Yesterday, I did an impromptu thread in the wake of the most recent, horrifying, revelations in the Catholic clergy abuse crisis.

We're all processing this together, and I have a few more thoughts:

1/Every Sunday, we profess faith in "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic" Church.

When we say, "apostolic," we're saying that we believe our current bishops are the direct successors of the hand-picked apostles of Jesus. That our Church's very structure is not merely man-made.

2/That's why we need, urgently and comprehensively, an authentic ecclesiological reform. An honest structural evaluation, followed by real, practical, enforceable changes to the way our Church is governed. Vatican II called for it. We just haven't implemented it yet. Not really.

3/Right now, as my friend @timothypomalley wrote in an essential piece last week, which you should read, we've sewn together temporal power and institutional decision-making with spiritual and sacramental leadership. All go to priests and bishops.

http://churchlife.nd.edu/2018/08/10/confusing-the-self-emptying-love-of-the-cross-with-political-power/

4/This is a misunderstanding of the priesthood of Jesus, which was fundamentally self-emptying and devoid of earthly power. Jesus did not lead worship at Temple. He did not sit on the Sanhedrin. He was no modern kind of governor, king, or pope. This is what confuses Pilate.

5/Pilate says, "So you are a king?" And Jesus confoundingly answers, "It's you that say I am." Because our narrow human categories can't comprehend what a kingship would mean if it was of Heaven, instead of earth.

We hear "king" and we think earthly power.

6/Peter, the first pope as we understand it, and his fellow apostles, the "original bishops," according to our Catholic ecclesiology... were poor preachers, most of whom preferred martyrdom to forsaking the Gospel as they had received it.

7/It was the intertwining of temporal power with spiritual leadership that led to Christendom. That led to bishops placing crowns on emperors and living like royalty while indigent parishioners struggled to feed themselves.

8/Numerous reformers saw this as the pernicious perversion it was: confusing earthly power with spiritual leadership. Reformers like Benedict of Nursia, Dominic of Osma and Francis of Assisi.

We need courageous, Spirit-led reformers to step forward right now.

9/We need reformers who grasp the theological truth that the priesthood and kingship of Christ lead to a form of power and leadership that cannot lead to bishops operating as CEOs of companies or governors of states.

10/We need reformers who understand that the priesthood of all believers means that there is space in the leadership of worship, ministry, and decision-making for faith-filled laity, and it must be said: women.

11/Right now, a Catholic seminarian takes courses in Eucharistic theology and learns how to hear confessions, but very little formation is provided with respect to managing an operating budget, resolving HR disputes among employees, or fundraising for a capital campaign.

12/Yet, when they're sent out into parishes, priests are expected to be CEO, CFO, COO, and CSO: Chief Spiritual Officer. The CSO position is the one they're most qualified for and the one most in keeping with our authentic ecclesiology. Yet it's the one they have least time for.

13/Many priests struggle to give adequate time to pastoral ministry, because of pressing practical concerns & urgent sacramental needs. They have to meet with a family to plan a funeral for their grandmother, then they have to meet with the finance council about the leaking roof.

14/This modus operandi, in which the bishop is the sole CEO of his diocese, like it's any other earthly corporation... and the priest is the local managing director of his regional branch... simply is not sustainable. Nor healthy. Nor in line with the Gospel.

15/In recent years, many priests/bishops have begun to recognize this and to integrate lay leaders more fully into decision-making and day-to-day operations. Having paid, professional staff to oversee budgets, lead fundraising, handle HR disputes, etc.

16/But at the end of the day, in any diocese, with ANY priest/bishop, no matter how "progressive" (in terms of ecclesiology, not U.S. politics), the individual with the collar has the final say. Everybody else is bound to follow that executive decision.

17/There's no existing structural apparatus by which, e.g. the CFO of a diocese can put a hold on a decision made by a bishop in order to call a meeting of priest deans and lay leaders to discuss it in greater depth. There are no checks or balances.

18/The people surrounding the bishop, e.g. senior staff and priest council, are consultors at best. Most on the diocesan payroll are, in theory, there to serve the priests/people in the parishes, but in reality, their job is to carry out the bishop's wishes.

19/Like any subset of humans in leadership roles, some bishops/priests love having all this power. Many find it an almost unbearable burden. Most probably find both things to be true, simultaneously.

20/But the bottom line is that it's damn near impossible to juggle all of those roles and wield that level of unilateral decision-making... well.

Certainly it's near impossible to do it in a manner that conforms to the specific leadership demonstrated by Jesus in the Gospels.

21/It is, quite frankly, not fair, either to bishops or to priests or to the faithful... to have an existing ecclesiology that requires bishops to hit the road for confirmations, give approval for construction of parish halls, and handle priest issues... all at the same time.

22/Many will say, "But Bishop So-and-So relies heavily on his CFO, his communications director, etc."

Yes. But at the end of the day, the bishop is the boss of all of them. So their job is to do what he would do, if he could be in all of those meetings himself.

23/Of *course* there's a great diversity in terms of day-to-day leadership styles; I know some diocesan/parish staff who feel truly empowered, trusted, and listened to. But that's b/c of personality of individual priest/bishop, NOT b/c of universal ecclesiological structures.

24/When I say reform, I mean reform of the structure of the Catholic Church itself. And (at the risk of re-opening this can...) that is what I was pointing to, a few weeks back, in my thread on the genuine benefits of ecumenism. We could become MORE the Church we're called to be.

25/Perhaps we could learn from our Eastern, Orthodox, and Protestant sisters and brothers, regarding certain governance structures, decision-making processes, and ecclesiological structures. Not adopt things wholesale, but revisit our own structures in light of those others.

26/The truth is that any "investigation," any "commission," any set of charters or norms, even any set of mass episcopal resignations in the wake of this crisis isn't going to achieve the institutional purification and reform that the Catholic Church urgently requires right now.

27/Top-to-bottom, Spirit-led reform guided by a combination of clergy, religious, lay leaders, theologians, and outside voices is the *only* step that will move us forward as a Church. Anything else is giving aspirin to a cancer patient.

28/Because right now, the Body of Christ is suffering from a cancer. And a small set of doctors refuse to allow the "c" word to be used. Heck, many of them are insisting that we don't even need to do a full body scan or run certain tests. (Because then we'd have to treat it.)

29/You can't diagnose a patient if you won't allow the tests. And you can't have an honest discussion of the treatment options if you stubbornly refuse to accept the diagnosis. The intermingling of earthly power and spiritual leadership is a cancer afflicting the Body of Christ.

30/30 - Until the bishops recognize that this is a cancer affecting all parts of the Body of Christ, and not just an isolated infection that can be cured by chopping off a hand or a foot... we will not be able to be cured.

(End impromptu ecclesiological reflection.)