Volume 25, Number 3    December 2003

Cozzens: Feudal Church fading fast

Currently “unraveling” before our eyes is “the last feudal system in the world,” Fr. Donald Cozzens told two packed sessions at the conference. He scarcely had to point out the striking similarities between the feudal structure and the current, top-down Catholic system. At the summit of the feudal world was the king. Just below were the lords who were accountable only to the king, and at the bottom were the serfs, who had “no land of their own, no education, no power and no voice.” The serfs were allowed to keep some sustenance from the land they worked but were held to strict obedience to all above them. In fact, said Cozzens, “loyalty and obedience” held the system together for centuries.

Similarly, the church has been based on a supreme pope who hands out benefices to bishops, who give parishes to priests, who in turn often regard their parishioners as serfs. The only major difference, said Cozzens, is that feudalism was based on a “land economy,” while the church is based “on a grace economy.”

He noted the feudal trappings that remain in the church today – robes of royal purple, titles like “your eminence” and “your excellency,” gestures of submission like bending knees before prelates and kissing their rings.

There is “a way out” of all this, said Cozzens, and it begins with the laity and with some priests and religious who are open to the Holy Spirit, who is “loose in the world,” The priest abuse scandal has made many Catholics aware of the need for structural reform, he said, even as it has made some bishops aware that the system to which they gave their total loyalty has betrayed them.

Fidelity to conscience
Traditionally, he recalled, a priest before his ordination would stand before the bishop, say “Adsum” (I am here), and make a promise of fidelity. Now, he said, laypersons should stand and say “Adsum!” signifying their promise of fidelity to conscience, gospel and the greater church. And they should declare, “We expect to know and to have a role in the governance of the church and the shaping of its future.”

The day of keeping the laity “at an adolescent level,” will end, he concluded, when lay charisms of leadership and prophecy are finally brought to bear on this “one, holy, wounded, perplexing and saving church.”

The priest of tomorrow
In a separate session, Cozzens gave his ideas for happier and healthier priests: Allow diocesan priests the freedom to live where they want to live; let them choose whether they are called to the sacrament of marriage. and give them a real salary, so they are not living as a kept man in a rectory. The priest of tomorrow will need the support of the bishops, and will have to be more collaborative, discern parishioners’gifts, and be better listeners. “We have not been trained to listen to you, so that we can be informed and transformed by you,” he admitted.

But in the immediate future, life is tough for priests, Cozzens said. For every 100 priests who die, leave or retire there are only 40-45 priests to replace them. Dwindling numbers plus the clergy sex abuse crisis have produced “skyrocketing stress and plummeting prestige. Most priests like doing what they do, but many are exhausted. Many others are well rested. These are the last of the landed gentry,” Cozzens quipped.