Along with professors and bureaucrats, the clergy have to be careful, since clerisy is a relentless illusion. The clergy are at their best when they proclaim the solid Gospel, and they can be at their weakest when they assume a prerogative to comment on problems outside their competence. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops published in 1983 a pastoral letter on disarmament, “The Challenge of Peace,” which, if taken seriously, might have prevented the fall of the Berlin Wall six years later. {The pacifists were led by Archbishop Rembert Weakland and the militarists were led by Cardinal John O’Connor, the debate was not very edifying; I know, I was there.}Their pastoral letter on economics in 1986, “Economic Justice for All,” prescribed a big-government solution that could have thwarted the economic boom that ensued despite them {God is good}.  The clerisy rejected a cogent critique of “Economic Justice” chaired by the former Secretary of the Treasury, William Simon, and supported by Secretary of State Alexander Haig and J. Peter Grace, among others. Opponents of the peace pastoral, Archbishop Philip Hannan and then-Bishop John J. O’Connor, were ignored even though Hannan was the only bishop who had served in World War II {wrong, Hannan was a Chaplain and did not fight in the Second World War; I was a member of a flight crew in the 8th Air Force and flew 32 combat missions over Germany in 1945} , and the future cardinal {O’Connor} was auxiliary bishop for the Armed Forces  {and never engaged in combat}.

Recently, a bishop suggested that anyone who supported laws on illegal immigration might be subject to canonical penalties {a statement on the par with the famous statement of Nancy Pelosi that “Illegal immigrants should not be detained unless they have done something illegal”}, a stricture he did not invoke against Catholic congressmen in his state who support abortion. The bishops have also disagreed with the Supreme Court’s defense of the right to work for federal employees. Clerisy often prefers gratuitous politics to doctrinal orthodoxy. {a syndrome knowns as PP, political pandering}

Then there is the curious inconsistency of a cardinal who has said that priests “have no credibility” when it comes to marriage instruction because they have not been married themselves. {This cardinal also said that Jesus Christ’s teachings about marriage should not be taken too seriously because He, Christ, was never married.} Having prepared over eight hundred people for marriage, I might venture to enlist most of them in witness against his demurral from competence, and would also ask, if that cardinal is correct, why does he not see any inconsistency {insanity} in declaring this as prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family, and Life. Pope Francis has said that “no one better than [a priest] knows” the challenges that married couples face. Clerisy may be well-intentioned, but Saint Bernard of Clairvaux said that the road to Hell is full of good intentions.

Clerisy does have its flaws, in witness to which one might conjure the ghost of Samuel Taylor Coleridge who, despite his erudition, died from recourse to opium.

• Father George W. Rutler