Activism in holy places

Abolish the Priesthood was the provocative title of James Carroll’s article in the June 2019 issue of The Atlantic. My response to that piece emerges from recent musings on the nature of religious rituals and institutional power. Over the past eight months, I’ve attended a Catholic church in my neighborhood about twice a month. The predictability of the rituals, combined with the church’s historical and global reach, carries a weighty spiritual resonance that appeals to me.

This stands in stark contrast to the lighter, personality-driven style of Pentecostal churches I’ve attended over the past four decades. I’ve been willing to suspend disbelief, recognizing that religious performance—especially in its front-stage form—is designed to evoke awe and sanctify the worship experience. Yet such performance may not reflect the lived realities of those who enact it. In the case of Catholic priests, the global sex abuse scandal has repeatedly pulled back the curtain to reveal a diabolical backstage.

Carroll attributes the scandal—and the secrecy that enabled it—to clericalism: a caste-like system that concentrates power in the hands of the priesthood. His argument is direct and unsettling: to address the crisis, the clergy must be abolished. He calls for a democratization of the church, with greater authority vested in laypeople. Importantly, Carroll’s proposal is not a call for radical revolution or destruction. It is a plea for reform from within—a reimagining of church governance that resists both authoritarianism and populist distortion.

The article raises more profound questions about the nature of religion itself: To what extent are religious systems human constructions that ossify over time? And how do bureaucratic structures obstruct the manifestation of the Holy? These institutions, while perhaps a necessary feature of modern life, are self-perpetuating power structures capable of significant harm—as the Catholic Church’s sex abuse crisis has tragically shown.

Carroll reminds us that clericalism is yet another form of inequality to confront, alongside racism, sexism, ableism, and classism. The 21st century presents formidable challenges for activists, and no arena is too sacred to escape scrutiny—not even the Catholic Church.