Pope Francis on Clericalism: Beware!

Why is Pope Francis so critical of clericalism? The answer is very simple...

...He's a Jesuit!

This is a fundamental element of the Jesuit charism (and of that of Opus Dei, perhaps even more so). Remember that God raised up the Jesuit Order in the wake of that great Council for the Reformation of the Catholic Clergy: the Council of Trent.

Recently the Holy Father spoke of the evil of clericalizing the laity, which is bad for the priest and bad for the layman!

“We priests tend to clericalize the laity. We do not realize it, but it is as if we infect them with our own disease. And the laity — not all, but many — ask us on their knees to clericalize them, because it is more comfortable to be an altar boy than the protagonist of a lay path. We cannot fall into that trap — it is a sinful complicity.”

Freedom of heart is fundamental to the Christian mission. Priests cannot fulfill their God-given mission if they live for worldly rewards. And the laity are not to spend their lives in the Church sanctuary looking for empty ecclesiastical privilege while neglecting their proper place in the world.

Christ Himself preached critically most often against the worldliness of the professional religious! Bravo, Papa Francesco. Afflict the comfortable!