It seems like it has been ingrained in us to see the word “Hierarchy” as something negative. To associate the word “Hierarchy” with words like “Injustice,” “Division,” “Tierney,” “Caste system,” etc. Perhaps without it being explicitly stated, I was taught that the word hierarchy had to do with separation, with people being placed over other people, and with inequality. So it was no easy task for my high school brain to comprehend that the church has what is literally called a hierarchy. In the hierarchy, we have the pope, then the cardinals, then the bishops, then the priests, then deacons. And then we have the laity, who we have somehow (incorrectly) understood as less than the men who make up the hierarchy.
This understanding of the hierarchy is a topic that I’ve had a lot of cause to think about and turn over in my head sometimes in formal ways and sometimes in less formal ways. I have written before about my parents, and about my dad in particular (who was blessed with three daughters) and told us over and over throughout the course of our lives that we were able to do anything that boys could do. As such, I remember quite distinctly as an 8-year-old, when my grandmother told me that only boys became priests, firmly telling her that I would be the first woman priest. Fast-forward to high school (when I started to grow into the independent, feminist teenager that my parents had created with their love and support) I had several friends in high school who were Catholic in the sense that they’d been Baptized, received First Communion and First Reconciliation, and Confirmation in the church but only attended Mass for Christmas and Easter services. When I asked the mother of one such friend her about the tattoo of a frog on her ankle; she told me that the frog was a reminder of her faith (a reminder to Fully Rely On God) and we started to talk about God and faith. Eventually, I asked her, if her faith was a big enough part of her life for her to get something tattooed on her body as a reminder, why they only came to Mass on Christmas and Easter? Her answer bore a striking resemblance to the claim I made as an 8-year-old; she told me that they stopped attending Mass every Sunday when her second daughter was a toddler because she looked at her two already strong and independent girls in the pew beside her and she looked at the leaders of our church (both locally and globally) and they were all men. And more than that, there was no future in which her daughters would have any power in this structure and that just wasn't the lesson she wanted to teach them about themselves. Move ahead a little further to my undergrad program at a Christian (not Catholic) college, I’ve mentioned before that I learned a lot of Catholic Theology merely as a way to combat people telling me that my church was wrong. In many settings (including my Biblical Studies and Theology courses as well as among my friend groups), the topic of women’s role in church came up repeatedly; comments about Catholics being stuck in the dark ages were common, as were comments about Catholics being anti women’s rights and sexist, among other things. Fast forward even further to my graduate studies at St. John’s University (a Catholic University this time) and the question of women's roles in the church is still being heavily debated amongst my peers and professors (with various degrees in Theology). In short, it seems that no matter where you go, there are people who struggle with the concept of hierarchy in the church want to debate this structure. All this being said, I think we have been steered off track (for a myriad of reasons, including valid things like abuse of power and cultural and political climate) because we, as a culture, do not have a proper understanding of the intention behind a hierarchical structure. I wrote a blog last year (you can read it here if you’d like) that talked about a similar construct. In short, it was about the fact that Jesus is given the title of "King" but is nothing like what we’d expect when we think of Kings. When we think of Kings we think of tyrants, of people who put their needs before the needs of the people, we think of someone who is above others. But for Jesus, this is not so, Jesus (who is literally God) came to the earth to serve (see Matthew 20:28). He healed the sick, washed the feet of his disciples, preached about the Kingdom of God, reached out to those who were the epitome of what one might call unworthy. Jesus showed us that having power wasn’t about what you could do for yourself but about what you could do for others. In this same sense, we do not interpret the Hierarchy of the church correctly; the hierarchy of the church is not meant to mirror the hierarchy on earth. The Hierarchy is meant to simply help us to understand what our jobs are in the church family no one job is more “important” than another. At the risk of oversimplifying things, while the pope looks after the whole of the church, the bishops look after dioceses, and the priests look after a particular parish, the laity have the job of looking after everyone else. We come to our church buildings to gather as a community, to receive the sacraments, to hear the word of God but we as the church are sent out to use our Baptismal calling of “Priest, Prophet, and King” to do the same for the world around us. Through the gift of the Holy Spirit given to us at Baptism, we are called to be Priest and help to reconcile the lost and broken to God, called to be Prophet and proclaim the good news that the Kingdom of God is here, and called to be King and serve in the way that Jesus served us. In the end, the hierarchy is meant to do one thing, and one thing alone, to fulfil God's mission from the beginning of time and bring His people into communion with him and communion with one another. This week, I pray that you will experience God's call on your life as Priest, Prophet, and King and be shown new ways that the Lord is calling you to help bring people into communion with him and each other.
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