It is now payback time for church, priest says

It is no surprise "that for some, it is now payback time" where the church is concerned, says Father Gerard Moloney in the November issue of the Redemptorist Reality magazine. "The church has hurt many, many people."

Ordinary Catholics are much more prepared to stand up to clergy with whom they disagreed or whose behaviour they consider inappropriate, he writes.

He cites the reaction to a description of Sonia O'Sullivan as "a common slut" by a priest at Mass in Ballinamore, Co Leitrim, last August as an example. What made that incident different from so many others in the past was the fact that it was reported, he says.

"One or more members of that congregation was so outraged by what was said that he or she contacted the media, who quickly camped on the priest's front door. The unfortunate priest paid a heavy price for his intemperate remarks." Not only was it inevitable such incidents would happen, but "it is also good that it has happened. It was inevitable because for far too long too many bishops and clergy engaged in what can only be described as an abuse of power, " he writes.

"They not only expected but demanded an obsequious obedience from their flocks; the bended knee, the proffered ring, the tugged forelock. There was no such thing as consulting the laity or even with fellow clergy, no sharing in decision-making. The bishop was lord of his diocese (and had all the trappings of title and dress to prove it), the parish priest was master of his parish.

"What they said and did went, and that was that. A lot of people suffered for it. Not just those who were `read' from the altar or scarred for life by a cutting remark, or abused in some form or another, or deliberately excluded from any real decision-making or leadership role in the church simply because they were women, but all those whose experience of the church has been of an institution that is autocratic and authoritarian," he writes.

Not only was it inevitable that people would challenge clerical abuses of power or authority, "it has been a good thing. "Good, because it reminds us that the church is about service, not power or pomp; and that it is called to identify with the weak and vulnerable, not to treat people arrogantly or abuse them or walk all over them; and that it is made up of all the people of God, and is not an elite club for celibate male clerics only."