The early church was probably more like AA in the way it was run, than the Church today, said Dr Tom Doyle.
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A leading canon lawyer has said that the Catholic Church should model itself on the self-help fellowship Alcoholics Anonymous. He said that the early church was probably more like AA in the way it was run, than the Church today.
Canon lawyer Dr Tom Doyle warned that an “unrealistic and exalted concept of priesthood” had contributed to the clerical abuse scandals and said: “Stop glorifying a clerical elite.”
Speaking to a webinar organised by lay reform group, We Are Church Ireland, the priest, who has advocated for decades on behalf of victims of clerical sexual abuse, called for an end to the “heretical theology” in which priests project themselves as superior human beings who are closer to God than the average layperson.
He said this had been a feature of Pope John Paul II’s theology of priesthood.
Clericalism, he said, “is a disease that enhances this concept that they are special. This clerical mystique is made even stronger by the concept of celibacy.”
He criticised as “nonsense” a seminary formation in which trainee priests are “totally isolated from normal people” and are taught that relationships are of secondary importance – “that as celibate monks or priests, they are in a higher calling than lay people who are married, namely, their parents”.