Wednesday,
and it is time for the ‘papal examen’ once again, our weekly trip through the
Pope’s speech to the Roman curia back at Christmas time. In the fifteen
spiritual diseases he mentioned in that talk, we are now at number ten, which
is:
The disease of idolizing superiors.
This is the disease of those who court their superiors in the hope of gaining
their favour. They are victims of careerism and opportunism; they honour
persons and not God (cf. Mt 23:8-12). They serve thinking only of
what they can get and not of what they should give.
Small-minded persons, unhappy and
inspired only by their own lethal selfishness (cf. Gal5:16-25). Superiors
themselves could be affected by this disease, when they court their
collaborators in order to obtain their submission, loyalty and psychological
dependency, but the end result is a real complicity.
This one we
know, those of us who have spent much of our life in the service of the
institutional church, to be rampant in clerical and ecclesial circles. I
suppose it is an inevitable downside of any hierarchical institution (I imagine
the army would see a similar phenomenon, or academia). At any rate, the Pope
certainly lays into it with strong language here: small minded persons…
thinking only of what they can get… lethal selfishness. Classic ‘Franciscan’
bluntness!
Outside of
the immediate context in which he is writing, it is worth examining our
consciences about this disease. Who are we trying to please? What are we trying
to accomplish in life? What ladder are we climbing, and is it a true ladder
carrying us genuinely higher, or a distorted upside down ladder promising us
heights and riches but truly bearing us downward to Hell?
Catherine
Doherty wrote of competitiveness, of the ‘rat race’ of modern economic striving,
and how it was like a horrible inverted pyramid made of human beings all
scrabbling and scratching to get to the top of it, but factually an upside down
pyramid where the top was actually the depths of human degradation and
compromise, the destruction of the person.
We have to
be vigilant about this kind of thing, which can infect anyone in any circle of
life. But in the Church in particular—and I say this to any of my brother
priests reading this—it is something that should be anathema. Careerism,
ambition, ‘sucking up’ to the bishop or the chancery—all of that is utterly at
odds with, directly contradictory to, the mission of Christ in the world which
is our only reason for existing.
What strikes
me about this is what an utter waste of time and energy it all is. All of that
ladder climbing stuff—it just doesn’t matter. It means nothing, does nothing,
accomplishes nothing, gets us nowhere. It is a sad waste of a human life to
spend it seeking and acquiring power and becoming obsessed with ‘playing the
game’ to get it, whatever form that game takes (toadying to superiors and
cultivating the good graces of those ‘high up’ is only one of those forms).
Meanwhile,
Christ beckons, and the Gospel beckons, and the joy of the Gospel beckons, and
the call to love and serve and lay down our lives with Him beckons… all the
real stuff, the things that actually matter. Money and power and position and
the good opinion of ‘those who count’ is the ultimate vanity of vanities—love and
service and the good opinion of The Only One Who Counts is everything, the one thing
necessary.
That’s all I
have time for this morning, as I actually have a plane to catch, and a long
drive to get there. I’m heading to Vancouver for two weeks of talks, retreats,
and various pastoral commitments. Blogging may be sporadic in the next while—I don’t
know what my time and wifi access will be there. So, Fr. Lemieux signing off
for now, and here’s hoping we all have a good day seeking the one thing that is
necessary and good for our souls and for the good of the world. And pray for me
as I go on this next little mission trip!
Safe travels Denis. Please say hello to Gary Franken if you run into him out there. He's my only B.C. classmate and a great all round guy to boot!
ReplyDeleteTim
Will do... but I'm probably not going to see him - pretty full schedule, so unless he's in my immediate vicinity...
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