(Based on “Celebration of Awareness”, Ivan Illich, Penguin, 1973, particularly on Chapter 6: The Vanishing Clergyman, and on Chapter 7: The Powerless Church).
Ivan Illich (1926-2002) was born in Vienna, Austria, and grew up in Europe. A Croatian-Austrian philosopher, Roman Catholic priest, and polemical critic of the institutions of Western culture, he could appear as a stern, forbidding character, which he put down to “growing up in five languages, but without a mother tongue”.
Illich prophetic writing (his work was published in the 60s and 70s) is a source of inspiration for those trying to see through the current ‘fog’ in which the church finds itself following the international sexual abuse scandal and the COVID crisis. These major historical and environmental forces have generated a range of social changes which in turn affect Christians and human development in general.
Human development is defined today as the process of enlarging people’s freedoms and opportunities and improving their well-being. Human development is about the real freedom ordinary people have to decide who to be, what to do, and how to live. The human development concept was developed by economist Mahbub ul Haq.
Historically, the church has always participated in social change either as a political force for the conservation of existing structures, systems and ethics, or as a spiritual lighthouse to condemn governments, greed or working conditions.
The church still retains and uses its power to do ‘good’ and to issue social justice statements addressing a range of social issues including education, poverty and inequity, such power is sustained and justified by its structures and dominical money collection in parishes.
However, in his essay on the powerless church, Ivan Illich tells us that now is the time for the church to renounce this power and let it pass into the hands of secular institutions and non-government Organisations already committed to a humanist agenda and which together form a secular ecumenical alliance united by common convictions.
The church withdrawal as an agent of social change will be painful but necessary if it wants to recover its ability to perform its mission (Kerygma the preaching or proclamation of the Christian gospel) and be the true witness of Christ.
This withdrawal from social justice initiatives taken in the name of the institutional church will likely be gradual. The existing power must initially be used to make amends, as in the case of the sexual abuse victims. The church social teaching (bishops’ pastoral letters) should no longer address ethical issues such as abortion or stem cell research in recognition of the changing role of the church as a social institution.
The less ‘efficient’ politically the church becomes, the more ‘effective’ it will be as a spiritual celebrant. The current social function is an obstacle for the Kerygma.
The Kerygma is the specific social contribution which cannot be made by other social institutions.
Applied to human development (defined above), the Christian Faith means that mankind tends towards ‘god’s kingdom’. The church provides one of the possible meanings of human development (growth in Christ) and consequently celebrates the Christian experience of social change and human evolution.
Church teaching should therefore focus on transcendental meaning of change in our lives and on the liturgical celebration of growth in Christ. In summary the task of the church in the “gestation” of the world is not to engineer its future but to be (as Pope John XXIII said it) mater et magistra.
This transformed church will give Christians the freedom to find in the gospel a dimension of life above and beyond humanistic reason which is the basic motive of social action, such freedom can also be found in the writing of Michel Quoist.
Because we live in conditions never before interpreted in the light of the gospel, the Christian community increasingly depends on its competence to express faith in a language new to Christians.
The transformed church will no longer be in opposition to the secular and the profane and may recover its unity (clergy and lay people). The church will grow in simplicity of faith and in its intellectual depth of theology and will manifest itself as the joyful revelation of love’s personal meaning.
Pierre Louys on views of Ivan Illich on problem of structure in the Church-November 2020
(Based on “Celebration of Awareness”, Ivan Illich, Penguin, 1973, particularly on Chapter 6: The Vanishing Clergyman).
I was recently reading Ivan Illich, a catholic priest whose ideas and books were influential in the 60s and 70s particularly in Latin America.
His essay titles “The Vanishing Clergyman” is very useful to anyone trying to understand what is happening to the Maitland Newcastle diocese at the moment, particularly looking at the various management programs aiming at efficiency to the detriment of pastoral care.
As Illich says: “Perhaps this will help us to see that the principles of corporate government are not applicable to the Body of Christ.”
In his essay Illich focuses on the Vatican bureaucracy, but it is not difficult to draw the parallel with this diocese.
“At the time when even the Pentagon seeks to reduce its manpower pool by contracting specific jobs in the open market, the Vatican launches a drive towards greater self-contained institutional diversification and proliferation… The pontifical Curia of the Middle Ages becomes a contemporary corporation’s planning administrative headquarters.”
Here is something directly concerning the bishop.
“The bishops develop the bureaucratic mentality necessary to keep up with the merry-go-round character of the increasingly frequent meetings.”
Now for the priests.
“Some priests are dissatisfied with their work, either because their freedom to do a good job is curtailed, or because they feel unprepared for the specific task assigned to them… The question must be asked: should not this job be dropped from the church control…”
About the recent professional development.
“Therefore the next five years will see a proliferation of retraining programs for the clergy. The outmoded product of the noviciate and seminary needs different skills to fit into the ‘new’ church…”
“Dioceses and religious congregations increasingly use business consultants, whose criteria of success are taken from the American Management Association, and whose premise is that the present structure must be maintained. The resulting clergy in-service training is essentially repressive, ideologically biased and directed toward efficient church growth.”
I will quote this paragraph to conclude.
“The church awakens anew in the city. Traditional pastoral analogies become anomalies… Kings, crowns and staffs have lost their meanings. Men are not subjects of sovereigns, and they impatiently question how they can be sheep led by a shepherd… Theologically literate persons no longer seek moral guidance from a priest…
But men begin to reject the claims of a pastor who, because of his ordination or consecration feigns competency to deal with any problem of his heterogenous congregation be it the parish, the diocese or the world.”