Today’s readings: Isaiah 50: 5-9a; Psalm 116: 1-9; James 2:14-18; Mark 8: 27-35
In When Prophets Die (1991), various scholars scrutinised religious groups’ destiny after their leaders’ demise. Their analyses confirmed, among other things, that those who remained faithful to their founder’s charism live on; others degenerated or just died away as indiscriminate changes are harbingers of failure and corruption. Founders inevitably pass on their legacy to their disciples, who are responsible for preserving and reinventing that legacy for the present and future.
More recently, in La trahison des pères (2021), Céline Hoyeau, analysing the issue of Church leadership, clerical and secular, over the last century, says the “signs of vitality and spiritual renewal of the Catholic Church”, pledged mostly in the time span of John Paul II, are transpiring to be a ghastly glacial winter. Such an “ecclesial success story” is indeed turning out to be an implosive nightmare, with tremendous pastoral consequences. In many cases, disaster is rooted in leaders’ abusive behaviour, not only in terms of sexuality and morbose spirituality but mostly from attachment to power structures, even seeking political support to enjoy benefits personally and for one’s group.
Jesuit priest Thomas Reese, an expert in religious and political sciences, poignantly points out that historically, “when religion and politics were in an incestuous relationship, religion turned rulers into gods, and political leaders corrupted religious leaders with wealth [...]. Temples and churches became not houses of God but monuments to clerical power and privilege.”
The powerful Scriptural readings in today’s liturgy should indeed thrust the local Church into a much-needed process of soul-searching. Recent intimation of indiscriminate entitlements offered by (if not requested from) politicians does not bode well to the “mystical body of Christ”, which is distinguished “from any other body, whether in the physical or the moral order” (Mystici Corporis, 60). In common parlance, the Church is not a club with a heritage to preserve! It is the “added humanity” of the Risen Christ in space and time, shouldered with the sacred mission of preserving God’s reign of justice and equity in the world. As such, it should always shy away from the proverbial dextrarum iunctio, which fugaciously conjoins Church and state.
Last March, a stern prophetic warning came from Pope Francis regarding the actual perils of collaborating in shady structures “contrary to Christ’s Gospel, exchanging faith with idolatry”. The Letter of James today calls “believers” to be operative in faith, and not “favouritism” (Js 2:1). Similarly, Jesus rebukes Simon Peter: “Get behind me, Satan! You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.” Jesus “plainly” shows that the only mark of prophets and prophecy is “to take up the cross and follow him”.
Equally, in the first reading, the Servant’s Song from Isaiah points the way towards righteous suffering as the cost of faithfulness to the gift of God. This is why the Church is always in need of prophetic presences and voices that articulate God’s intentions through the divine gift of “an instructed tongue” and “opened ears”, which empowers prophets to speak truth to power and to courageously bear all possible convulsive consequences. It is evident, to those who have eyes to see, that the local Church desperately needs prophets who cherish the covenant, look at the present, and point to the future path, for “where there is no vision, the people perish” (Prov. 29:18).