I might prefer, thisstatement is not at variance withwhat the Church teaches about the priesthood (see CCC 1547). So why should affirming it be consideredevidence of a cultic mindset?
Thirdly, the classification of priests according to thesetwo models reinforces a simplistic narrative of how the priesthood is changing:where once we had (good) Vatican II priests, we now have (bad) John Paul IIpriests. I, too, am concerned aboutseminarians who seem to know nothing more of the Catholic tradition than whatthey have read in the Catechism. On theother hand, would it be offensive to suggest that there are at least somelaypeople whose ecclesiology owes less to Vatican II and more to a vaguecongregationalism absorbed from the surrounding culture?
I am not blind to the problems that Davidson and Hoge wantto highlight. Priests who cannot buildstrong collaborative working relationships with lay staff and volunteers willdo enormous damage to the Church. In myexperience, however, petty ecclesiastical tyrants are no longer solely a clericalphenomenon.
Theres no question that the emerging generation of priestsis different in many ways from those who came before them. Thats true of the laity, too, by theway. The potential for conflict isreal. Sociology can help us understandand reduce those conflicts, but not if we insist on stuffing people into thetired old liberal and conservative boxes.We need a broader set of categories.Mary Ann Reese, the coordinator of Young Adult Ministry for theArchdiocese of Cincinnati, wrote an article for Americain 2003 where she developed eight different categories to help her understandthe diversity of the young people she was encountering. What struck me about her approach was thatshe seemed sincerely interested in getting inside the heads of these kids andunderstanding their various points of view.
We need more of this kind of thinking. We need diverse models of lay and priestlyministry that can help the emerging generation of clergy and laity to betterunderstand each other and their respective vocations. Models that emphasizeand evenexacerbatepolarization are not going to get the job done.
