If the term, appeared in the current language in the middle of the nineteenth century, has designated a time the will of the Catholics to interfere in the affairs of the state, he points today an internal evil in the Church. : that of the excess power of the priests.
by Luc Chatel
History of a notion. “Clericalism? That’s the enemy!” Léon Gambetta launched on May 4, 1877 in the House of Deputies, quoting his journalist friend Alphonse Peyrat. The clericalism referred to by the deputy of La Seine symbolized the tensions between the Republican and Catholic camps. And more precisely the temptation of the Church to encroach on legislative and executive powers. “We have come to ask ourselves if the state is not now in the Church, counter the truth of the principles that the Church is in the state,” said Gambetta.
The word “clericalism” appeared in the current language around 1855, to designate this will of influence of the Catholic clergy on political power. After the 1905 law has filed the separation of churches and the state, the word reappeared with another meaning. From the 1950s and especially the 1970s, under the influence of the Vatican Council in 1962, it refers to both the central place of the priest in the life of parishes and the way the latter can abuse his power. Of the influence of an institution on another, we move on to the influence of an individual on others; of the guardianship of the Church on the State, we go to that of the priest on the faithful.
The place of the priest in question
One of the earliest and surprising evocations of the term taken in this new meaning was revealed by Father Pierre about his priestly ordination on August 14, 1938. Father Henri de Lubac, Futur Cardinal, him Then gave this advice: “Tomorrow, when you are extended on the slabs of the chapel, do only one prayer to the Holy Spirit: Ask him that he gives you the anticlericalism of the saints!” (” Father Pierre, a steel soul soaked in love. Homily Cardinal Roger Etchegaray “, published in the Cross, April 16, 2013)
In the 1950s, Catholic theologians and intellectuals question the place of the priest in the Church. “There is a legitimate Christian anticlericalism necessary … when the faithful manifest too much passivity in their submission to the authority, they lack the respectful charity that they owe the hierarchy”, thus affirmed the historian Henri- Irenénée Marrou in 1955, at a conference entitled “The Church is not clerical!” Given with another Catholic historian, René Rémond.
The current of the theology of liberation (in the 1970s) as well as great figures such as those of the Philosopher Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) or theologian Yves Congar (1904-1995) have contributed a lot, by their writings , to try to deacalize the function of the priest and bring the Catholic institution closer to the communities of believers. In 1977, Paul VI became the first pope to publicly use this term, almost a century day for day after Gambetta. In his “speech to the bishops of the northern region of France” of March 28, 1977, he said: “Clericalism is for priests this form of government that is more of the power than the service.”
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