I was sitting at church listening to a priest talk Bible tonight when I thought, I really don’t believe in clergy. Awkward. Especially as it is my secret retirement plan to become clergy.
Our priest is kind and thoughtful and smart, I should say, nothing against her, or any of the other clergy I love, but the whole concept. I don’t know.
Perhaps it is common knowledge my thoughts on bishops are, Why? And the idea that they are all knighted one after another from St. Peter is a lovely but silly idea. I mean, spiritually, tradition passed down, sure, but who ever knew God, capital G, to be contained to ceremonies and handshakes?
And the idea of a pope is actually offensive to me. Seeing the pope, when I was in Rome, all I could think was that people thought he was closer to God than I was, and that is offensive.
My Lutheran upbringing either formed me well, or fit me well, maybe both: we had bishops in administrative form only, in my experience anyone could hand out communion if she said the right words, and in a pinch, anyone could baptize, leading us to enjoy baptizing (some of) our cats.
(Later I turned Episcopalian so I could kneel and kiss crosses. Basically.)
Today Bishop Finn resigned. Finn has been a specter hanging over many of my Kansas City Catholic (and former Catholic) friends. Any time we talked church matters, I would express my sympathy. I have no personal outrage about his particular crimes– he enabled awful things to continue, and he was caught, and he was punished. I heard and felt just as much sense of disrespect, that in a position of leadership he had directed and not led. That he did not listen. He kept his position of leadership and was unable to rebuild relationships within the church. That’s what really gets me.
A long time ago he should have seen he was making his people weaker, not stronger. When people aren’t listened to, it creates an incubator for infection.
I don’t believe anyone has authority on spiritual matters. I do listen to people whose sense of these things is in harmony with my own spiritual experience. I listen to strangers. I listen to my life, and texts, particularly The Bible, but other works of art, too.
On the subject of clergy, then, I am an extremist sort of Protestant, I wish we would rotate who did the ceremony and who gave the speech. But then I know a lot of people don’t want any responsibility like that, don’t feel qualified. Maybe they should.
I just hate the sort of hierarchy that naturally follows from one person being the person up front all the time.
Again I love many people who are clergy, and becoming so, people who seem perfect for such a role, ready to be nurturers and speakers and contemplative, it is not about that, the effect on them, so much as it is the effect it seems to have on others. As many times as clergy tell people they are not God, people want them to be.
Jesus had the same problem.
I know: now I’m really in trouble.
The leadership part of teaching weighs on me, and I’m constantly reevaluating it, what is my responsibility, what is the kids’. What do I have to offer them. When to step back and let them make a mess. When to discuss and when to just say no. Oldest child stuff, too. Problems with authority and problems being authority.
Anyway I know that listening is always where to begin. It starts relationships, offers possibility for diagnosis, and sometimes even cure.
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