KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter
November 16, 2018
By Ken Briggs
How do you learn “clericalism”? As the Broadway show “South Pacific” said about human prejudice, “you’ve got to be carefully taught.”
It’s an attitude inculcated mostly in subtle ways, in little gestures and tainted language. It’s absorbed in behavior and habits considered normal rather than aberrant, accepted as a natural way of life.
The upheaval sparked by priests’ sex abuse and bishops’ cover-up has pointed to clericalism as a major factor. The phenomenon has long plagued Catholicism as a contrived power grab based on arrogance and superiority. Its audacious presumption was that ordination was God’s method of conveying higher status and authority on certain individuals, conferring rights to rule the church without the consent or advice of the laity. They alone were entitled to espouse what the church officially taught and exact sanctions for disobedience.
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