Friday, May 24, 2019

Hierarchy and the need for a 'culture of vulnerability'


Hierarchy and the need for a 'culture of vulnerability'

KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter
May 22, 2019
By Tom Roberts
Hierarchy and vulnerability are seemingly incompatible ideas. Hierarchy (in the Catholic imagination) signals status, power, privilege and the ability to control. Vulnerability, on the other hand, signals weakness, a flaw of some sort. It is to be avoided.
But vulnerability, properly understood, is precisely what members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy need to embrace as a strength, argues Fr. James Keenan, a Jesuit theologian. If it is ever to understand an essential interior element at the core of our humanity, the absence of which lies at the core of the sex abuse crisis, the hierarchy must develop a culture of vulnerability.
Keenan, Canisius Professor and director of the Jesuit Institute at Boston College, is developing an important and fascinating insight into the abuse crisis, elevating the discussion about clerical and hierarchical culture well beyond the changes in law and protocols and institutional structure that the scandal has forced upon the church. So I'm going to stick to one subject this week, with connections to past columns on the same and a hope that the discussion continues in the future.
Two months ago, in a segment of this column, I made extended reference to an insightful piece by Fr. Mark Slatter, associate professor of theological ethics at St. Paul University, Ottawa, Ontario, on clerical culture. He generally described culture as "a network of personal meaning and valuing." In the clerical world, that means a psychology that "engenders webs of kinship among priests, bishops and similarly disposed lay groups, bishops and cardinals, wealthy lay Catholics and think tanks."

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