Fifty-two years ago, two years after the conclusion of Vatican Council II, an article by Msgr. Ivan Illich was published in The Critic magazine. It was entitled “The Vanishing Clergyman”.
Like much of Illich’s reflections, talks, and publications, it was way ahead of its time, almost prophetic. It was also startling, controversial, and criticized by very many of its readers.
It can’t be summarized any more than a few bars of only one of its melodies can summarize a concerto. Illich’s clear, tightly-packed, and well-organized exposition is a meal no slight tasting can fully imagine.
From the moment I first read this article it was unforgettable. Re-reading it now, I marvel at how prescient it was and find new depths of insight and meaning in it.
Some have misunderstood Msgr. Illich, thinking him to be an eccentric genius, a wild man whose biased extremism was destroying the church—but, his thought and his work faithfully echoed the spirit of John XXIII in convoking the second Vatican Council and of Paul VI in reconvening it and patiently and perseveringly guiding its implementation.
A brilliant thinker and reader of the signs of the times, Msgr. Illich had little patience with head-in-the-sand reactions to them. He spared no punches in suggesting courses of action to address them from a prospective of deep faith.
Of course, he also knowingly and intentionally wanted to rattle his readers out of their lethargy and hesitation—e.g., the striking title of his essay (which did focus, in particular, on ministry)
It has taken half a century for many of the analyses, ideas, and proposals he advanced, long treated as marginal and extreme, finally to start becoming matters of serious mainstream consideration.
Here are a few excerpts of his thoughts (their selection reflects my own bias):
– the Church’s institutional bureaucracy is in need of radical structural reform;
– the relationships between sacramental ministry and full-time personnel, between ministry and celibacy, and between ministry and theological education need to be re-examined;
– the post-conciliar growth of the Vatican is leading to an ungovernable bureaucratic maze, overwhelmingly staffed by clerical specialists, members of the aristocracy of the only feudal power left in the Western world;
– in the entire Church, a clergy survives partly because priestly service at the altar is united with clerical power and privilege;
– the Church needs men deeply faithful, living a life of insecurity and risk, free from hierarchical control, working for the eventual “dis-establishment” of the Church from within;
– the era of religious congregations may be over . . . an analogous movement is at work among the clergy;
– an adult layman, ordained to the ministry, will preside over the Christian community of the future. The ministry will be an exercise of leisure rather than a job;
– the current ecclesiastical imagination is still inadequate for defining this new function—the lay priest;
– the union of the clerical state, holy orders, and celibacy in the life of the Church has confused the understanding of their individual realities; (and above all)
– the Spirit, continually re-creating the Church, can be trusted.
9 June 2019