Pope Francis made a strong comment on clericalism in the Church during his speech delivered in the 18th General Congregation of the Synod of Synodality “it is a whip, it is a scourge, it is a form of worldliness that dirtyes and damages the face. of the wife of the Lord; enslaves the holy faithful people of God.”
The Holy Father began by assuring: “I like to think of the Church as a faithful people of God, saint, and sinner, a people summoned and called with the force of the beatitudes and of Matthew 25,” a chapter of the Gospel in which it is presented. how Christ will judge men at the end of time.
“Jesus, for his Church, did not assume any of the political schemes of his time: neither Pharisees, nor Sadducees, nor Essenes, nor Zealots. No ‘closed corporation’; “He simply takes up the tradition of Israel: ‘you will be my people and I will be your God,'” he said.
“I like to think of the Church as this simple and humble people who walk in the presence of the Lord (the faithful people of God). This is the religious sense of our faithful people. And I say faithful people so as not to fall into the many ideological approaches and schemes with which the reality of the people of God is ‘reduced’. Simply faithful people, or also, ‘holy faithful people of God’ on the way, holy and sinful. And the Church is this,” he continued.
Pope Francis then assured that “one of the characteristics of this faithful people is their infallibility; yes, it is infallible in credendo. ( In credendo falli nequit , says LG 9). Infabilitas in credendo . And I explain it like this: ‘when you want to know what Holy Mother Church believes, go to the Magisterium, because he is in charge of teaching it to you, but when you want to know how the Church believes, go to the faithful people.'”
The Pope then indicated: “An image comes to mind: the faithful people gathered at the entrance to the Cathedral of Ephesus. History (or legend) says that people were on both sides of the road to the Cathedral while the Bishops in procession made their entrance and that in chorus they repeated: ‘Mother of God’, asking the Hierarchy to declare that truth dogma. that they already possessed as the people of God. (Some say they had sticks in their hands and showed them to the Bishops).”
“I don’t know if it’s history or legend, but the image is valid,” he said.
The Holy Father assured that “the faithful people, the faithful holy people of God, have a soul, and because we can speak of the soul of a people we can speak of a hermeneutics, of a way of seeing reality, of a conscience. “Our faithful people are aware of their dignity, they baptize their children, they bury their dead.”
The Pope highlighted that “the members of the Hierarchy come from that people and we have received the faith of that people, generally from our mothers and grandmothers, ‘your mother and your grandmother’ Paul tells Timothy, a faith transmitted in feminine dialect, like the Mother of the Maccabees who spoke ‘in dialect’ to her children.”
“And here I like to emphasize that, in the faithful holy people of God, faith is transmitted in dialect, and generally in feminine dialect. This is not only because the Church is Mother and it is precisely women who best reflect it; (the Church is a woman) but because it is women who know how to wait, how to discover the resources of the Church, of the faithful people, they take risks beyond the limit, perhaps with fear but courage, and in the chiaroscuro of a day that begins “They approach a tomb with the intuition (not yet hope) that there may be some life.”
“The woman of the holy faithful people of God is a reflection of the Church. The Church is feminine, she is a wife, she is a mother,” the Pontiff highlighted.
The Holy Father then warned that “when ministers exceed their service and mistreat the people of God, they disfigure the face of the Church with sexist and dictatorial attitudes.”
“It is painful to find in some parish offices the ‘price list’ of sacramental services in supermarket style,” he noted, because “either the Church is the faithful people of God on the way, saint and sinner, or it ends up being a company of varied services.”
“And when pastoral agents take this second path, the Church becomes the supermarket of salvation and the priests become mere employees of a multinational. “It is the great defeat to which clericalism leads us.”
“And this with a lot of shame and scandal (it is enough to go to ecclesiastical tailor shops in Rome to see the scandal of young priests trying on cassocks and hats or albs and roquettes with lace),” he noted.
“Clericalism is a whip, it is a scourge, it is a form of worldliness that dirtyes and damages the face of the wife of the Lord; “It enslaves the faithful holy people of God,” she expressed.
At the end of his message, the Successor of Peter highlighted that “the people of God, the faithful holy people of God, continue forward with patience and humility, enduring the contempt, mistreatment, and marginalization on the part of institutionalized clericalism.”
“And how naturally we speak of the princes of the Church, or of episcopal promotions as career advancements! The horrors of the world, the worldliness that mistreats the holy faithful people of God,” he concluded.