It is no secret that the Catholic and Orthodox Churches are pathetic. Petty squabbles over doctrine, systematic hypocrisy, and plain bad ole witness to the truth abounds. If you are an honest believer these should be not just acknowledged, not just mourned, but you should actively hate these things, not to mention seeking these cancers out and cutting them out of the Body of Christ. That's the unvarnished truth of the thing.
I'm not saying these things didn't use to exist. Of course they did! The Church (if you bristle at the thought of being lumped in with either Catholics or Orthodox I promise you all this applies to you and then some) has always been amongst fallen people. Humans are wretches by default, monsters if left unchecked. A simple yardstick to whether you're being a monster or not is to ask if you feel glee over some act that separates you from another.
Congratulations. You found it.
You're welcome.
So yeah. Christianity is for the wretch, a corrective to the monster in us all. So it makes sense that things were always ugly, we're ugly beings! But the original model did a pretty decent job at keeping this in check. And decent is as good as you're going to get.
Each city had a church. In that church was a bishop. Think of each bishop as a head doctor. This doctor had received his pedigree from three other doctors (at least) and had been thoroughly vetted and approved by his patients, the laity. There was no mysterious overlord telling you what was best for you, although other bishops did have to confirm the appointment. Now, each bishop (doctor) needed assistants, nurses we call them in the medical field. Nurses take a look at the patients and make sure the minutiae get sorted out. You need someone who's got some experience to fill this role, someone who we know has had their heads bashed in a few times. They were called presbyters, or later on priests. Now, whether you like it or not, churches do need to be run, they require administration. And that's where we get deacon(es)s.
For the conservatives (what exactly are you conserving? I promise it isn't a a healthy system) yes, female deacons were not just a thing, but necessary. Not everyone had the same way of ordaining them, but the Byzantine female deacon ordination service is almost identical to the male one. Sorry, nobody was thinking about in persona Christi for clergy. Really wasn't a thing like it is now in the Roman Catholic Church. And that's part of the problem.
Notice the comparison to medicine! Clergy are not there for your normal spiritual life. Health does not require a physician. Oh sure, regular checkups are necessary (Confession), and getting your regular doses of God is necessary (Eucharist), but very few practical spiritual works talk about Communion, but instead focus on what you do assuming you have it. Supernatural grace was assumed before the 19th century to be a normative part of tht spiritual life, with each member of the Body of Christ having gifts that helped heal and glorify the community.
There are exceptions to this general model, of course. All models are fake. Some models are useful. And this is a good and useful way to look at the early Church. Each city was its own Church, because each city had its own bishop. This Eucharistic model was more or less the norm.
The problem was that, as the Church grew, the model of one bishop in a city became impractical. Too many people were now in the cities to have one (or even a few) churches. Did we realize that the important thing was to keep bishops as local as possible? I mean, when there are more bishops you get more staff in general, but especially doctors and nurses, right?
Nope. We made the doctors politicians and made the nurses do the doctor's job, with none of the graces or privileges.
Are humans stupid or what?
The thing is the model only really works if the bishop is around. Without the bishop the living grace of the apostles isn't readily available. I strongly suspect this is why the grace of monasticism began to flourish: to get around our idiotic ideas of bishops as politicians. Take that with salt, of course, but it is what I think, so whatever that's worth.
Regardless, however, the laity internalized this similarity between monastic and bishop. The churches followed suit: celibacy is officially regarded as the true way of Christianity in the Latin Church, mandating that all their priests be celibate, and the Eastern Churches usually only pick bishops from amongst the monastics.
This distance creates simplification.
Simplification leads to overestimation.
Overestimation of others creates a lack of trust in your God- given, baptismal graces.
Which leads to Clericalism: that which is distant is superior. Which is the exact opposite of the point of Christianity. We are to be gods by grace, not sycophants of the hierarchy!
If you don't value your own experience, you won't go looking, reject what you do have, and will hang onto the first megalomaniac who has no scruples.
Like Father Paul of this show.
So how do fix this, assuming I'm right?
I've absolutely no idea.
As my angel of a wife frequently reminds me, I have no charism to fix the Churches. But I do know that a spiritual strengthening of the laity isn't just a nice idea.
So here are my suggestions for my lay brethren, Catholic and Orthodox:
When you were baptized you were made priest, prophet, and king/queen. You were given much. Trust in the gifts God gave you! He is in your heart and if you show Him you are ready He will show up.
At the same time you have to acknowledge that God didn't just appear to only you one day. God left a Church, which has made some attempts at archiving spiritual practices and doctrine that hold to God. I do not mean listen to your clergy blindly. Unlike medicine spiritual knowledge really doesn't change that much, and it's important to have a good range of knowledge of what came before you. You are not a special snowflake; God is not going to contradict what He told folks for the last 2000 years.
Keep it short and simple, at least at first. The following books can get you a pretty decent grounding.
Arise O God (which I have reviewed on this blog before) is the only English work I know that sums up the Gospel with all the mythological and spiritual considerations necessary. It is small and mercifully short. Catholics: do not let the fact it is by an Orthodox priest throw you off. This is pure gold. And it's so mercifully short and simple to boot. A real home run of a book!
Unseen Warfare is the best introduction to the spiritual life I've ever read, hands down. It is, not coincidentally, a book that has both Catholic and Orthodox contributors, over a few centuries. You can use it either way, which I heartily recommend. Maybe if we get a common parlance again it won't be so hard to talk.
To be ignorant of the Scripture is to be ignorant of Christ. That's not a trite saying. Scripture is to the mind as Communion is to the soul. But what's missing from common Catholic thought is that Scripture is incomplete without the Fathers and Mothers of the Church. They show what prayerfully receiving Scripture can look like. I personally use Ancient Christian Commentaries,which breaks it down into as short and easy to manage chunks as possible. You can pick any book you like to start out, although you really can't go wrong with the Gospels.
If you're in the mood to read more than that short amount (and a lot of the time I'm not) I find perusing the Old Testament to be extremely useful, given that the Old Testament is the context for the New. I go off a program suggested by the second most important book of Catholicism, The Golden Legend:
Revelation for Easter season
Pentecost through Advent/Phillips Fast: Samuel, Kings, and Maccabees
Christmas to Lent: Isaiah
Lent: Genesis and Exodus
I personally don't go through commentary here, not yet. I let the stories puzzle me. You are under no obligation to be so masochistic.
I also have The Book of the Elders, which is a collection of stories and sayings from the Desert Fathers. There are two editions: Latin and Greek. The Greek is longer, of course. I take these with heavy doses of salt and may puzzle over them for months.
I assume regular participation in the Sacraments, particularly Communion and Confession. The rest is just context for your walk with God in the Sacraments.
I take Flanagan's criticisms very seriously. I cannot solve the full scope of the problem as I see it, but I can suggest ways that have helped this cantankerous layman stay in the basket God is using to yank him out of Hell. There's more, of course. What I suggested is just barely a drop in the ocean of information out there. But anyone with the grounding I suggest would have been much, much, much harder to fool than the sad folks in this show.
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