Quotes About Clericalism

The popes who succeeded John XXIII were in clericalism's grip, which is why the reforms of his council didn't have a chance.

Once converted, the former Anglicans are welcomed into the Roman Church as priests, even if they are married. So in that way, the rule of mandatory celibacy has indeed been lifted, if only for these self-acknowledged misogynists. That leaves the inferiority of women as the absolutely overriding Catholic moral principle. It is the keystone of clericalism.

But inside the church, the fiercest opposition [to Pope Francis] has come from the defenders of clericalism — the spine of male power and the bulwark against any loosening of the sexual mores that protect it.

Generating a neurotic pathology in many priests, and prompting many others to protect themselves and the institution instead of victims, clericalism, I will argue in this book, is both the root cause and the corrupter, the ongoing enabler of the present Catholic catastrophe. The priesthood itself is warped.

It has become routine for Catholics today to denounce clericalism — the supernatural status claimed for priests. Clerics themselves denounce it. But what is suspect, finally, is the priesthood as such. It's an illusion to pretend that "clericalism" exists apart from the entire culture defined by the sacrament of holy orders, which is the formal name of the priestly ordination rite.

Clericalism: the habitual confusion between that which is of Caesar, and that of God.

We need a pope to usher in a new era of inclusion, the end of a sinful clericalism, and a strong sense of duty to those on society's margins. The 1 billion faithful long for a leader who is fearless and driven - not by terror but by love.

In a word, why were they not men at worst, when at best they ought to be more of men than other men?--And here lay the difficulty: by no effort could I get the face before me to fit into the clerical mould which I had all ready in my own mind for it.

In our ecclesiastical region there are priests who don't baptize the children of single mothers because they weren't conceived in the sanctity of marriage. These are today's hypocrites. Those who clericalize the church. Those who separate the people of God from salvation.

Clericalism: the habitual confusion between that which is of Caesar, and that of God.

Clericalism is the pyramid, a structure of domination that must be protected at all costs by everyone occupying a niche in it — which is why bishops and most priests so routinely shield the clerical abusers instead of their victims.

Francis has a tragic blind spot — the corruption of clericalism….

Pope Francis routinely expresses his shame and sorrow, but he instinctively defends the accused; he denounces the clerical culture in which abuse has found its hospitable niche, but he does nothing to dismantle it. Indeed, in his instinctive protective responses to the corruption of clericalism, he embodies that culture, even while seeming to criticize it.

Francis is at the mercy of an incoherent Catholic morality about all kinds of sexual expression, and he seems incapable of bringing the needed moral clarity and essential new structure of accountability. That incoherence in ethics and morality is itself essential to the malignant culture of clericalism that imprisons many, including the Pope.

Clericalism has rendered some of Ireland's brightest, most privileged and powerful men either unwilling or unable to address the horrors cited in the Ryan and Murphy Reports.

The financial cost20 was around £47 million, an appalling sum for those days. The cost in idealism, energy, and enthusiasm was probably higher. Bitterness, cynicism, disillusionment, emigration, censorship, clericalism and stagnation became the hallmarks of Irish society

Clericalism is a form of elitism in which some are viewed as having special rights and privileges.

We Catholics have been in the forefront in defending the dignity of the human person. Clericalism is a direct violation of human dignity.

Here we come upon the old, old craze of the world, which has not yet learned to do without clericalism--that to live and work *for an idea*is man's calling, and according to the faithfulness its fulfilment his *human worth* is measured