By losing, we find life

Sunday 12C June 26 2022

[1Kings 19:16-21, Luke 9:51-62]

Just now in Melbourne the trees of European ancestry have lost nearly all their leaves. Through stark black twigs we can see the sky, usually grey but today a glorious blue. In earlier years, bare winter branches moved me to feel sad, but now, when last summer seems like last week, I know how temporary these changes are. Poets and theologians have taught me how these trees must be stripped bare so that, just a few months from now, they can dress up in glorious new green.

The carpet of dying leaves shows us the truth in today’s gospel reading: if we are to “follow Jesus” – to “see the bigger picture” and go deeper into the Mystery of the One who formed us among trillions of stars – we need to let go of some things that seem basic and essential. Jesus, the itinerant preacher, had no permanent home. In his patriarchal culture, family was one’s only source of protection, but for deeper reasons he walked away from his family. He advised a person who clung: “Leave the dead to bury their dead”. Mark’s gospel tells us that Jesus’ family thought he was mad, and tried to restrain him.

The need to “lose our leaves” is clear too in the reading from the First Book of Kings. When the great prophet Elijah is approaching his end, he throws his mantle over Elisha, inviting him to be his successor. He does not compel him, but Elisha is willing. At once he stops ploughing; he kills his two oxen and burns their heavy wooden yoke to cook them as a sacrifice to God and a feast for his community before he departs.

There are times when we need to let go: after our spouse dies; or we are divorced; or receive a serious diagnosis; or when we need to forgive someone who has done us great wrong. Sometimes we need, literally, to move away.

I love the church, founded on Christ, into which I was baptised 82 years ago. I deeply respect the tradition of the Dominican Order, in which I have lived for 62 years. But after carefully considering the actions of the Catholic church, I am about to make a gesture to express my profound disagreement with some of its policies. I will move out of my Dominican community – we are still friends – but live alone and work as a priest among poorer people.

My disagreement is with clericalism: the idea that men [sic] ordained to preside at the Eucharist are more deserving of honour and privilege – and power – than other Christians.The church was founded as a community based on love, but has become a “pyramid of power”.

It is because of clerical privilege that a shamefully high proportion of clerics world-wide have sexually abused children. Clericalism was the reason that most bishops consistently concealed those crimes. In Melbourne and Ballarat, notorious priests were abusing children for decades, but bishops kept moving them to other parishes, without telling the people.

It was the church’s Canon Law that led bishops to protect clerical offenders rather than help broken children and families. Are not children just as much members of the church, as are clerics?

Our church-institution is still paying enormous legal fees to avoid compensating victims/survivors. In the USA, bishops are opposing new laws that would enable older abuse cases to be heard. In 1983 Pope John Paul’s “reform” of Canon Law declared that any complaint about abuse that was not made within five years, was simply “extinguished”; could not be pursued. (Canon 1362) Several dozen bishops and cardinals have themselves been abusers.

Even more importantly, clerics have gradually changed the Eucharist, our central Christian action and prayer. Originally the Eucharist was a thanksgiving meal of people rejoicing that Christ was in them. After 1000 years it had become a ritual dominated by one privileged man, while the people might receive a morsel of the consecrated bread only once a year, and never receive the chalice. Even the good reforms made by the Second Vatican Council do not give the people their rightful part.

Still today, about half the Catholics in the world cannot celebrate Mass, because clerical rules restrict who can be ordained to preside. Fewer people attend Mass now – in Australia about 12%. Many, especially the young, stay away because clericalism restricts our sharing.

Thousands of Catholics have asked the Plenary Council to allow our church to grow and develop. But many bishops are trying to smother the “voice of the faithful”. Are we praying enough that our bishops will listen? It is not only individuals who need to let go of things we think are important. Surely the Church-institution must also heed what Christ so often said, in all four gospels: “… those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

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